Portside

Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s Abolition Geography is written to be used.

The process of examining recipes and cooking instills concepts more deeply than traditional modes of assessment; learning about Jewish women just by reading texts would be particularly ahistorical.

Barack Obama abandoned his commitments to unions, and many top staffers went to work for the gig economy. In his Netflix series Working, the former president bears witness to workers’ suffering as if it were immutable.

California poet Lee Rossi knows what’s wrong with America—but who will listen?

A radical communion of painting and writing, Art on the Frontline reckons with the leftist political potential of Black visual and expressive culture.

A new bill aims to help the state’s independent farmers by first labeling who they are.

The conformity of 1950s film and television was the result of the successful McCarthyist purge of leftists — and their genres — from the entertainment industry. The life of socialist screenwriter Very Caspary shows how it was done and what was lost.

The so-called “arc of history,” says poet Kenneth Pobo, does not “bend toward justice,” and he tells us why!

Sarah Bakewell’s sweeping new survey of the philosophical tradition, “Humanly Possible,” says that putting your faith in human behavior means confronting complacency and nihilism — but it can be worth it.

Many processed foods now common in civilian life were first created by and for the military-industrial complex. Thank Uncle Sam for Cheetos, air fryers, and other modern mainstays.