The Women’s March on Washington, a mobile protest organized in response to President Trump’s election, is under way in downtown Washington, D.C.
The event’s organizers are anticipating roughly 250,000 marchers, many of whom supported Hillary Clinton for president and are wary about the new administration’s policies towards women, as well as its approach toward the LGBT community, minorities, immigrant groups, and others. According to the march’s mission statement, participants aim to “send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world, that women’s rights are human rights.” Six hundred similar marches are being held Saturday around the country. Others have been organized around the world.
In Washington, a morning rally will be held at 10 a.m. ET, and the march will begin at 1:15 p.m. ET. We’ll bring you the latest updates from the nation’s capital as the day goes on.
Marchers Leave Their Protest Signs in Front of Trump's D.C. Hotel
Bryan Woolston / Reuters
Protest signs were ubiquitous at the Women’s March on Saturday. Some posters called for action (“Speak up for humanity”), while others portrayed messages of female empowerment (“The future is female”). By the afternoon, it became clear that many demonstrators didn’t plan to keep theirs for posterity’s sake. Instead, they left them behind in a conspicuous place:
It wasn’t just the pussy-cat ears: Many of the signs in downtown D.C. employed the word made infamous by President Trump in the leaked Access Hollywood video in October. Women hoisted hand-sketched vaginas and drew cat shapes on their block letters. One even used the c-word. They are reclaiming “pussy,” they said.
Mary Trudeau, 47, came from Atlanta. “After the election I was so depressed,” she said. “I said, I have to go, I have to participate, because if I don’t I’ll feel like I just did nothing.”
Her sign was inspired by Trump’s words in the Access Hollywood video, she said. “Instead of it being a vulgar word, it being a word of empowerment for women. Everything about my person is for me to decide.”
Kerry Gaertner-Gerbracht Credit Olga Khazan / The Atlantic
Kerry Gaertner-Gerbracht had her 11-year-old daughter make her sign—she wanted to get involved. “Trump has brought the word to the national conversation,” Gaertner-Gerbracht said. “If this is what our president is saying, she should get comfortable with it, too.”
One element of Trump’s victory, she believes, was “the masculine fear of the vagina. It’s a very basic thing.”
Sinead Macleod. Credit Olga Khazan / The Atlantic
Sinead Macleod, a 24-year-old from New York, said it was important to show female genitalia and “reclaim the grossness—and the beauty.
“During the debates when [Clinton] went to the bathroom, he said that was gross,” she said. “There’s no reason to be ashamed of it.”
Macleod might have out-done the other protesters in terms of female-anatomy drawings. She has an IUD tattooed on one ankle, and vagina dentata on the other.
I'm close to the White House now, on the Ellipse, the public, lawn-like area beyond the South Lawn of the executive mansion. Protesters are pouring onto the grass from all angles, and a dance circle has broken out in the center of the lawn. There are children frolicking around, and demonstrators are cheering and waving their signs.
The White House is where the protesters planned to finish their march. But President Trump, who many of them are specifically marching against, isn't in the building. He left about an hour ago for a meeting in Langley, Virginia, with CIA officials.
Scarlett Johansson Asks Trump to Support 'Women in Our Fight for Equality'
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Various celebrities and activists are still speaking at the Women’s March rally, which began roughly five hours ago.
“President Trump, I did not vote for you. That said, I respect that you are our president, and I want to be able to support you, but first I ask that you support me,” American actress Scarlett Johansson said from the stage. “I ask you to support all women in our fight for equality in all things.”
She told her fellow protesters that she’s hoping people discontented with November’s election results will become more politically active in their communities. “Let this weight not drag you down, but help to get your heels stuck in,” she said.
Kamala Harris: 'We Are at an Inflection Point in the History of Our Country'
Shannon Stapleton / Reutres
California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris told protesters at the Women’s March that she believes “we are at an inflection point in the history of our country.”
Harris, who recently became only the second black woman and first Indian-American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, compared the moment to when her parents met “when they were active in the civil-rights movement.” Elaborating on the comparison, Harris said that it is a moment where Americans must collectively ask the question of “what kind of country America is.” “Ladies and gentlemen, I believe the answer is ‘a good one,’” Harris said. “Imperfect though we may be, I believe we are a great country.”
