Essays


Christmas on Red Hill, or The Birth of Misotheism

Liberties
forthcoming

The Ordeal Mechanism
Liberties
forthcoming

The Great Bus-Tracker Debate
Cambridge Day
June 19, 2024

David Graeber’s Magic Words
Compact Magazine
May 24, 2024

Where’s the Bus?
Education Policy blog
New America
May 9, 2024

Naming Names at the Cambridge School Committee
Cambridge Day
March 22, 2024

In the Counterlife of Autism
Liberties
January 2024

Autism’s Cult of Redemption
Skeptic
December 2023

The biggest Vietnam War story that Americans don’t talk about
Boston Globe
August 11, 2023

What my autistic son’s cold cheeseburgers taught me about bureaucracy
Boston Globe
May 26, 2023

MassHealth’s Personal Care Attendant Program’s hybrid model cheats families like mine
Boston Globe
May 18, 2023

Anti-Memoirs of Autism
The Point
November 30, 2022

The Mismeasure of Misha
Boston Globe
November 27, 2022

The Shocking School
Boston Review
December 22, 2021

The Group Home Racket: How a Financial Model
Masquerades as a Human Service

Dollars & Sense
November/December 2021

Care Economy Misgivings: Investigating
‘Human Infrastructure’ in Disability Policy

Medium
September 27, 2021

Rewarding Bad Behavior: Will Private Equity Dominate Autism Services?
The Nation
April 2, 2021

Spinning Their Wheels: Disabled Children Deserve a Sane Commute
Cambridge Day
December 18, 2017

Ketchup Is Still Not a Vegetable
Cambridge Chronicle
December 15, 2017

Everything Goes Together in the Same Wrong Direction: Conversations with Slovenians Not Named Melania Trump or Slavoj Žižek
Counterpunch
November 13, 2017

Never-Before-Seen Photos of Fidel Castro’s Revolution
Vanity Fair
November 29, 2016

Out of the Blue: Mass Murder in the Skies
The Baffler
March 30, 2015

The People’s Republic of Zuckerstan
The Baffler
November 2014

The Stark Morals of James Agee’s Great Depression Essay
The Atlantic
June 19, 2013

R.I.P. Aaron Swartz
The Baffler
January 12, 2013

The Cult of the Boss: Thorstein Veblen
Playboy
November 2011

Statement in Support of Aaron Swartz
Guernica
July 23, 2011

Daniel Bell and The End of Ideology
Dissent
Spring 2011

Politics and Pragmatism
U.S. Intellectual History Blog
May 27, 2011

Failure is Not an Option
Times Higher Education
March 24, 2011

Fly Away, Mockingbird
Counterpunch
July 26, 2010

What Politics Does to History
The New Republic
July 19, 2010

The Stranger: C. Wright Mills
Reviews in American History
June 2010

The Observer: Henry Thoreau
The New Republic
April 20, 2010

Bring Back Dwight Macdonald!
The New Republic
January 20, 2010

Positive/Negative Thinking
Bookforum
Sept./Oct./Nov. 2009 

American Nihilism
Bookforum
July 17, 2009

Too Smart to Fail
Times Higher Education
July 2, 2009

The Mirror Cracked
Times Higher Education
May 7, 2009

Political Tourism and Its Texts
Times Higher Education
April 16, 2009

Beggared by Our Own Universities
Times Higher Education
April 2, 2009

Gettysburg Regress: How the Government is 
Ruining America’s Most Famous Battlefield

The New Republic
March 18, 2009

Don’t Mourn, Write
Times Higher Education
February 26, 2009

Humanities Wither on the Vine
Times Higher Education
January 29, 2009

It’s Less Tough at the Top
Times Higher Education
December 18, 2008

Campaigning for the Dream Vote
Times Higher Education
October 9, 2008

In Dreams Begin Politics
History News Network
September 8, 2008

Psychologists in the Firing Line
Times Higher Education
September 4, 2008

All the Privileged Must Have Prizes
Times Higher Education
July 10, 2008

A Note on Anti-Americanism
New Politics
Summer 2008

Seduced by Information
The Chronicle Review
April 11, 2008 

The Epigone’s Embrace, Part II: C. Wright Mills and the New Left
Left History
Fall/Winter 2008 

