Online Only

We have public housing, but it has never been as well designed, built, or maintained. We have limited-equity co-ops built by limited-dividend companies, but we built far fewer of them, and we allowed some to go private. We have inclusionary zoning, but whereas their model requires two-thirds of the development to be social housing, ours only demands that one-third be targeted to tenants under a certain household income.

All of us, from academics to fishermen, have now internalized a practice of reading the social world as a field of political or latently political signs. TV watching habits, food choices, clothing, interpretive approaches to 19th-century British literature: Everything becomes an opportunity to take a political stand, and to position yourself in relation to others taking political stands—and in a profession where discourse is everything, such opportunities abound.

No awkward fumbling in the dark, no failed maneuvers, no humiliating slurp sounds slipped out in the throes of passion—even a middle-aged beauty crowns the novice to be a carnal “king”! Have you ever heard of a more seamless first time? Then you remember this is a book written by a teenage girl who’s never been kissed, let alone had sex.