The lawmaker also said that women are tired of “simply being thought of as a particularly constituency or demographic.” Together, “we are powerful and we are a force that cannot be dismissed or written off onto the sidelines.”
Encouraging activism, Harris said: “It’s going to get harder before it gets easier,” but added that she believes “we will keep fighting no matter what.”
The women I’ve talked to so far are driven by a variety of issues, but for some, the future of reproductive rights is the biggest concern.
Dena Delaviz, from Columbus Ohio, held a sign that read “Abortions = healthcare,” and said she was inspired, in part, by a T.V. appearance by Planned Parenthood director Cecile Richards. She can’t understand Republicans’ desire to defund the organization. “Planned Parenthood sees Republicans, too,” she said.
Kaitlin Bruinius, a student at Appalachian State University, said she is worried about losing access to free birth control. Without the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control provision, her monthly contraceptives would be $80, she said. “It makes it a lot easier, but [Trump] doesn’t understand how great it is. He’s going to take it away without being in our shoes.”
Pooja Prasad, a doctor in Prince William County, Virginia said Obama’s election seemed to have made it more acceptable to talk about birth control and STD tests with her teenage patients. In her area, many teens rely on Planned Parenthood. Now, “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to tell teenagers that they can’t go and get free birth control, free pap smears.”
But many of the attendees were also worried about losing health insurance coverage in general, not just for reproductive care.
Yedda Olson, a high-school teacher from Wisconsin, road tripped through the night. She said many of her students' families work in factories and rely on the Obamacare exchanges for insurance. Her former students want to stay on their parents' insurance until they're 26. "A lot of my former students are really worried about losing that," she said.
Cecile Richards: 'Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights'
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
“Reproductive rights are human rights,” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards told protesters at the Women’s March.
She warned that the Republican-controlled Congress poses a threat to reproductive rights, and called on the assembled crowd to “call your members of Congress, call your senator, and say, ‘We cannot go back.’” She added: “One of us can be dismissed, two of us can be ignored, but together we are a movement, and we are unstoppable.”
Richards made a pledge to the crowd that the doors at Planned Parenthood will “stay open.”
“Planned Parenthood is not the problem,” she said. “We’re the solution.”
Snapshots From Women's Marches Around the Country and the World
There are roughly 600 sister protests to the Women’s March on Washington that are being held around the country Saturday—and more around the world. The demonstrations in the United States are reflective of the grassroots way that women organized after the election, and perhaps foreshadow a new strategy for Democrats ahead of the 2018 midterms. They remind one political reporter of another movement entirely:
The massive crowds in DC, Chicago, Boston etc. looks like Democrats are tapping the same energy of opposition as the tea party in 2009
The march through Chicago was canceled because the number of participants—some 150,000—grew too large. Instead, marchers are staying in place and extending the rally, which was scheduled to start at 10 a.m. local time. “There is no safe way to march. We are just going to sing and dance and make our voices heard here,” an organizer announced.
Michael Moore: 'We Have to Take Over the Democratic Party'
Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
Activist and filmmaker Michael Moore had a message for the crowd at the Women’s March: “We have to take over the Democratic Party.”
Moore took the stage to outline a plan of action to oppose the Trump administration, starting by urging the crowd to start calling their members of Congress “every single day” and calling upon young people and women to run for elected office themselves.
“The old guard of the Democratic Party has to go,” Moore said. “We need new leadership, we need young leadership, we need women’s leadership.”
Moore argued that public backlash over a move by House Republicans earlier in the month to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics prompted Republicans to quickly backtrack. He suggested that similar activism will get results in the future, though he failed to mention that the backtrack also followed a disapproving tweet from then-president-elect Donald Trump. “I’m telling you these calls work,” he said, “that’s how powerful you are.”
'We’re Here to Show We’re Present and Planning on Staying'
Madai Ledezma (right) and her daughter (left) head to the Women’s March on Washington. (Priscilla Alvarez / The Atlantic)
In the early morning hours of Saturday, a sea of color flowed into the nation’s capital. People descended from around the country to attend the Women’s March on Washington. Amid the crowds was a group of roughly 15 people donning butterfly wings inspired by Favianna Rodriguez, an artist based in California.
The imagery is meant to represent migration and beauty, said Alma Couverthie, the senior director of community organizing for CASA, a Maryland-based organization that focuses on Latinos and immigrants. CASA began planning for the march two weeks ago, with the additional purpose of representing immigrants.
