William Harris has written for n+1, New Left Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Point, and others. He studies English literature and teaches writing at the University of Chicago.
It is received wisdom that Ronald Reagan played “Pink Houses” and “Born in the USA” at his rallies because he thought he could drain these songs of their meaning. A new book explains how heartland rock came to appeal to left- and right-wing fans alike.
After learning her mother took out $200,000 of debt in her name, Kristen Collier felt betrayed. Her new book traces how it pushed her to expose unscrupulous lenders who upend the lives of millions across the US.
British literary magazine Granta has focused its latest issue on China during a time of growing geopolitical tensions. It introduces a contemporary Chinese literature written in the minor key by writers driven by political ennui.
Two years after his 1982 album Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen released Born in the U.S.A. Together, they provided a tragic-romantic view of the working class in Reagan-era America.
The music critic Ian Penman made his name during the heady days of anti-Thatcher counterculture. In Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors, he finds his match in the frenzied life and work of postwar Germany’s most iconoclastic director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Creating a vibrant left ecosystem doesn’t just mean building stronger labor and tenant unions — it means building cultural institutions that prize democracy over privatization and embed themselves in everyday working-class life.