Portside

In the 1970s a group of African American experimental jazz improvisors organized musician-sponsored concerts in a network of lower Manhattan lofts. The music they produced was not only sonically adventurous, much of it was also driven by a host of social concerns. Michael Heller has published a new history of this movement. Michael J. Agovino helps guide us through this important cultural moment.

It feels perfectly appropriate that in 2016, a mortifying examination of one man’s ego played a role in the election of America’s next president. Weiner is a depressing pile-up of the year’s governing impulses: the media’s veneration of scandal, the increasing shamelessness of the country’s politicians, and Weiner’s quiet, ashamed delight in his own continued relevance.

Interview with behavioral scientist Dr. Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating (2006) and Slim by Design (2014) and founder of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University. The Food and Brand Lab was started in 1997 at the University of Illinois (before moving to Cornell in 2005), to explore how humans relate to food with the end goal of uncovering solutions to improve eating environments and help individuals eat better. Wansink analyzes why we eat what we eat.

A good starting point would be to stop making the Nazis and Japanese imperialists the most compelling characters in the series.

New Year's coming, a moment for memories, and a gift seldom appreciated until a person has lost the ability. Poet Jennifer L. Knox's Auld Lang Syne points to a sad irony.

At first glance, modern art and contemporary imperialism make strange bedfellows. The book under review both charts the history of the CIA's work in promoting US corporate interests through its manipulation of culture--what was then called cultural diplomacy-- while also working to define modernism. The reviewer congratulates the author on his first task, but criticizes him on the second.

For those of us who need a reminder of the notorious record of the CIA over the last sixty-plus years, here is a useful up-to-date history. Reviewer Paul Buhle shows some of this new book's high points.

The friend who urged me to see Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea told me it was the only film she’d been able to watch since the election, the only work of art that had, even briefly, distracted her from her worry about the future of our democracy. It might seem odd to describe a film about unendurable grief and sadness as a distraction—a word we more often associate with entertainment and escape. But after watching Lonergan’s astonishing film, I understood.

In the UK. junk food ads for children will be prohibited on the internet, in print and at movie theaters

Thanks to sustained, legitimate outrage from people on the Internet and a major ethical violation, there will be one fewer outlet for white supremacists to plead their case to the American people.