Portside

At a moment when the President of the United States is attacking the very idea of U.S. citizenship, this book reminds us how the true — and Constitutional — ideal of who this country belongs to is embedded in our traditions.

It is, after all, about a slice of red-state America at a time of fierce political polarization. In the wake of the 2016 election, traveling to Monrovia—a mostly white town in the vice president’s home state—was hardly an idle or random decision.

The teens of "Sabrina" are witch and human, girl and gender nonconforming—and they have a message: If magic isn’t used for justice, then it’s not witchcraft.

Among jackals and ostriches, poet Timothy Donnelly satirizes the Court of King Don with pitch-perfect mimicry.

Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh has gotten a few things wrong over his career. But his memoir shows a reporter with broad and brave consistency, exposing one atrocity and cover-up by the forces of American imperial power after another.

Here is a review of a new history of the pro-Nazi movement in the United States in the years before World War II. That movement was far more popular than many people know.

First Man is a paean to American greatness. It does include a montage of protesters demanding that the money on NASA be spent to help the poor and hungry, set to Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon”. That might have been a good title for the film.

We need wild salmon—and not just because they’re tasty. They are an indicator of ecosystem health.

What would the world look like if all workers were this close to the soil?

Washington state poet Risa Denenberg writes of the fragility of human life on this imperiled planet while “Our sun winks…/without ambition.”