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Issues

Hey, it’s our play issue, in which David Graeber hopscotches over the robotic universe of contemporary science and winds up inventing a new law of reality. Barbara Ehrenreich calls for a science that can explain why fun is fun. John Summers reports from “The People’s Republic of Zuckerstan”—once known as the liberal community of Cambridge, Massachusetts, now a playground for startup science and tech professionals. Gene Seymour rescues science fiction from the warped real-world utopias of certain plutocratic cybervisionaries. Andrew Bacevich dances on the grave of Tom Clancy, the recently departed hack thriller writer. Ian Bogost analyzes the addiction economy lurking behind cutting-edge free-to-play videogames, while Rhonda Lieberman walks us through the trophy rooms of leisure-class art hoarders. And that’s only the half of it. Look here for head-spinning salvos by Chris Lehmann, Susan Faludi, William T. Vollmann, George Scialabba, and Heather Havrilesky on history, politics, feminism, and literature. Anne Elizabeth Moore makes sport of Vice magazine. Alex Pareene practices journalism on the New York Times’ DealBook. Fiction by Paul Maliszewski and J. Wagner; short prose by Jaron Lanier, Gabriel Zaid, and Erik Simon; poetry by Thomas Sayers Ellis; and hilarious graphic art by Brad Holland, Mark Dancey, and David McLimans, who gave us the cover. Not to win or lose the game, but to be free of the system of winners and losers—that’s the spirit.
 January 2014
Oh, we may say our colleges are the best in the world while we secretly believe they’re an overpriced rip-off, but leave it to Thomas Frank in The Baffler no. 23 to ask whether they’re the best in the world at committing the rip-off. Welcome to America five years after the financial crisis. It’s a place “made possible by buncombe,” as David Graeber explains here. And it’s a time of magical thinking, as Susan Faludi says in her exposé of the narrow brand of feminism on offer from Sheryl Sandberg’s positive-thinking tract Lean In. Luckily, we have Jacob Silverman to burst the techno-bubble that is South by Southwest; Ann Friedman to explain why we’re “All LinkedIn with Nowhere to Go”; and Quinn Slobodian and Michelle Sterling to report from Berlin “How Hipsters, Expats, Yummies, and Smartphones Ruined a City.” Our midyear issue contains world-defining fiction by Adam Haslett and genre-bending prose by Thomas Sayers Ellis about Lou Beach’s surreal cover art. The carnival’s all here. From Seth Colter Walls on Jean-Paul Sartre to Farran Nehme on Buster Keaton, from Dubravka Ugrešić’s dreams of Wittgenstein to Richard Byrne’s “Nod to Ned Ludd,” The Baffler gives you the latest trends in cultural news and retail opinion. Step right up!
With the presidential election in the rear-view mirror, we wanted to think about the opposite of politics, so we thought about sex. The result was an issue in which Heather Havrilesky sent up Fifty Shades of Grey, Chris Bray tracked down General David Petraeus and his wandering PhD, Hussein Ibish remembered the Marquis de Sade, Christian Lorentzen buried the British pop star/pedophiliac Jimmy Savile, Slavoj Žižek told us why gonzo porn is the most censored of all film genres, and Anne Elizabeth Moore explored the hidden assumptions behind Nicholas Kristof’s bid to rescue the women of the world, who have nothing to lose, apparently, except their market potential. Thomas Frank and David Graeber wrote about politics after all, and Thomas Bernhard‘s homage to Arthur Rimbaud appeared here for the first time in English. Evgeny Morozov’s “The Meme Hustler,” meanwhile, made the longest single essay in the history of The Baffler. Hey, look, we’re finally in color!
 April 2013
In the third and last issue of our revival year, Thomas Frank tells you how theory met practice in Occupy Wall Street (and drove it out of its mind), Rick Perlstein explains how Mitt Romney lies to be loved, and David Graeber asks whether it’s possible to think that you believe something when, in fact, you don’t, or to think that you don’t believe something when, in fact, you do? (Answer: yes and yes.)
In our summer culture issue, we bring you decomposing cities that tremble with vibrancy, art museums where cash-and-carry aesthetics are the rule, journalists on the endless education of the president, and imperial foundations and their pet broadcasters on public radio. Where else can you learn why Eugenia Williamson thinks Ira Glass’s This American Life is so annoying, or take in Steve Almond on the lame, postideological pantomiming of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, or admire, with Jim Newell, the performance art of Harvard fraud Adam Wheeler and laugh at the Ivy mothership’s efforts to smite the pretender down?
The fallout from the financial crash continues—everywhere but Silicon Valley’s profit center. Alighting on the bloodless crossroads of culture and technology, this issue was driven there by Thomas Frank’s “Too Smart to Fail,” David Graeber’s “Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit,” and Maureen Tkacik’s hilarious satire of The Atlantic magazine. Barbara Ehrenreich, Rick Perlstein, Jim Newell, and James K. Galbraith all contributed. There’s fiction by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and Kim Stanley Robinson, plus poetry by Geoffrey Hill. Who could have guessed that this flying car, a symbol for the tech-induced stagnation we investigated in this issue, first graced the cover of a Soviet youth magazine? Well, this issue marked the first assembled by the mag’s new crew: John Summers, Chris Lehmann, Patrick Flynn, Lindsey Gilbert. What have they done?
