From global capital to YouTube, carbon credits to indigenous land defenders in their own words, Will Meyer has compiled a reading list on who lit the match and how the fire might be stopped.
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America’s Post-Frontier Hangover
America binged on expansion, relying on land grabs as an engine of growth and a way to externalize racial hatred. Historian Greg Grandin asks, without a frontier, what can America be?
How the NRA Sells Guns in America Today
At The New Republic, “military veteran, big game hunter, and gun owner” Elliott Woods goes undercover at gun trade show to learn about how the NRA marketing machine has gone into high gear to combat what they’re calling the “Trump Slump.”
The Age of Forever Crises
We need to learn how to talk about our irreversible mistakes. Historian Kate Brown says the first step is to resist the Chernobylization of knowledge.
The Final Five Percent
If traumatic brain injuries can impact the parts of the brain responsible for personality, judgment, and impulse control, maybe injury should be a mitigating factor in criminal trials — but one neuroscientist discovers that assigning crime a biological basis creates more issues than it solves.
What’s Love Got to Do With It?
“Although the world has made space for more diverse women, we are still expected to fill the role of the one who wants to be loved, to be a mother when perhaps we only ever wanted to paint, to write, to explore the world alone, on our own terms.”
We Still Don’t Know How to Navigate the Cultural Legacy of Eugenics
From abortion to immigration, a long-debunked scientific movement still casts long, confusing shadows over our most fraught debates.
‘I Don’t Think Those Feelings of Self-Doubt Ever Go Away.’
Susan Choi talks about feeling unsure of oneself, as a writer, as a performer — or as a victim — and about how her latest novel evolved in uncanny tandem with the real world.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Ta-Nehisi Coates; Nikole Hannah-Jones; Mark Collette, David Hunn, and Mike Hixenbaugh; Natalie Kitroeff and Victoria Kim; and Robert Minto.
On Being an Ill Woman: A Reading List of Doctors’ Dismissal and Disbelief
Eight stories of being ill and being dismissed by the medical establishment.

