People Are Still Getting Married, and This Book Is Here to Help
Why would a woman ever marry a man? “Happy Ever After,” a new book by the behavioral scientist Paul Dolan, argues that women who don’t marry or have children are happier and live longer than those who do. A University of Arizona study from 2017 suggested that divorce improves the health of postmenopausal women. Mountains…
The Chaotic Magic of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue
I may be wrong about this, but I don’t think so: music, particularly pop music, will never reach you in a more visceral way than it does when you’re very young. Something about the hunger and plasticity you have at that time of your life as you encounter an art form that is so raw,…
A Weakening Economy May Be the Biggest Threat to Donald Trump
On Friday morning, the Labor Department released its jobs report for May, which showed a sharp slowdown in hiring. Donald Trump was still in Ireland, preparing to fly back to Washington. He didn’t immediately react to the news that employers created only seventy-five thousand jobs last month, which wasn’t surprising. Trump hates acknowledging negative developments…
Bernie Sanders’s Walmart Speech May Offer a Preview of Larger Labor Proposals
On Wednesday, Bernie Sanders spoke at Walmart’s annual shareholders’ meeting in support of a resolution that would require the company to consider its hourly associates for seats on its board of directors. “The concerns of workers, not just stockholders, should be part of board decisions,” he said. “Today, with the passage of this resolution, Walmart…
A D Day Journey in the Spirit of A. J. Liebling
When, on the evening of June 5, 1944, troops set out from the south coast of Britain for what would be a decisive assault on the European mainland the following morning, A. J. Liebling, a writer for The New Yorker who had been among those covering the war in France and elsewhere, was among them.…
Amber Gray’s Ferocious Twist on the Goddess Persephone in “Hadestown”
Persephone, the Greek goddess of harvest and fertility, and a daughter of Zeus, is walking through a garden plucking wildflowers one day when Hades, the god of the Underworld, whisks her away to his subterranean realm. There, Persephone and Hades strike a deal; she can return to the land above for six months every year,…
Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Debate About the Best Way to Get Donald Trump Out of Office
As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi roamed Normandy on Thursday (she had brought along a contingent of dozens of members of Congress for the official commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of D Day, including veterans from both sides of the aisle), her party was debating what it meant to want someone behind bars. Was…
How Fetal Personhood Emerged as the Next Stage of the Abortion Wars
The line for which the Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is best known is also his ugliest: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” He was referring to a woman named Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter, in the case of Buck v. Bell, from 1927, which held that it was constitutional for…
The Best Episode of the New “Black Mirror” Is a Princess Tale Starring Miley Cyrus
“Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” is the pick of the litter of the fifth season of “Black Mirror.” The episode, directed by Anne Sewitsky and written by the series’ creator, Charlie Brooker, is a self-aware princess tale in triplicate. With a clarity that excuses its thematic obviousness, it explores a few overlapping visions retailed by…