In the summer of 2004, in reaction and opposition to the very worst of the Bush era, n+1 published its first issue—which means that this year, the magazine turns twenty! We’ll be celebrating two decades of ambitious, career-launching, era-defining publishing over the course of 2024, so watch out for all kinds of twentieth-anniversary programming, merch, and more throughout the year.
In the meantime, as we look back on twenty years of n+1, we’ve unpaywalled all twenty of our most-read pieces of all time. The list offers a greatest-hits selection of the essential essays, fiction, and criticism that have defined the magazine—and defined, by extension, so much of intellectual life on the left in the 21st century.
n+1’s top twenty in twenty years:
1. “Uncanny Valley,” by Anna Wiener
2. “On Liking Women,” by Andrea Long Chu
3. “The Feminist,” by Tony Tulathimutte
4. “Why Is Everything So Ugly?,” by The Editors
5. “Cash/Consent,” by Lorelei Lee
6. “Pussy Riot Closing Statements,” by Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
7. “No Human Being Can Exist,” by Saree Makdisi
8. “Sexism in the Academy,” by Troy Vettese
9. “A Dangerous Conflation,” an open letter from Jewish writers
10. “Bad Education,” by Malcolm Harris
11. “What Do You Desire?,” by Emily Witt
12. “The Stupidity of Computers,” by David Auerbach
13. “Have We Learned Nothing?,” by David Klion
14. “My Instagram,” by Dayna Tortorici
15. “Raise the Crime Rate,” by Christopher Glazek
16. “What Happened to Canada?,” by Marianne Lenabat
17. “Death By Degrees,” by The Editors
18. “5.4,” by Richard Beck
19. “Magic Actions,” by Tobi Haslett
20. “On Design Thinking,” by Maggie Gram
If you’re able, help support n+1’s next twenty years by making a $20 donation—or, through the rest of 2024, take 20% off a print subscription with the discount code NPLUSTWENTY. Happy reading, and happy twenty years!