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Blind Jozef Pronek and Dead Souls
September 05, 2013
The Red Scarf As soon as Pronek stepped out of the plane (an exhausted steward, crumpled and hoary, beamed an “Auf Wiedersehena’ at him), he realized that he had left his red wool scarf with a mustard stain from the Vienna airport cafe in the luggage compartment. He ...

The National Highway Defense Fund
My father had left Kansas City after he finished high school. He’d joined the Navy in ’44, learned to operate destroyer guns, and then shipped quietly off to watch the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. He’d been on leave, visiting a shipmate in Asheville, North Carolina, ...

Four Minutes and 33 Pairs of Sweatpants
You’re both musicians, so I’ll put it to you in musical terms. Certain people have volume problems, simply. They have what you might call an awkward sense of dynamics. They’re loud when the rest of us are soft, and when the rest of us are loud, they fall silent. And ...

Jimmy Carter’s Rabbit
He came to see me at my Atlanta office, after his move back to Plains. It was a slow afternoon and the day’s sessions were already over when the Secret Service men stepped into my foyer. I wasn’t expecting company; my first thought when I opened the door on them—with their ...

Something to Be Proud Of
In Edinburgh an American looked up at the castle, if it was the castle and not a housing project. He saw a crowd of citizens and tourists beginning to gather against the railings on the other side of Princes Street. He crossed the road and looked down into the park. Nothing ...

Epic Freight
Michael rowed the boat ashore and moored it to a gnarled stake. He reached into the fold of his turtleneck sweater and pulled out a map drawn on the back of a wallet-sized photograph. In a clump of cattails he found the beat-up giftbox marked “Dirt Towers,” his orders ...

from How Late It Was, How Late
Alright? Just find this damn bloody button … The doors shut on him. They opened again. Fucking bastard, muttered the guy. The doors shut. Sammy waited a wee minute then wandered. A door opened. He called: Hullo? Yes? said a man with a polite voice. I’m looking for ...

Meeting Polanski
I should have seen it coming. I should have known it was going to happen. I mean it’s not like I wasn’t forewarned. All the signs were there that this was going to be the worst day of my life, and the very best I could probably expect from it was an over-the-counter ...

Flying Cars — and a Progress Report on Our Summer Issue
June 04, 2012
What’s the difference between an iPhone and a flying car? David Graeber can tell you in his great Baffler 19 essay, “Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit,” which you can read now, for free, on this site. Just click on the current issue and scroll down to the ...

The Baffler No. 19 Coming Early March
February 01, 2012
In March, after a two-year hiatus, The Baffler will return with a dazzling new issue. Behold its cover! Contained therein are thundering new salvos from Thomas Frank, Barbara Ehrenreich, Rick Perlstein, and David Graeber, fiction from Kim Stanley Robinson and Ludmilla ...

The Baffler Joins the MIT Press
October 26, 2011
We have big news: This afternoon, we signed a five-year, fifteen-issue publishing contract with the MIT Press. We’re very excited that a new Baffler is now guaranteed to come out three times a year for the foreseeable future. We know you are, too. The next issue is due in ...