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Debunking the Myth of Self-Made Success
Image by Libby Levi, via opensource.com Here is a short piece I wrote recently for a Zócalo Public Square discussion on the question “Is Rising Inequality Slowly Poisoning Our Democracy?” The...
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The War within the War
A camp in Suruç for refugees fleeing Kobani, a nearby Kurdish city under assault from the Islamic State. We stand on an empty highway in South Turkey, twenty kilometers from the Syrian border. The...
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Send These, the Homeless, Tempest-Tost
Daniel Okator lives on the streets of Athens. Fearful of Boko Haram, he left Nigeria in 2013 and crossed the Mediterranean on a rickety boat. Two of his fellow migrants drowned when the boat capsized....
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America: A Country without a Cuisine
A cornfield in Nebraska. Jan Tik, via Flickr I celebrated every birthday under my mother’s roof with a bowl of miyeokguk, or seaweed soup. I ate it for breakfast and had the leftovers for dinner the...
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Futures for the Middle Class
Chicago Board of Trade corn pit, 1993. Jeremy Kemp, via Wikimedia This week, after 167 years, the futures trading pits in Chicago closed down. Computers now handle the work that shouting traders...
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Op-Ed on the Fight for a $15 Minimum Wage
Newsday has published an essay of mine that puts the fight for a $15 minimum wage within the big-picture context of my new book, Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy: Amid all the...
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Page 99 of My New Book on Unemployment
I participated in Marshal Zeringue’s Page 99 Test at the Campaign for the American Reader. The blog is based on a quote by the writer Ford Madox Ford: “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and...
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Don’t Blame Canada If They’re Doing What America Should Be Doing
I wrote an essay that appeared in the Atlantic yesterday. Based on the research for my book on unemployment, the piece talks about the debate over Denmark in last week’s Democratic presidential...
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Sleeping under the Rocket Trails
A motorcycle in front of United Nations-issue tents and their residents in a refugee camp in Bekaa, Lebanon. Four years of a raging civil war in Syria have displaced more than eleven million people,...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Incompetence + Stupidity
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | October 2013: Incompetence + Stupidity In a glaring example of governmental dysfunction, Congress has shutdown the US government and may default on the...
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Rebel Blues: A Review of Mojo Hand
Mojo Hand: The Life and Music of Lightnin’ Hopkins By Timothy J. O’Brien and David Ensminger University of Texas Press. 294 pages.Blues legend Sam Hopkins — known as Lightnin’ Hopkins to his fans —...
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Maybe in America: A Review of Captain Phillips
Captain Phillips Directed by Paul Greengrass Columbia Pictures. PG-13. 2 hours, 14 minutes.Captain Phillips, the new film based on a real-life encounter between an American commercial-shipping crew and...
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The Slippery Slope of Social Media
Photo by Jason Howie I am a writer who recently noticed I spend more time reading articles about writing, absorbing Top Ten lists of famous authors’ work practices, and laughing at clever memes than...
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Burning Man’s Economy of Loving-Kindness
As I approached the gate to Black Rock City, a young man came up to my car and greeted me with a warm “Welcome Home.” I had arrived at Burning Man: a week-long arts festival in the Nevada desert held...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Forgiveness
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | January 2014: Forgiveness Nelson Mandela, who spent twenty-seven years in prison before leading South Africa out of apartheid as its first black president,...
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Tourism in a Time of War
The Bekaa Valley and the shelters of Syrians (not necessarily refugees) who work in the adjoining fields. Please, please, please cancel your ticket. It doesn’t matter how much it costs,” implored the...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Resistance
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | April 2014: Resistance Ukraine. Venezuela. Thailand. The Arab Spring. We are living in a time of vibrant protest, captured and magnified by cellphone...
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The White Death, Revived
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes TB. NIAID She looks like a child: a baby face and large, round eyes, long and thin arms that make her seem gawky. When she sees me, her eyes...
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The Poetry of Pussy Riot: A Review of Words Will Break Cement
Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot By Masha Gessen Riverhead. 320 pages.Journalist Masha Gessen wrote a well-received biography of Russian president Vladimir Putin two years ago. In her...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Frenemies
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | August-September 2014: Frenemies “Frenemies”: friends with fewer benefits. It’s often an apt term to describe our working lives, where polite interactions...
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