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Author

Scott W. Stern

Scott W. Stern is the author, most recently, of There Is a Deep Brooding in Arkansas: The Rape Trials That Sustained Jim Crow, and the People Who Fought It, From Thurgood Marshall to Maya Angelou

All Articles
October 24, 2024
Scott W. Stern
Searching for the Elusive Man Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin
John Andrew Jackson spent a night at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home as he fled north. Why do so few traces of his visit remain?
April 12, 2024
Scott W. Stern
L.A. Doesn’t Have a Homelessness Crisis. It’s a Crisis of Abandonment.
Two new books show how a frayed social safety net is leaving more and more people alone and vulnerable.
February 5, 2024
Scott W. Stern
The Socialist Moment Hasn’t Passed. It’s Yet to Come.
The most promising leaders on the left today are not elected politicians.
November 15, 2023
Scott W. Stern
Big Publishing Killed the Author
How corporations wrested creative control from writers and editors—to produce less interesting books.
June 26, 2023
MagazineScott W. Stern
Where Does the South Begin?
A new history cuts against stereotypes, to show a region constantly changing—and whose future is up for grabs.
February 6, 2023
MagazineScott W. Stern
Blame Palo Alto
From Stanford to Silicon Valley, a small town in California spread tech’s gospel of data and control.
January 10, 2023
Scott W. Stern
The Problem With Silent Spring Environmentalism
A new history of the environmental movement places too much emphasis on famous figures like Rachel Carson and shies away from confronting failures.
May 31, 2022
Scott W. Stern
DDT Is Still With Us, 50 Years Since It Was Banned
Scientists have found toxic levels of the chemical at large. And some groups are making the case to produce even more.
August 17, 2021
MagazineScott W. Stern
The Radicalization of Clarence Thomas
His time working for Monsanto and other polluting industries helped make him the fierce conservative he is today.
June 10, 2021
Scott W. Stern
The Political Imagination of Stacey Abrams
What ails democracy in her Supreme Court thriller, “While Justice Sleeps”?
March 31, 2021
Scott W. Stern
A Rust Belt City’s New Working Class
Heavy industry once drove Pittsburgh’s economy. Now health care does—but without the same hard-won benefits.
February 11, 2021
Scott W. Stern
Lauren Oyler Is a Tough Critic of Contemporary Fiction. Can Her Novel Do Better?
On “Fake Accounts” and the problems of millennial fiction
October 28, 2020
Scott W. Stern
A Mission to Expose Far-Right Hate
Talia Lavin’s book “Culture Warlords” documents her efforts to root out white supremacy—through some creative methods.
September 18, 2020
Scott W. Stern
The Generation That Was Exhausted
When millennials talk about being burned out, they are pointing to the failures of capitalism.
April 8, 2020
Scott W. Stern
Don’t Look For Patient Zeros
Naming the first people to fall sick often leads to abuse.
February 27, 2020
Scott W. Stern
How Far Left Should a Millennial Be?
Malcolm Harris’s book sketches a radical politics for the generation between Occupy Wall Street and the age of Trump.
February 19, 2020
MagazineScott W. Stern
How Powerful Is This Right-Wing Shadow Network?
A new book traces the workings of the Council for National Policy. But how much influence does the organization really wield?
December 3, 2019
Scott W. Stern
The Lives of the Left Behind
A new book details what happens to a community after an immigration raid.
October 24, 2019
MagazineScott W. Stern
The Making of a White Supremacist Myth
Why the far-right pushes the lie that black Americans fought as Confederate soldiers
September 25, 2019
Scott W. Stern
How War Made the Cigarette
A new book explores the tangled politics behind a global addiction.

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