The Brooklyn Rail

Giving it All for Ron Paul

By Michael Terry

Typically, the tail end of a losing campaign for a major party nomination is filled with equal parts desperation, sadness, and finally, some form of acceptance. As the front-runner pulls ahead and the math becomes next to impossible to ignore, the candidate moves robotically through a stump speech no longer worth tinkering with, halfheartedly shilling for votes that won’t matter.

Big Oil vs. The Little Folks

By Polly Brewster

In March 2010, the electricity went out at the home of Linwood Laughy and Borg Hendrickson, a retired couple in Kooskia, a tiny town in the middle of Idaho. Lin went out to investigate.

The Strange Case of Charles Taylor

By Nicholas Jahr

“My name is Dankpannah Dr. Charles Ghankay Taylor, the 21st President of the Republic of Liberia.” Taylor’s first words on the witness stand, seemingly a statement of the simplest facts, already hinted at his country’s tortured past.

In Conversation

STANLEY ARONOWITZ with Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker

Stanley Aronowitz is one of America’s most prominent social theorists. For almost 30 years, he has been a Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Before that, he was a labor organizer. In books like False Promises, Crisis in Historical Materialism, The Jobless Future, Science as Power, How Class Works, and Against Schooling, he has intervened in major debates on class, the labor movement, education, and cultural studies.

Goodbye, Babylon

By Seb Doubinsky

The explosion blossomed in the distance. A huge fireball rolled over the dark trees in yellow fury. Steve hid his eyes behind his hand. A gust of wind enveloped the men, filled with dry heat and the scent of gasoline.

BUSHWICK BOUNCE
A fragment from Isolate Flecks: An Anatomy

By Forrest Hylton

Yeah, so, I used to have this job, right, writing ad copy for sex workers. I would like go online to find these reviews of other sex workers—you could always tell the real johns, who wrote about exits and off-ramps and discreet parking—and then I’d basically steal the parts I liked, you know, maybe use my imagination a little, but try to stick to facts pretty much.

PORN WARS: The F.B.I.’s Hidden Campaign to Police Morality

By David Rosen

If you caught Clint Eastwood’s less-than-compelling biopic, J. Edgar, you would have never learned about J. Edgar Hoover’s (and the F.B.I.’s) war against pornography. This missing story is the subject of Douglas Charles’s well-intentioned, if too narrowly drawn study, The FBI’s Obscene File.

Interested Parties

By Allen Wilcox

A handful of years ago, Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Harvard University, began executing on a longstanding commitment.

Back On The Couch

By Courtney Fiske

Editor John Burnham makes his claim boldly in the collection’s opening pages: far from an addendum, America was the nation where Freud’s insights enjoyed the greatest cultural purchase and the most enduring institutional embrace.