Donald Trump, who made immigration a cornerstone of his campaign, has vowed to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. March attendees were fearful about what immigration policies the new administration may implement.
“I think it’s going to affect us—all of us,” said Madai Ledezma, who’s undocumented, in Spanish. “If they deport me, I don’t know what her situation will be,” she said, looking at her daughter who she had brought to the march. Ledezma, who’s participated with CASA for three years, added: “Perhaps, in the future, [attending the march] will help her, so she can fight for those of us that don’t have a voice.”
Fatima Coreas was in attendance to represent mothers like Ledezma. “[I’m here] for Latina mothers, who have left everything behind; they migrated to the United States to search for a better life for their kids,” she told me in Spanish. Coreas has a connection to mothers who have migrated for their children—she came to the United States from El Salvador with her mother in 2007, and was shielded from deportation by the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “We’re here to show we’re present and planning on staying,” she said.
Ledezma and Coreas, with their wings securely fastened, promptly began chanting “Se ve, Se siente, el pueblo esta presente.” Translated to: “You see, you feel it, the town is present.” It didn’t take long before their chants dissipated into those of crowds around them: “This is what democracy looks like.” But it was no matter, as Ledezma said put it: the march is meant to represent everyone.
Roslyn Brock: 'Courage Will Not Skip This Generation'
People gather for the Women's March in Washington U.S., January 21, 2017. (Shannon Stapleton / Reuters)
“Courage will not skip this generation,” Chairman of the National Board of Directors for the NAACP Roslyn Brock told the Women’s March crowd. “Courage will not skip this generation.”
Brock reminded the crowd that black women are a powerful force in elections, saying that they “exercised the right to vote larger than any other group in this nation,” but added that “the silence has been deafening for black women and their families who also feel forgotten and locked out of a prosperous society.”
She called upon the crowd to organize, and fight. “We will march on till victory is won,” she declared, referencing Lift Every Voice And Sing, an 1899 poem later adopted as the black national anthem.
I’m riding on the Metro’s Green line from the station in Petworth, to the north, to the L’Enfant station, in the south, and the train is holding for 5 to 10 minutes at each stop. The conductor keeps repeating that "due to amazing, outstanding turnout, we are holding to make room for people." Riders aren't mad—at least not yet—even though the Women’s March rally is already under way. They keep cheering when he says "amazing turnout."
Gloria Steinem: 'We Must Put Our Bodies Where Our Beliefs Are'
Sait Serkan Gurbuz / AP
American political activist and feminist Gloria Steinem thanked the crowd assembled at the Women’s March rally, and thanked them for “understanding that sometimes we must put our bodies where our beliefs are.”
Reflecting on her life of activism, Steinem described the march as “an outpouring of energy and true democracy like I have never seen.” She added that the people gathered in Washington and across the country to march “is the upside to the downside.”
She suggested that Trump’s presidency will inspire a wave of continued activism. “When we elect a possible president, we too often go home. When we elect an impossible president, we’re never going home,” she said.
Steinem said that if a critical mass of people come together to oppose Trump, those people can prevail. “The Constitution does not begin with ‘I the president,’” she said, “it begins with ‘we the people.’”
America Ferrera: 'Our Safety and Freedoms Are on the Chopping Block'
Sait Serkan Gurbuz / AP
The rally for the Women’s March on Washington is under way, and features a long roster of speakers with some of the celebrity star power that may have been missing from President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
American actress America Ferrera just spoke, warning the crowd that the new administration is a threat that must be opposed. “Marchers, make no mistake,” she said. “We are every single one of us under attack. Our safety and freedoms are on the chopping block, and we are the only ones who can protect one another. If we do not stand together, march together, fight together for the next four years, then we will lose together.”
Ferrera ticked off a long list of what the anti-Trump protesters out in full force Saturday must stand together to oppose: “the demonization of our Muslim brothers and sisters,” attacks on LGBTQ rights and access to abortion, “the systemic murder and incarceration of our black brothers and sisters,” and building walls.
“It’s been a heart-rending time to be both a woman and an immigrant in this country,” she said. “Our dignity, our character, our rights have all been under attack, and a platform of hate and division assumed power yesterday. But the president is not America. His Cabinet is not America. Congress is not America. We are America.”