Ah, the financial crash. Old media has kicked the bucket, and so has the economy. The founding Baffler crew reemerges one last time to say we told you so . . . with full-color art and a built-in ribbon bookmark. Christine Smallwood considers the difficulty of thinking about the Internet. Astra Taylor asks about the meaning of “free” in an age of digital piracy. Michael Lind resurrects the word “oligarchy.” A.S. Hamrah links the work of the painter Thomas Kinkade to the mortgage bubble—an observation that would be quoted frequently when Kinkade died a few years later. Naomi Klein discusses the continuing relevance of her ten-year-old classic, No Logo. Will Boisvert remembers Detroit. Mike Newirth remembers Nelson Algren. Walter Benn Michaels tells us how Americans’ fixation on social virtue has blinded us to our economic regression. Matt Taibbi reads Rod Blagojevich. And Maureen Tkacik drops an eight-thousand-word bomb on the literature of the financial crisis. “This issue of The Baffler was assembled in December 2009 in Chicago, Washington and New York after having been painstakingly ghostwritten by Bill Ayers,” reads the front matter. It was also the last issue edited by Thomas Frank and Dave Mulcahey.
 January 2010
This one we produced in Chicago and Washington, D.C., at the tippy-top of the bubble. Thomas Frank describes the Washington culture of centrism. Thomas Geoghegan tells what inequality does to the rule of law. Andrew O’Hagan remembers where he was when William S. Burroughs died. Jim Arndorfer reveals how the fortune of a Milwaukee plutocrat helped to change the nation’s politics. Kim Phillips-Fein understands online poker as a symbol for bubble-time economics. Steve Evans describes the rise of backlash poetry and “Free-Market Verse.” Jim McNeill honors labor bureaucrat Victor Reuther. Catherine Liu observes the ultimate commodification of dissent in Singapore. Matt Weiland marvels at Chautauqua reenactors. With fiction from Martin Riker and Whitney Terrell. Spring 2006.
The backlash is back, the New Economy is dead, and Thomas Frank does a close reading of Ann Coulter, uncovering the remarkable similarities between the newest of rights and the oldest of lefts. Kenneth Neil Cukier reminisces about the salad days of New Economy journalism. Steve Featherstone reminisces about the management practices of New Economy offices. Dan Raeburn rescues the reputation of Baffler household god H.L. Mencken. Ana Marie Cox reads paperback potboilers. Dubravka Ugrešić remembers happy days under Communism. Dan Kelly builds plastic models of movie monsters. Spring 2003.
The Global War on Terror has begun, and Ian Urbina and Chris Toensing tell of a colorful military clique wallowing in the new wave of defense dollars. Thomas Frank makes a pilgrimage to the Super Bowl. Martha Bayne appraises the cult of culinary excellence surrounding a certain celebrity chef. Andrew Friedman gets beneath the swirly titanium skin of the Bilbao Guggenheim. Terri Kapsalis draws frightening parallels between artificial insemination and American Girl dolls. Sharon O’Dair tells of the ne plus ultra in scholarly self-absorption: academic memoirs. J. D. Connor reads a submarine movie as a glorified deal memo for a corporate merger. Seth Sanders and Mike O’Flaherty remember rock music’s part in the backlash. With poetry from Daniel Bouchard. November 2002.
An issue about that ungracious deity, the Market, which starts off by wondering why Americans continue to love their shabby god when it sure doesn’t love them back. Mike Newirth narrates the awful story of the gun culture. Josh Glenn blames youth quiescence on the brainwashing power of OK Soda. Clive Thompson describes Conrad Black’s effort to bring an American-style backlash to Canada. Earl Shorris recalls his personal fight with the neocons. Chris Lehmann traces the long history of the liberal-media myth. Harper’s magazine publisher John R. MacArthur remembers the backlash election of 1972 and the sparsely populated political group Republicans for McGovern. Martha Bridegam ponders the beginnings of the real estate bubble in booming San Francisco. With fiction from Christopher Sorrentino and Leon Forrest, plus a legendary illuminated cover by Mark Dancey. A classic issue—at the printer when fire destroyed the Baffler office in Chicago. Spring 2001.
In which we kicked off our long-running study of American conservatism with a look at the nation’s long parade of kooks and cranks. In it, Jeff Sharlet remembers Westbrook Pegler, the “It Boy of attack journalism.” Dave Mulcahey remembers the backlash bible known as Reader’s Digest. Robert Nedelkoff remembers the black godfather of American fascism. And Dan Raeburn remembers when the beloved comic strip Li’l Abner took its sharp turn to the right. Dan Kelly tells the anti-heroic story of the John Birch Society. Daniel Lazare traces the career of The New Criterion’s Hilton Kramer. Christian Parenti singlehandedly launches the discipline of Seventies Studies with an essay about wildcat strikes. With microfilm-pastiche art by Hunter Kennedy and fiction by Aleksandar Hemon, no. 13 was editor in chief Thomas Frank’s favorite issue of them all. Winter 1999.
 December 1999