Scott W. Stern

Is the Supreme Court the Best Way to Get Justice?

I'm still walking on air hours later - this @nytimes.com review so perfectly and concisely gets the point of THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS (@yalepress.bsky.social)

Check it out - the Times calls the book "powerful new history"!! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...

Is the Supreme Court the Best Way to Get Justice?

Beyond thrilled to receive a glowing review in today's @nytimes.com!!! THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS is a "powerful new history"!

An enormous thanks to @alexiscoe.bsky.social for her deep engagement with my work! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/b...

Pack the Court. If we are serious about the defense of these rights, we pack the Court. Simple as that. They pack it back, we pack it again. We do it until we reach consensus on long-term reforms to the judiciary. I don't know what it's going to take for people to get it.

How Slow Motion Became Cinema’s Dominant Special Effect The turbulent late ‘60s saw the technique’s popularity explode—and it’s been helping moviemakers (and literary artists) engage with the unsettling tempos of modern life ever since.

Check out my latest in @newrepublic.com - a review of "Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion" by @goblemark.bsky.social!

The review asks why this one particular special effect resonates - and concludes it's because "our world is, obviously, ending" newrepublic.com/article/1962...

as for the upshot of the decision, the republican court has put the citizen children of non-citizens in a position similar to that of free blacks during the antebellum period. their right to enjoy the privileges and immunities of american citizenship will vary according to state borders

The left better start figuring out how to weaponize today's decision rather than just (rightfully) criticizing it.

- Go back into Judge Kaczmaryk's court to dissolve all of his nationwide orders.

- Pass gun bans and insist any order applies only to plaintiffs.

Wow wow wow wow wow

‘There Is a Deep Brooding in Arkansas’: A Q&A with writer Scott W. Stern - Arkansas Times Scott W. Stern’s new book, “There Is a Deep Brooding in Arkansas,” intertwines two rape trials that occurred in Mississippi County alongside a recounting of the life of Maya Angelou.

A thrill to be interviewed about my new book, THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS (@yalepress.bsky.social), in the @arktimes.bsky.social. Check it out in print and online. Thanks to Guy Lancaster for the insightful questions! arktimes.com/arkansas-blo...

Headline: ICE came for their neighbor so these Tennesseans formed a human chain to protect him

I can't emphasize enough that the most important thing journalists can do right now is publish exactly this kind of article

Book Review: ‘What’s Left,’ by Malcolm Harris “What’s Left,” by Malcolm Harris, arrives at a particularly difficult time to consider anything beyond our immediate turmoil.

Wild that the NYT insists on assigning Malcolm Harris books to the least sympathetic possible reviewers. This one calls for "something more modest and, admittedly, conservative than what Harris suggests," which ... isn't critique! It's just a call for a different book www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/b...

Damn. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

The ‘can machines do creative writing’ thing is mostly a distraction from the use of the machines to go through text and images to cancel grants and put people on deportation lists

“BigLaw firms are not going to save the legal profession, because what they care about is preserving their positions of power within it. If an unlucky few are going to go down, the others are going to try to make a buck off their demise.”

HERVermont’s Bold Debut: From Research Project to Advocacy Powerhouse - The Montpelier Bridge The five U-32 students who recently founded the organization “HERVermont” started it by reading a book. Inspired by Scott Stern’s “The Trials of Nina McCall,” they went all-in developing an informatio...

I am honored beyond words at this event happening today, honoring many women abused by the U.S. government, including several I wrote about in The Trials of Nina McCall! montpelierbridge.org/2025/03/herv...

Well, that should be a wrap on this university, genuinely.

The Underlying Problem This is happening because some people are too rich.

"It is tempting, because of the sudden severity of our situation, to imagine that there is a secret, hidden reason driving it all.

There’s not. This is the outcome of the class war ... This is what happens when it is lost." www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-underl...

The World Can’t Keep Up With Its Garbage A new book shows how residents of wealthier nations are jeopardizing the health and safety of other parts of the planet.

A new book tracks how the garbage of rich countries ends up in some of the world’s poorest places, exacting a devastating environmental toll, writes Scott W. Stern:

Question: What do people like this think normal deportation is? Presenting some elements of this story like they are novel and "just like Putin" is not what is needed to reckon with longstanding US practice. The tools and capacities Trump will use are already here.

The World Can’t Keep Up With Its Garbage A new book shows how residents of wealthier nations are jeopardizing the health and safety of other parts of the planet.

Check out my latest in @theatlantic.com! I write about "dystopian reality" of the global waste trade, reviewing a brilliant new book by @alexclapp.bsky.social (@littlebrown.bsky.social)

"A colonoscopy in book form, an exploration of the guts of the modern world"

www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

The Labor Theory of AI | Ben Tarnoff Artificial intelligence may be the first attempt to automate and discipline human labor that even its creators don’t fully comprehend.

"Contemporary AI is best understood ... as the latest in a long line of efforts to increase the power of the boss." www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Spot-on analysis by @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/strike-or-...

The actual trajectory of Democratic opposition to Trump since 2016 is that Democrats first engaged in #resistance and cultural progressivism, won the House in 2018, defeated Trump and won a trifecta the year of the George Floyd protests, tacked right under Biden, and lost in 2024.

Screen grab of Twitter post my pundit Matt Yglesias saying that California governor Newsom is not only correct on merit to oppose trans athletes, but that it's bizarre to see the Democratic party line up on an issue that is opposed 70-30.

Interracial marriage did not cross 50% approval in the US until 1996, when I was 30 years old. Good political messaging drives opinion, it doesn't follow it.

Oil Paintings at the Dentist’s Office | A. S. Hamrah I can only take so much messiah talk in science fiction, especially when it’s coming from Javier Bardem and Timothée Chalamet, both of whom I generally like, but here all I could think about was that ...

“No Other Land shows up as useless the computer-generated nonsense of Hollywood and European films about inclusion.” www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

Could share the Tony Valenzuela essay about meth and time you mentioned? I’m having trouble finding it

This has been two weeks of constant events that are more dangerous than January 6th or, I’d absolutely argue, even 9/11, and it is a damning indictment of American media that so many publications and reporters are too cowardly, too docile, to act like it.

Check out my excerpt in @literaryhub.bsky.social, in which I discuss the varied responses to Maya Angelou's writing.

And if you're really interested, check out my new book, THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS, out NOW from @yalepress.bsky.social!

lithub.com/how-black-an...

Check out my essay in Time, in which I discuss Maya Angelou's anti-rape activism.

And if you're really interested, check out my new book, THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS, out NOW from @yalepress.bsky.social!

time.com/7206199/maya...

The Unsung Power of Maya Angelou's Activism The poet Maya Angelou remains beloved more than a decade after her death. Yet few lift up the power of her voice in the anti-rape movement.

Check out another essay adapted from THERE IS A DEEP BROODING IN ARKANSAS, this one in Time! time.com/7206199/maya...