The evidence is overwhelming: the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color was out of proportion to the size of those communities in the overall American population. Dr. Yohuru Williams is among a group of scholars whose new book argues the experience with COVID is consistent with other difficult experiences in American history.

Often, politics can feel like a thankless and often futile undertaking. But White House chief speechwriter Cody Keenan tells his readers that occasionally, through long and sustained effort, the world moves.

For most mothers, pregnancy is a time of hope, expectation, and even fear. Dr. Ade Osinubi focuses the lens—literally—on the maternal health challenges facing black women in the United States—the legacy of racism, staggering numbers of maternal mortality, postpartum depression, and difficulties accessing care.

For most of the last 20 years, the conversation about American national security has been focused on the threats posed by extremists. With the death of al Qaeda Leader Ayman al Zawahiri, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and rising tensions with China, Javed Ali argues that conversation has swung back to great-power competition.

People come from all over the world to access cutting-edge care in American hospitals. But Linda Villarosa describes a different experience for Black Americans, who she says “live sicker, and die quicker” than their white compatriots.

Indigenous artists often straddle a space created by white anthropologists between art and craft. Cannupa Hanska Luger grapples with that dichotomy. Creating art from tradition that, in its time, was purely practical. And seeing his own contemporary activism viewed as art when it was, in fact, protest.

The social determinants of health—how living conditions, family life, poverty, homelessness and other factors affect human health—have emerged as key factors in understanding health outcomes. Dr. Maria Raven shines a critical light on the complexity of cases she sees every day in one major city’s emergency room.

When Russian forces invaded Ukraine earlier this year, Dr. Michael Fine was outraged—like a lot of Americans. So he traveled to see first-hand the human cost of this war.

Of all the hashtag social movements, #MeToo has proven among the most enduring—for its truth, for the power imbalance it revealed, and because so many women had the courage to speak out. Winnie M Li told her story in her first novel. Now, in her second novel, she tells another about appearance, reality, and the facades that dominate public life, whether in the film industry or at the corner shop.