Portside

With all the toxicity coming out of the White House and the GOP-dominated Congress, it's important to remember how insufferable were the politics of the neoliberal Democrats in power under Bill Clinton. The book under review (an article derived from the book is below) should help us remember how malignant were the Clinton years when it came to economic and social justice.

This week the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, named Tracy K. Smith as the U.S. Poet Laureate for 2017-2018. Smith is the fifth African American poet and the fourth black woman to hold the honor. She is the author of three books of poems, the most recent of which, Life on Mars, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. A link to the Library of Congress citation, and a review, from 2012, of Life on Mars, are posed below.

National Public Radio's media critic Brooke Gladstone talks with the Poynter Institute about the myth of post-fact journalism and the need for journalists to ferret out and offer common pools of accurate information, if only to provide contending parties with a basis to negotiate and for democracy to work.

The acclaimed Indian novelist and essayist whose first novel, The God of Small Things (1997) was a prize-winning, international sensation, has just published a new novel that reviewer Walter describes as "a bright mosaic."