Journalism

… continued at The Nation, HERE 4-29-2024

The Oregon senator who tried to get into Gaza explains what he saw and learned.

Jon Wiener: Recently you went to the Rafah border crossing, between Gaza and Egypt—it’s one of the very few ways for anyone to get into or out of Gaza, and is the principal route for delivery of humanitarian aid. Why did you go, and what did you see?

… continued at The Nation, HERE 2-9-2024

Drew Faust was the first woman president of Harvard, from 2007 to 2018. Before that, she was the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and before that, she was the Annenberg professor of history at Penn. Now, she’s a member of the history department at Harvard. She’s the author of six books, including This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. Her new book is Necessary Trouble: Growing up at Mid-Century. This interview has been condensed and edited.

JON WIENER:​  I’ve read a lot of memoirs written by sixties people and virtually all trace the origins of their activism to the same moment: the sit-in movement in the spring of 1960.  But your epiphany, as you call it, the shock of recognition that spurred you to take your first political act, came well before 1960​…

… continued at The Nation, HERE  5-30-2023

“Sowing the Future” (co-authored by Mike Davis), LARB Quarterly 37 (Spring 2023), pp. 37-44.  Excerpt from “Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties,” with a new introduction.

… continued in LARB Quarterly, HERE  6-10-2023

Eyal Press on courage and caution among abortion providers.

JON WIENER: When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a lot of our friends immediately sent a check to Planned Parenthood—because Planned Parenthood is known to all as the organization that provides abortion services and defends abortion rights. But it turns out some of the affiliates are less willing to provide abortion services than others. And in many places, independent abortion clinics do a lot of the work, and face a lot of the threats from violent anti-abortion activists: for example, in Montana.  

… continued at The Nation, HERE  5-30-2023

WRITING ABOUT LA IN THE SIXTIES WITH MIKE DAVIS – LARB

“A moment in rock-and-roll dreamtime: Saturday night on Sunset Strip in early December 1967.”

That beginning of an academic article was the first thing anybody saw about Mike Davis’s new project, a movement history of L.A. in the sixties. “Riot Nights on Sunset Strip” recounted how thousands of young people fought the police, ostensibly over a curfew.

… continued at Los Angeles Review of Books, HERE   11-11-2022

“City of Quartz,” Mike Davis’ masterpiece, was remarkable in many ways, not the least of which was the author photo, which became the focus of the Nation magazine’s review. There, Marshall Berman wrote that Mike looked like “an aging, ravaged light-heavyweight” who “doesn’t want company.” Berman confessed he was so turned off by the photo that the book “lay on my night table for weeks” before he started reading it. So began Davis’ ambivalent career in the intellectual trenches, declaring his independence by defying the convention of the warm, inviting author photo.

… continued at LATimes.com, HERE   10-26-2022

“Michael Wolff’s wonderful review of Jared Kushner’s memoir says “everyone hated Jared” (September 9). But what about Ivanka?”
Letter to the TLS, Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 7, 2022,
Here:   https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-decline-of-metaphysics/
Read more…