Category: News

The Unlikely History of Faber & Faber

A literary publishing house is a strange beast—a business, yes, but also less and more than one. Publishers sometimes develop exalted notions about their cultural status; sometimes these notions become broadly shared. Names like Cape; Einaudi; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Fischer; Gallimard; Grove Press; Knopf; New Directions; Scribner; and the granddaddy of them all, John…

By JohnValbyNation July 24, 2019 0

What Happens When a Group of Strangers Spends a Day Debating Immigration?

About twenty-five minutes into a small group discussion of undocumented immigration, in Houston, something changed. The group was taking part in an experiment in “deliberative polling,” which measures the impact of discussion and information on public opinion. The conversation among the eighteen people in the room had hit all the standard talking points and deployed…

By JohnValbyNation July 24, 2019 0

Conservative Nationalism Is Trumpism for Intellectuals

On the final night of this past week’s National Conservatism Conference, Senator Josh Hawley—a graduate of Stanford and Yale and a former instructor at an English private school—warned the attendees gathered in the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Washington, D.C., about the threat of élite cosmopolitanism. “The politics of those left and right have…

By JohnValbyNation July 23, 2019 0

How Illinois Became an Abortion-Rights Haven

On a recent Friday night, Janeen Lee sat at her round dining-room table on Chicago’s South Side, scanned her laptop, and chose a name from a short list. Lee is a volunteer for the Chicago Abortion Fund, which, since its founding, in 1985, has helped low-income people pay for abortions. She reached a woman, about…

By JohnValbyNation July 23, 2019 0

The Audio App That’s Transforming Erotica

Not long ago, my co-worker Josh Rothman and I each listened to several hours of audio erotica—a broad swath of podcasts and such—as research for a proposed story about “sexy self-care.” Erotic podcasts, like many genres of podcast, have been booming in recent years, and, in theory, it was a fun story idea. Josh likes…

By JohnValbyNation July 22, 2019 0

Conservative Nationalism Is Trumpism for Intellectuals

Click:personalized dog cake topper On the final night of this past week’s National Conservatism Conference, Senator Josh Hawley—a graduate of Stanford and Yale and a former instructor at an English private school—warned the attendees gathered in the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Washington, D.C., about the threat of élite cosmopolitanism. “The politics of those…

By JohnValbyNation July 22, 2019 0