'We Can't Have True Freedom If We Can't Control Our Bodies'
Credit Priscilla Alvarez / The Atlantic
Suzanna Walters, 54, traveled from Boston to attend the march. “I’ve been coming to marches for a long time. We’re really witnessing the rise of fascism in America. ... It behooves all of us to get out here.” Walters is attending with a group dubbed Feminists Against Trump.
Joining her is Judith Levine, 64, from Brooklyn. Levine touted a sign saying “Abortion rights is equal to human rights.” “I was one of the people that fought to have abortion decriminalized,” she told me. “We can't have true freedom if we can't control our bodies.”
Saturday’s march was born, in part, out of Hillary Clinton’s loss in November. Politically progressive women considered Clinton a champion of women’s rights, and worried about what the Trump administration would bring.
On Friday, Clinton attended Trump’s inauguration wearing white, the color worn by suffragettes who themselves demonstrated in the streets. And this morning Clinton thanked the women marchers, many of whom are attending in her name.
Thanks for standing, speaking & marching for our values @womensmarch. Important as ever. I truly believe we're always Stronger Together.
Will the Women's March Have More Participants Than Trump's Inauguration Did?
Priscilla reported earlier this morning on the packed Metro cars she saw headed to downtown Washington for the march.
Based on video footage and photos on Twitter, it wasn’t just her route that’s crowded.
This is what the trains to the Women's March look like when they show up — in the Virginia suburbs, before they've even gotten to the city. pic.twitter.com/84cjhqTju7
Metro cars in Washington, DC are packed to overflow this morning, unlike for yesterday's inauguration. Pumped up women marchers. pic.twitter.com/EwI9LpT7vu
There’s been some speculation that the crowds for Saturday’s march could well exceed those at the inauguration ceremony for President Trump. According to The Washington Post, Metro ridership was down Friday compared with recent inaugurations, and “fewer riders flocked to the system than would even on a typical weekday.” I can report anecdotally—as other journalists have on Twitter—that the two Metro lines I took Friday morning to get to the inauguration weren’t packed at all.
As for non-Metro modes of transportation, roughly 1,200 bus parking permits were issued for Saturday versus some 200 for Friday. And the trains incoming from Baltimore seem sure to be crowded as well.
Updated on January 21 at 10:50 a.m. ET: A previous version of this post mistakenly reported that Metro ridership was down on Saturday. It was down on Friday.
"We Want to Make Sure Our Rights Are Not Taken Away"
Credit Priscilla Alvarez / The Atlantic
Lisa Gissendaner, 56, is here from Canton, Ohio. Originally, she intended to March in Cleveland but decided a week ago, with encouragement from friends, to join the march in DC. Gissendaner, who's here with the African American Policy Forum, told me she came to support women across the country and women of color.
"We want to make sure our rights are not taken away," she said, adding that she's also here to represent women who have been shot and killed by police. As we talked, she began stomping her foot on the ground. "In my shoe, are the names of my great nieces and nephews." She added: "Every foot forward is a step for them."
Nanette Nilssen, 61, and Sue Kvendru, 56, just got off a 17-hour bus ride from Minnesota. They've been planning for the march for weeks, attending regular meetings to make signs and coordinate. Nilssen, who supported Hillary Clinton, felt motivated to come because of her work. "I march for children because they need the [Affordable Care Act], they need a decent education. I've spent 25 years as a day-care provider," she said. Kvendru jumped in: "This is just the start."
"We sat back and let it happen. Now we have to organize and take it back," Kvendru said.
It's 8 a.m. ET in Washington, D.C., and the city is already bustling. Droves of march attendees are filling into Metro cars, touting their signs, donning Women's March sashes, and breaking into the occasional cheer. Alexanne Neff, 26, told me she traveled here from New Jersey to participate: "I'm tired of having to fight for women's rights and I wanted to be part of a really big voice."
Twitter is a private company—not the federal government.
Last night, Matt Taibbi, an independent journalist, wrote a lengthy Twitter thread he called “THE TWITTER FILES.” The thread purported to expose how Twitter made the decision to dramatically suppress discussion of the contents of a hard drive from Hunter Biden’s laptop. But it inadvertently did something else entirely: It exposed the new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s profound misunderstandings about the First Amendment.
