Heather McGhee Offers a New Story of American Solidarity

The 2022 Zócalo Book Prize Winner Sees Hope Beyond America’s ‘Zero-Sum’ Mindset

The 2022 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize event’s return to in-person programming for the first time in three years—and the hopeful chord struck by the winning author—arrived at the ASU California Center in downtown L.A. at a necessary moment.

The event also streamed live online, which allowed Georgia poet laureate and 2022 Zócalo Poetry Prize winner Chelsea Rathburn to join virtually to read her winning poem, “8 a.m., Ocean Drive,” before philanthropist Tim Disney, the sponsor of both prizes, took the stage at the Herald Examiner building before a large, enthusiastic …

by Sarah Rothbard | June 2, 2022

Why the Western Remains ‘One of Our Most Powerful Cinematic Inventions’

From The Searchers to The Power of the Dog, Troubled Protagonists Offer an American Vision of Death and Defeat

by Glenn Frankel | March 17, 2022

Robert Warshow, a tall, wry, chain-smoking New Yorker and an editor at Commentary magazine in the early 1950s, was obsessed with movies, comic books, and other forms of popular culture …

Can the American Republic Survive the Stubbornness of San Francisco?

The City by the Bay Keeps Producing Leaders Who Won’t Quit—Even When They Should

by Joe Mathews | September 7, 2021

San Francisco stubbornness is holding the republic hostage.

The hostage takers are two of California’s oldest and most powerful mules. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer …

How ‘Automation’ Made America Work Harder

Computers Were Supposed to Reduce Office Labor. They Accomplished the Opposite

by Jason Resnikoff | September 2, 2021

The world confronts “an epochal transition.” Or so the consulting firm McKinsey and Company crowed in 2018, in an article accompanying a glossy 141-page report on the automation revolution. Over …

Is America Ready to See Itself as an Orchestra?

Cultural Pluralism Offers a Better Concept of the Nation Than the Melting Pot Ever Did

by Michael C. Steiner | September 1, 2021

More than a century after Jewish American philosopher Horace Kallen developed the concept of cultural pluralism in 1915, it has never been more important. In the simplest terms, cultural pluralism …

America Isn’t Awkward Enough

Our Anti-Social Social Norms Keep Us From Engaging in the Uncomfortable Moments That Lead to Real Change

by Adam Kotsko | July 12, 2021

Ever since vaccines became available, people have been joking that the return to normal life would be awkward. After more than a year of relative isolation, so the half-earnest predictions …

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