The Cultural Break: C. Wright Mills and the Polish October
Intellectual History Review
July 2008

No-Man’s-Land: C. Wright Mills in England
Penultimate Adventures with Britannia: Personalities, Politics, and Culture in Britain
Edited by Wm. Roger Louis
I.B. Tauris, 2007

The Epigone’s Embrace: Irving Louis Horowitz on C. Wright Mills
Minnesota Review
Spring 2007 

James Agee, the Anarchist Sublime
The Gettysburg Review
Winter 2007

James Agee and C. Wright Mills: Sociological Poetry
Agee Agonistes: Essays on the Life, Legend, and Works of James Agee
Edited by Michael Lofaro
University of Tennessee Press, 2007 

Everybody Must Get Stoned
New York Observer
January 10, 2007

Prophesy’s Heroic Prose
New York Observer
December 4, 2006

Perpetual Revelations: C. Wright Mills and Paul Lazarsfeld
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
November 2006

Seeing from the Center: Richard Hofstadter
New York Observer
June 19, 2006

The Deciders: The Power Elite at 50
New York Times
May 14, 2006

Chomsky and Academic History
Counterpunch
January 8, 2005

George Herman Ruth
Sport and American Culture
Edited by Joyce Duncan
ABC-CLIO, 2004

Cold War Culture
Boston Globe
July 4, 2004

New World Order
Boston Phoenix
January 30, 2004 

The End of Sociology?
Boston Review
December 2003/January 2004

Against Love?
Boston Phoenix
December 19, 2003

Irving Howe’s Passionate Dissent
Wilson Quarterly
Spring 2003

Brutal Bruno Bettelheim
San Francisco Chronicle
September 8, 2002

Christopher Lasch’s Plain Style
San Francisco Chronicle
August 18, 2002

Paterfamilias on the March
Austin Chronicle
July 5, 2002

The Temple of Literature
Boston Review
Summer 2002 

Dear Dwight Macdonald
Boston Review
December 2001/January 2002

Hitchens’s Passion for Polemic
Boston Globe
December 30, 2001

Personal Pragmatism
Boston Review
October/November 2001

Cold War Civil Rights
Commonweal
May 18, 2001

Class and Culture
New Labor Forum
May 1, 2001

Will Teach for Food
Dollars and Sense
March/April 2001

Schools and Society: Progressive Education
Who Built America? From the Great War of 1914 to the Dawn of the Atomic Age in 1946, a multimedia CD-ROM
Worth Publishers, 2001

White Lies in the Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Atrocity
Who Built America? From the Great War of 1914 to the Dawn of the Atomic Age in 1946, a multimedia CD-ROM
Worth Publishers, 2001

A Massacre on Memorial Day
Who Built America? From the Great War of 1914 to the Dawn of the Atomic Age in 1946, a multimedia CD-ROM
Worth Publishers, 2001

Law and Order in Black and White: Policing the Color Line in Atlanta
Who Built America? From the Great War of 1914 to the Dawn of the Atomic Age in 1946, a multimedia CD-ROM
Worth Publishers, 2001

Pride and Prejudice: Marcus Garvey and the UNIA
Who Built America? From the Great War of 1914 to the Dawn of the Atomic Age in 1946, a multimedia CD-ROM
Worth Publishers, 2001

What Happened to Sex Scandals? Politics and Peccadilloes, Jefferson to Kennedy
Journal of American History
December 2000


The Big Discourse
The Nation
October 9, 2000

Graduate Economics
Washington Post Magazine
April 9, 2000

Sister Revolutions
Austin Chronicle
December 24, 1999

Suicide is Not Painless
Austin Chronicle
December 3, 1999

The More Things Change
Texas Observer
November 26, 1999

Writing Teachers of America Unite!
culturefront
Summer 1999

Blackouts: Symptoms of our Dependence
History News Service
Summer 1999

The Future of Labor’s Past
Labor History
February 1999

Training for What?
Perspectives, newsletter of the American Historical Association
February 1999

Civility Wars
Newsday
May 31, 1998

Journalists—or Defenders of the Faith?
Free Inquiry
Spring 1998

Unions and Universities
Perspectives, newsletter of the American Historical Association
April 1997