Taibbi’s documents provided further evidence demonstrating what Twitter’s critics (including me) have long argued—that the decision to suppress the information was both incoherent and inconsistent. Twitter suppressed the information based on its so-called hacked-materials policy, but the application of that policy was hardly clear in this instance, especially given that the platform had, at the time, just permitted widespread sharing of New York Times stories about Donald Trump’s leaked tax information.
The swastika that the rapper tweeted ties a nasty little bow on his ever-expanding collection of disturbing ideas.
What was your line with Kanye West? If you never listened to what he had to say in the first place, you don’t get a medal: The rapper now known as Ye really did, at one time, merit attention for making some of the most forward-thinking art of this century. (Plus he was funny, in an actually-trying-to-be way.)
But over the years he’s done plenty of things that indicate he is a fundamentally bad dude, like when he went on the radio to slut-shame his ex, or when he told Black people that they’d chosen to be enslaved. Of course, he’s faced accusations of reckless arrogance all along, but discerning whether those reflected a racist double standard—isn’t bragging American?—was never simple. For me the exit point came late and oddly. Earlier this year, Ye started publicly lambasting his ex-wife and making violent art about her new boyfriend. Actions that might have been written off as tabloid-baiting theatrics were, in the totality of Ye’s life, getting scary: He seemed to be trying to hurt others both for his own gain and for larger, almost metaphysical reasons, perhaps best described as evil.
The app’s original purpose has been lost in the era of “performance” media.
Earlier this fall, while riding the subway, I overheard two friends doing some reconnaissance ahead of a party. They were young and cool—intimidatingly so, dressed in the requisite New York all black, with a dash of Y2K revival—and trying to figure out how to find a mutual acquaintance online.
“Does she have Instagram?” one asked, before adding with a laugh: “Does anybody?”
“I don’t even have it on my phone anymore,” the other confessed.
Even just a couple of years ago, it would have been unheard-of for these 20-something New Yorkers to shrug off Instagram—a sanctimonious lifestyle choice people would have regretted starting a conversation about at that party they were headed to. But now it’s not so surprising at all. To scroll through Instagram today is to parse a series of sponsored posts from brands, recommended Reels from people you don’t follow, and the occasional picture from a friend that’s finally surfaced after being posted several days ago. It’s not what it used to be.
With Ye on Infowars and Elon Musk lifting the floodgates on Twitter, the right wing is getting the free-speech thunderdome of its dreams. Or nightmares.
If you’re looking for a way to understand the right wing’s internet-poisoned, extremist trajectory, one great document is an infamous October 6 tweet from the House Judiciary GOP that read, “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” This tweet was likely intended to own the libs by adding Kanye to an informal, Avengers-style list of supposed free-speech warriors and truth tellers—a variation, perhaps, on the sort of viral meme that the Trump camp deployed during the 2016 election. (Remember the “Deplorables”?) It was written in support of the rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, shortly after he wore a White Lives Matter shirt during one of his fashion shows.
This was just the beginning of a shocking two-month spiral of anti-Semitic rhetoric that has led to the undoing of Ye’s business empire and his full transformation into arguably the most openly bigoted famous person in American life. Throughout this grim unraveling—which has as its backdrop Ye’s ongoing mental-health issues—he has been thoroughly embraced by right-wing media as well as prominent white nationalists. He has also been active on the Republican political scene, most recently dining with former President Donald Trump and the white supremacist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.
The island’s people seem blissfully oblivious of a looming conflict with China. The U.S. can’t afford that luxury.
The night before boarding a flight home, at the end of a trip that had taken me from D.C. to Taiwan, Japan, Macedonia, Turkey, and back again, I came across a tweet that succinctly crystallized many of the fleeting impressions I had accumulated on the Pacific leg of my journey. The tweet was from Tanner Greer, a brilliant and iconoclastic China scholar, citing a quote about Taiwan sometimes attributed to Kurt Campbell, years before he became President Joe Biden’s chief Asia adviser on the National Security Council: “I thought I was going to find a second Israel; I found a second Costa Rica.”
“Whether Campbell ever said such a thing is beyond the point,” Greer wrote, explaining that he’d heard it from a Taiwanese think-tank associate. “What mattered was that this retired Taiwanese nat/sec official believed he could have said it, and believed the description accurate.”
CNN’s Headline News may seem thoroughly old-fashioned now that it’s dead. But its demise is a reminder of the creeping nature of media obsolescence.
