At head of title: New Republic.

Introduction: The insurrectionists / Franklin Foer -- 1910s. The duty of harsh criticism / Rebecca West -- In a schoolroom / Randolph S. Bourne -- Life is cheap / Walter Lippmann -- The future of pacifism / John Dewey -- 1920s. Meditation in E minor / H.L. Mencken -- The eclipse of progressivism / Herbert Croly -- Soviet Russia / John Maynard Keynes -- In Dedham Jail: a visit to Sacco and Vanzetti / Bruce Bliven -- The birth-control raid / Margaret Sanger -- 1930s. Progress and poverty / Edmund Wilson -- Out of the Red with Roosevelt / John Dos Passos -- The future of democracy / Benedetto Croce -- 1940s. The corruption of liberalism / Lewis Mumford -- Thoughts on peace in an air raid / Virginia Woolf -- Young man with a horn again / Otis Ferguson -- The art of translation / Vladimir Nabokov -- "In every voice, in every ban" / Alfred Kazin -- Politics and the English language / George Orwell -- 1950s. Sigmund Freud / W.H. Auden -- Indo-China / Graham Greene -- Our stake in the state of Israel / Reinhold Niebuhr -- Positive thinking on Pennsylvania Avenue / Philip Roth -- Arthur Miller's conscience / Richard Rovere -- 1960s. Candidate on the eve: liberalism without tears / James MacGregor Burns -- A jolly good Fellini / Stanley Kaufman -- The march on Washington / Murray Kempton -- The war on poverty / Gunnar Myrdal -- Movie brutalists / Pauline Kael -- 1970s. Power and powerlessness: decline of democratic government / Hans J. Morgenthau -- Random murder: the new terrorists / Michale Walzer -- The liberal's dilemma / Daniel P. Moynihan -- Protâegâe power / Nicholas Lemann -- 1980s. The great Carter mystery / Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. -- Liberals and deficits / Michael Kinsley -- Tory days / Henry Fairlie -- Mr. Democrat / Michael Kinsley -- Here comes the groom: a (conservative) case for gay marriage / Andrew Sullivan -- 1990s. The value of the canon / Irving Howe -- Highway to hell / Michael Kelly -- The child monarch / Hendrik Hertzberg -- After memory / Leon Wieseltier -- Beyond words / Fouad Ajami -- The griz / Michael Lewis -- Les tráes riches heures de Martha Stewart / Margaret Talbot -- He is finished / James Wood -- 2000s. Disgrace / Jeffrey Rosen -- Saint Gerhard of the sorrows of painting / Jed Perl -- Mad about you: the case for Bush hatred / Jonathan Chait -- The limited circle is pure / Zadie Smith -- A fighting faith / Peter Beinart -- American Adam / John B. Judis -- The idea of ideas / Leon Wieseltier --

Essays collected from ten decades of the New Republic explore pivotal issues of modern America.