Why Progressive “Myths” Distort Solutions to the Housing Shortage

A big deal that’s not nearly big enough: what the “city of yes” will (and won’t) do

In January 2025, Urban Matters, Center of New York City Affairs's weekly journal of ideas and opinion, wrapped up a wide-ranging two-part interview with noted urban policy expert Richard McGahey on the likely impact of New York City’s newly adopted "City of Yes" zoning package intended to jumpstart housing production. ...
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Why Progressive “Myths” Distort Solutions to the Housing Shortage

Israel’s American History

On Israel’s ambivalent relationship with the United States and OZ Frankel’s latest book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973

Historian Oz Frankel's new book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973 (Stanford University Press, 2024), examines the multifaceted and contradictory presence of the United States in Israel during a short but significant period of history. In a conversation with Claire Potter, Frankel shares the ...
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Israel’s American History

The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel

An interview about After David

An older woman and a younger man—a trope that operates on elements of fantasy and plays with conventional expectations. The dynamic between an older woman and a younger man is complex; it's looked down upon, and it never gets tiresome. In After David (ITNA Press, 2024), Catherine Texier explores these themes ...
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The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel

Where the Avant-Garde Went to Grow

Behind the scenes of Becoming Bohemia: Greenwich Village, 1912–1923

We have really rich, deep collections of materials related to Greenwich Village, especially dealing with this period of the Village's history. When the wider public thinks of Bohemias or avant-garde settings, especially from that time period, the early twentieth century, their thoughts might gravitate towards Paris in the 1920s, or ...
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Where the Avant-Garde Went to Grow

Emily Nussbaum Is Getting Realer Than Real

A review of Cue the Sun!—The Invention of Reality TV

Emily Nussbaum is a highly celebrated intellectual and writer. She has written for the New Yorker for several years, first as a television critic, then as a staff writer. She’s the author of I Like to Watch, a collection of essays about her television hot takes; she’s also a Pulitzer ...
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Emily Nussbaum Is Getting Realer Than Real

Enter the Glow

Hannah Burns explores identity, escapism, and queer belonging in I Saw the TV Glow

Sometimes the only place we can be ourselves is inside the media we consume. Sometimes that is where we see options, where we feel less “other.”  Watching I Saw the TV Glow, I loved the thought that Jane Schoenbrun’s amazing new film will join a queer film canon in which a ...
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Enter the Glow

How American Jewish Marxists Forged a Macho Style for Public Intellectuals

A conversation with Ronnie Grinberg about her book Write Like a Man

In this biographical study of the New York Jewish intellectuals behind journals like Partisan Review, Dissent, and Commentary, Grinberg focuses on prominent post war writers and editors like Irving Howe, Norman Podhoretz, Lionel Trilling, and Irving Kristol, many of them native New Yorkers and graduates of City College....

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How American Jewish Marxists Forged a Macho Style for Public Intellectuals

From the Sewer of the Internet, a Slang Surfaces

Why are my friends talking like incels?

“Been gymmaxxing lately,” my friend quipped as he made a protein shake.  “Proteinpilled too,” I said. My generation is speaking a new slang—new to us, anyway. Not quite ubiquitous, but familiar to that contingent of chronically online youth (and is that phrase not becoming a tautology?). These are phrases borrowed from incels, ...
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From the Sewer of the Internet, a Slang Surfaces