Media Winter is here once more, and it is getting ugly. It seems as though every news giant is shrinking toward 2023 through end-of-year layoffs, hiring freezes, or otherwise Dickensian austerity. Text chains and Slack channels are bursting with farewells and expressions of uncertainty about the future.
Industry veterans will tell you they’ve come to expect these Christmas-time cutbacks. The Gannett newspaper chain is laying off scores of local and national journalists. NPR is looking for ways to save at least $10 million. The Washington Post is ending its Sunday magazine. CNN, where I was an anchor until August, is cutting several hundred jobs.
As usual, explanations vary. The advertising marketplace is softening. Economic headwinds are worsening. Shareholder demands are unforgiving. But the effect is always the same: contraction, lost livelihoods, diminished brands, fewer outlets for both reporters and consumers.
In Saturday’s World Cup–eliminating defeat, the U.S. men’s team revealed its shortcomings against the old-world sophistication of the Netherlands.
This is an edition of The Great Game, a newsletter about the 2022 World Cup—and how soccer explains the world. Sign up here.
One of Gregg Berhalter’s charms is that he can’t be bothered. Unshaven, attired in the uniform of Team Schlub, he loped along the sideline as if it were still the height of the pandemic and he was enjoying his newfound freedom from showering.
Standing in the technical area opposite him was the Dutch coach, Louis van Gaal, looking very much like an uptight high-school principal eager to reprimand Berhalter for his aggressive indifference. Van Gaal is one of the most experienced and meticulous coaches in the game, wise to the ways of tournament soccer and a shrewd pragmatist.
A 1957 image of the Dallas Cowboys’ owner highlights long-standing inequities in the NFL.
If you’re wondering why, in professional football, so few Black coaches get hired and Black players struggle to be heard, you can learn a lot from a 65-year-old image of Jerry Jones. In a 1957 photo published late last month by The Washington Post, the future owner of the Dallas Cowboys, then 14, stood among a group of white teenagers who were blocking six Black students from desegregating his Arkansas high school.
In an interview with the Post, Jones minimized his role in the event. “I don’t know that I or anybody anticipated or had a background of knowing … what was involved. It was more a curious thing,” Jones told the newspaper, which has published a series of stories about the NFL’s failure to promote Black coaches over the course of decades.
Netflix’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover updates the book’s treatment of sex, presenting the act as not just an erotic force, but a miraculous one.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence’s infamous 1928 novel about an upper-class woman’s extramarital affair with her gamekeeper, was considered so obscene that it was banned in multiple countries for years. But as much pleasure as the author took in describing, well, pleasure, he wasn’t distasteful, just bold for his time. When writing clandestine trysts, Lawrence detailed every motion, thrust, and caress with relish. He especially liked equating desire to a flame—a warmth that guided his titular aristocrat out of her ennui. Lady Constance “Connie” Chatterley’s sexual awakening, he wrote, was like a “curious molten thrilling that spread and spread.”
Netflix’s adaptation, which started streaming yesterday, takes a different route to illustrating lust. Unlike many previous onscreen versions, this film eschews the soft glow of Lawrence’s words for a more haunting aura. The director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre drenches her cast in a blue tone, transforming what could have been another titillating period piece into something more mesmerizing. The naked actors often look like figures from a painting—surreal and sumptuous rather than merely erotic. Seen through shaky-cam shots, Connie (played by Emma Corrin) and her paramour, Oliver Mellors (Jack O’Connell), appear as wild, breathless creatures. The film updates the book’s treatment of sex, presenting the act not just a “molten” force, but a miraculous one.
These titles do more than answer questions: They explain how the world moves and what moves it.
The cover of a nonfiction book is like the hood of an automobile: Nudge it open, and you’ll find sentences like cylinders and pistons folded and coiled together, an engine ready to propel us toward answers to daunting questions. How did life begin? What is art for? What transpires inside our cells? How do our nation’s values hold up in an era of accelerating change? The best nonfiction does more than just assemble information. It takes a reader through curious landscapes, offering a deeper grasp of how the world moves and, most important, what moves it.
The seven nonfiction titles below are not textbooks; they’re accessible to lay readers, give an overview of crucial topics, and can serve as a jumping-off point for further research. They investigate what our society values and what it’s built on, driving us to the monumental, the sublime, the quintessentially human.
