Browse Topics

Free Radical

An Interview With Noam Chomsky

Up until December 1967, almost everybody had been a hawk. Starting in February 1968, everybody who was not a dove was saying they had been all along. If you look at the Kennedy-era intellectuals, they have two versions of what happened: the memoirs they wrote before the Tet Offensive and the books they wrote after it. These are radically different. Before Tet, there is no hint that anyone wanted to withdraw from Vietnam. The books after Tet are full of explanations about how Kennedy had plans to withdraw from Vietnam. The game was over by then, of course, and they wanted to cover their asses.

Sister Sadie

The Voice Of The Earth

A Conversation With Theodore Roszak

One of the paradoxes of our conception of progress is that, as time goes on, our society produces people more ecologically illiterate than people ever have been in the past. Widespread ecological illiteracy is one of the roots of our environmental crisis. Many people simply do not understand the biological foundations of their own survival.

On The Bus

He brushes the pastry crumbs off his shirt, speeds up as we approach a blind curve, and passes the car in front of us. He jokes about the frightened gringo behind him whose knuckles are whiter than his face.

The Sixties

Investigating conscientious-objector status, attending a rock festival, plucking strychnine tufts from a bag full of peyote buttons

A Good Life

We were in the kitchen, listening to the radio — Norma preparing dinner, Mara studying for exams — when the bulletin came over the air. The United States had just gone to war with Iraq. Mara, not quite fifteen, looked up in astonishment. Norma put down her knife and wept.

Bobo And The Devil

Bobo looked up. The devil took the opportunity to slip out of his grasp and go rest by the wall. He had a huge black cloak, and purple sneakers, and came across as very urbane, but he bit in close situations. Bobo had learned to avoid his teeth.

Dear Michael

Kevin Murray, retired, one-time police chief of a small midwestern city, turned on his electric typewriter and began his third letter of the day. “Dear Abbie Hoffman, It says in the newspapers you killed yourself because you weren’t getting enough attention. Makes sense. More sense than most of what you said. . . .”

Why Schools Don’t Educate

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnas Sears and W.R. Harper of the University of Chicago and Edward Thorndike of Columbia Teachers College and others to be instruments for the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

Selected Poems