In the first half of the 20th century, 8 million poor rural whites fled the border states for Great Lakes cities. Brash and suspicious of government, they played an underappreciated role in the collapse of the New Deal order.
books
Posted inSeptember/October 2023
Can Aristopopulism Save Us?
Patrick Deneen wants to replace corrupt “structurally liberal” elites with a new elect of moral guardians.
Posted inJuly/August 2023
The Provocations of Martin Peretz
The legendary editor shook up the political-media power axis. Was he a free-thinking iconoclast or an irredeemable bigot?
Posted inJuly/August 2023
Chamber of Secrets
The Supreme Court’s habit of deciding hugely important cases without briefings, arguments, or even a word of explanation threatens democracy.
Posted inJuly/August 2023
Erasing the Color Lines
The problem of residential segregation is racial. The best solutions are not.
Posted inMagazine
Was Edith Wilson the First Woman President?
Woodrow Wilson’s wife had extraordinary influence. Then he suffered a debilitating stroke.
Posted inMagazine
Birch of a Nation
How a group of conspiratorial far-right business tycoons in the 1950s and ‘60s helped lay the groundwork for the MAGA movement decades later.
Posted inMagazine
Desperately Seeking Union
A new biography of Daniel Webster argues that the antebellum statesman forged a civic nationalist vision that has held America together. If only it were true.
Posted inMagazine
The New Company Towns
Monopolistic hospital systems now dominate the economies of many cities—and shape public policy far beyond the scope of medicine.
Posted inBooks
Emancipation Relocation
In 1848, at a time when Black families were routinely ripped apart and Black bodies were bought and sold in public squares as chattel, a Black man and his mixed-race wife pulled off one of the most daring and ingenious feats of self-emancipation imaginable. Defying conventions of race, class, and gender, William and Ellen Craft […]
