How Star Wars Unmasks Baby Boomers As America's Sith Lords
George Lucas' greatest triumph is charting a generation's passage from antiwar activism to running Abu Ghraib and secret kill lists.
Book Reviews
Good Stuff Comes from the Bottom Up
How culture, economies, technology, and government evolve
The Incoherent Politics of Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The movie is fun, but its post-Galactic Empire political structure doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Slate Says "Upwing" With The End of Doom by Ronald Bailey
Forget Right and Left: Are You an Upwinger or a Downwinger?
The Man Behind The Martian
Bestselling author Andy Weir on politics, commercial space, and the future of publishing
Star Wars as the Story of Luke Skywalker's Terrorist Radicalization
Arguing about politics is part of what makes Star Wars fandom so much fun.
What Does Star Wars Mean?: A Reason Argument Hotter Than the Twin Suns of Tatooine
The Washington Post's Alyssa Rosenberg, Free Beacon's Sonny Bunch, and Reason's Peter Suderman fight over why we care.
First Private Rocket Goes to Space, Safely Lands on Earth
Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin company succeeds with its New Shepard Reusable Rocket
The End of Doom: 'One of the year's best science books,' says Wall Street Journal
Makes a wonderful Christmas gift.
The Corporate Christian Conspiracy?
A historian tries to blame "Christian libertarians" for the idea that America is a Christian nation.
Friday A/V Club: The Story of Hitler's England
Something to watch with The Man in the High Castle
Citigroup Executive Reviews Book on the Federal Reserve
An executive whose bank faltered while he was highly compensated reviews a book on the Fed for the New York Times.
North Korea's Grassroots Capitalism
How creeping market forces are improving life in the Hermit Kingdom.
Is a 'Black Silent Majority' Responsible for Some of America's Harshest Drug Laws?
A new book argues that black America helped pave the way for the War on Drugs.
The Martian author Andy Weir on Mars Colonization, Commercial Space Travel, and Going From Programmer to Best-Selling Author
Q&A with the man who wrote the book behind the upcoming Hollywood film starring Matt Damon.
Taking Exception to Exceptional
Dick and Liz Cheney's unpersuasive new book says exactly what you'd expect it to say.
Science Fiction Fans Are Fighting About Politics. It's Not the End of the Universe
Science fiction's culture wars have been around for as long as science fiction.
How Artificial Stupidity Can Kill Us All
The Singularity is closer and dumber than you think.
Spies, Lies, and the Underground
A new book shines some light on the violent radicals of the 1970s but misses their biggest impact on American politics.
Oysters vs. the State
The fight to save a California oyster farm from the National Park Service
Blood and Leviathan
A Stanford historian thinks war is the engine that drives civilization. Is he right?
Sense8: The Wachowskis Bring Their Hallucinatory Visions to Television
First season of show about strangers with mysterious mental connections debuts on Netflix.
The Politics of Tomorrowland
The Fountainhead? More like The Open Conspiracy crossed with "The Gernsback Continuum."
Tomorrowland: 'Atlas Shrugged reimagined by Mickey Mouse'
Is director Brad Bird's film an "insidiously political" argument for the value of individual achievement?
Feminism, Frankenstein, and Freedom
The individualistic works and lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley
The Dark Side of Police Reform
Gay rights, black neighborhoods, and how reformers paved the way for Eric Garner
Bill Bennett's Pot Prevarications
A former drug czar's dazed and confused defense of marijuana prohibition
Prometheus Award Nominees for Best Libertarian Science Fiction Announced
Harlan Ellison to get Hall of Fame award for classic short story "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman."
Unpacking Obamacare
How the president's signature law came into effect, and what might come next
Is Another Financial Crisis On the Way?
We didn't learn the lessons of the last crisis. Does that mean we're doomed to repeat it?
Somalia Lived While Its Government Died
"Serious" foreign policy minds care about everything but citizens' lives.
Friday A/V Club: Rock 'n' Roll Invasion from the Moon
Two Firesign Theater veterans recut some ancient movie serials into a conspiracy comedy.
