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FIGHT OLIGARCHY

Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s […]

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LETTER FROM JAPAN

When it first became popular, Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was often associated with minimalism, as she instructed de-clutterers to keep only things that “spark joy.” At the same time, her guidance to thank objects for their service was a point of puzzlement: Do material goods and personal surroundings really matter? In Kondo’s […]

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LOOK OUT

The late philosopher Roland Barthes had a fear of heights and a hatred of mountains. Had he been around to read McPherson’s book, he might have reconsidered: Seeing from up high can yield awe, and while “awe often carries an undercurrent of fear,” it can provoke some, if you will, elevated thoughts. It can also […]

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THIS IS ORANGE

Poliquin’s epic journey opens, naturally, with an orange. Fast facts and anecdotes follow; though presented seemingly randomly, they coalesce into a rich exploration of the color through the lenses of culture, history, and nature. The rooster from The Canterbury Tales, “dreaming of a fox whose ‘colour was betwixe yellow and reed,’” precedes a spread about […]

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THE DEMON AND THE LIGHT

Ren is no longer a traveling troupe performer. After her Light powers were revealed and she defeated the general who killed her mother, she had to take her rightful place as the Princess of Sareniya and a celestial maiden. Before she can claim the throne, however, Ren needs to find Sunho, the boy she loves. […]

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ANALOG DAYS

It’s June 2016. A group of friends gather in the courtyard of a New York City bar to discuss their days, their dates, their philosophies of art and life. In November there will be an election whose consequences can’t quite be imagined yet. The Brexit vote goes through in England. In Minnesota, Philando Castile is […]

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THE PROPHET OF LOST SOULS

Ralph Norton is the highly successful CFO at FASTRAK, America’s second-largest purveyor of Christian merchandise. Ralph is also the genius behind Word of God, an AI-based app that uses Scripture and religious doctrine to create a personalized spiritual experience in the form of counsel from “God” himself. The app has catapulted Houston-based FASTRAK into the […]

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LOVE WARS: CLASH OF THE PARENTS, A TRUE DIVORCE STORY

Told through the eyes of a sensitive child, Tower’s offbeat personal narrative immerses readers in the visceral confusion of a fractured family, rendered with vivid sensory details—the smell of apple juice and holding tight to a Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animal. The child’s imagination serves as a coping mechanism, with recurring Star Wars and Hundred Acre Wood metaphors […]

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THE TURKEY IS NOT THE ONLY THING GETTING ROASTED

“Thanksgiving is not just about gratitude,” the author writes in the book’s opening lines, continuing, “It’s about gravy, grudges, [and] group texts gone wrong.” With a chapter dedicated to each state (plus Washington, D.C.), Okine offers readers 51 short stories poking fun at America’s “most chaotic, carb-loaded, emotionally layered holiday.” None of the stories are […]

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Lessons In Coming and Going or Neti-Neti (Not This Not That)

Glicksman, an American English professor and jewelry importer before his death in 2021, recaps three decades of periodic sojourns in the Middle and Far East starting in 1971. The author usually traveled on his own, in threadbare circumstances. His destinations included Turkey, where he encountered “hashish of a legendary quality” that made “the air…thick and […]