The Real Roots of American Rage
The untold story of how anger became the dominant emotion in our politics and personal lives—and what we can do about it.
January/February 2019
In This Issue
The president’s extraordinary emergency powers, how Tibet went crazy for hoops, rescuing American exceptionalism, and why we’re so angry. Plus a new term for ‘LGBTQ,’ modern feminism’s RBG obsession, how authoritarians wage war on women, fiction by Samanta Schweblin, and more.
Cover Story
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The Alarming Scope of the President’s Emergency Powers
From seizing control of the internet to declaring martial law, President Trump may legally do all kinds of extraordinary things.
Tibet Is Going Crazy for Hoops
Monks, nomads, and a sport’s unlikely ascent in a remote corner of the globe
What Donald Trump and Dick Cheney Got Wrong About America
We allowed an important idea—American exceptionalism—to be hijacked and misused. Now we need to rescue that idea and let it guide America at home and abroad.
Fiction: Toward Happy Civilization
A traveler plots an escape from a rural train station. A short story
Dispatches
Edmon de Haro The New Authoritarians Are Waging War on Women
Donald Trump’s ideological cousins around the world want to reverse the feminist gains of recent decades.
Esther Aarts Humans Made Drones by Copying Birds. Birds Are Fighting Back.
As machines fill the skies, they meet resistance from the animals who already live there.
Katie Martin It’s Time to Drop the ‘LGBT’ From ‘LGBTQ’
The case for a new term that describes all sexual minorities
James Graham Ending Weed Prohibition Hasn’t Stopped Drug Crimes
Marijuana legalization was supposed to decrease crime—but the reality is more complicated.
Chiara Zarmati Did Free Pens Cause the Opioid Crisis?
What Big Pharma knows about people’s hardwired instinct to reciprocate when given a gift
Rami Niemi China’s Hottest Bachelors Are Animated Characters
Why millions of women play the mobile game Love and Producer
Joe McKendry Graffiti Could Bankrupt You
A very short book excerpt
The Culture File
Ian Wright; photo by David Harrison; courtesy of Academy of American Poets The Haunting Last Letters of Sylvia Plath
As tragedy approaches, she is stricken, broken—and at the height of her artistic powers.
Bijou Karman The Irony of Modern Feminism’s Obsession With Ruth Bader Ginsburg
A new biography squares the decorous legal figure with the feminist gladiator.
Hanna Barczyk Sam Lipsyte’s Lame Send-up of a Guru and His Acolytes
In Hark, the characters are distracted, and their author veers between satire and sincerity.
Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Warhol’s Bleak Prophecy
What a new retrospective reveals about the artist, and about our swerve away from humanism
FSG Riveting Stories About Restless Wanderers
Chris Power’s debut collection, Mothers, reveals that maternity is an unsettling journey.
Departments
The Conversation: Newt Gingrich Says You're Welcome
Readers respond to our November 2018 stories and more.
Graham Roumieu What Was the Coldest Act of Revenge of All Time?
A big question
This is a test article
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Poetry
Melinda Josie
