Selected Journalism


The Atlantic

Bill Ackman Is a Brilliant Fictional Character, January 2024

How to Talk Trump, March 2018

One Blasphemer’s New Admiration for Mormons, November 2017

How America Went Haywire, September 2016

Postcards from Fantasyland, July - August 2018

Medium

Every Day Is Christmas for CEOs, November 2021

Doing Our Bit To Avoid a Civil War, November 2021

Hating Big Tech Can Unite America, October 2021

America Is Rich Enough To Make Every American a Winner, October 2021

Living in A Word Cloud, September 2021

Democrat-Blue Highways Through Red America: A Road-Trip Game, September 2021

Maybe You Don’t Want to Be In Business With Jared Kushner, August 2021

Ride Without Helmets, Don’t Get Vaccinated, Live Free and Die, July 2021

A Brief History of “Fuck” in The New York Times, July 2021

The GOP Is Now the WWE of Politics, May 2021

Shouldn’t You Get A Raise For Working From Home?, May 2021

5 Thoughts About Hollywood’s Obsession With Hollywood, April 2021

Why the Republican Party Is Doomed, April 2021

A Guide to This Exciting, Funny, Scary, Real-Life Sci-Fi Moment, March 2021

The Vaccine Is Magic, March 2021

The Beginnings of a New New Deal, March 2021

Obama Boomers vs. Springsteen Boomers, March 2021

How the Supreme Court Gave the Capitol Insurrection a Green Light, February 2021

How the GOP Turned Into a Cult, February 2021

How I Became A Prophet, February 2021

Other Publications

The New Republic's issue speculating about the nature of the U.S. in 2050: Our Best-Case Scenario: A Negotiated Breakup, December 2022

Los Angeles Times: Book Review: Empathy for the Donald - President Trump’s psychologist niece writes about a man warped by his family, July 2020

Esquire: The Unbelievable Punchline to Spy's 30-Year Joke, November 2016

Creator: Death Penalty for Dickishness, March 2015

Rumpus: Sense of Place: Where I Work, January 2013

Allure, Boy Girl Boy Girl, August 2012 

The Daily Beast: Five Favorite 1960s Books, July 2012

The Wall Street Journal: How A Pronoun Shaped A Novel, June 2012

BN.com: Three Favorite Books, September 2009

Travel & Leisure: A Different Denmark, May 2006

Mother Jones: An Interview with Lizz Winstead of Air America, May 2004

Metropolis: Best and Worst Case Scenarios for the Future, May 2004

The Harvard Crimson
Straddling the Fence, June 2001

Slate

How the GOP Went Crazy, February 2018

Oprah Winfrey Helped Create Our American Fantasyland, January 2018

America's Gun Fantasy, October 2017

An Exchange with Nora Ephron, June 2002

The Last Gerontocracy, April 2002

E.L. Doctorow’s City of God: An Exchange with Polly Shulman, March 2000

Vanity Fair

Enthusiasts and Skeptics Debate Artificial Intelligence, November 2014

Reverse-Engineering a Genius (A Vermeer Mystery Solved?), November 2013

The 1980s, Our Nation’s Manic Episode, October 2013

French version of “You Say You Want A Devolution?, Courier International, May 2012

You Say You Want A Devolution?, January 2012

Next Stop, Manhattan, September 2011

The Genesis 2.0 Project, The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, January 2010

From Mao to Wow, new architecture in Beijing, August 2008

The New Yorker

Gotham Shuffle, June 2000

Dr. Entertainment, November 1999

The Future All over Again, September 1999

Pleasantville, September 1999

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, July 1999 

Postscript, May 1999

My People, Your People, May 1999 

The Culture Industry, April 1999

The Tom Hanks Phenomenon, December 1998 

The Culture Industry, May 1998

Blunt Trauma, March 1998

Sore Winner, March 1998

Desert Cool, February 1998

Entertainer-in-Chief, February 1998

Golden Globalization, January 1998

The Digital Bubble, December 1997

Kids Are Us, December 1997

Auteur Gridlock, December 1997

Speak, Memory, November 1997

Real People, November 1997

 Empowerment Son of Est, October 1997

 The Creative Life N, October 1997

A City on a Hill, September 1997

Beat the Press, September 1997

The Culture Industry, September 1997

The Culture Industry, July 1997

The Origin of Alien Species, July 1997

The Culture Industry, July 1997

Animation Nation, June 1997

Smokin'!, April 1997

The Outsider, March 1997

The Age of Unreason, February 1997

The New York Times

'Succession’ Nailed the Unreal Way We Live Now, May 2023

How Liberals Opened the Door to Libertarian Economics, September 2020

Tom Wolfe Made Everyone Talk About Him, Op-Ed, May 2018

Hands Up. It's Showtime, Op-Ed, September 2017

Kurt Andersen Praises Jonathan Lethem's New Novel, the Book Review, A Gambler’s Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem, October 2016

The Best Decade Ever? The 1990s, Obviously, February 2015

Wanderlust: A Road Trip Through Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, T Magazine, November 2013

I Spy, the Book Review, Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan, November 2012

True to Character, the Book Review, Kurt Vonnegut's Letters, October 2012

The Downside of LibertyOp-Ed, July 2012

Our Politics Are Sick, Op-Ed, August 2011

We, RobotOp-Ed, August 2011

The Madman TheoryOp-Ed, August 2011

Pop Culture in the Age of Obamathe Book Review, August 2009

Omaha’s Culture Club, T Magazine, March 2007

A Reporter’s Reporter, the Book Review, A Writer’s Life by Gay Talese, April 2006

Doonesbury At War, the Book Review, The Long Road Home by Garry TrudeauApril 2005

The Disquieted Americanthe Magazine, April 2003

The Year in Ideas, the Magazine, December 2002

City of Schemes, the Magazine, October 2002

Only Gossip, the Magazine, March 2002

Adventures in Baby-Sitting, the Magazine, December 2001

Falloutthe Magazine, September 2001

Destination: N.Y., the Magazine, September 2000

Nouveaux Bohemians, the Book Review, Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks, May 2000

The Next Big DialecticOp-Ed, November 1999

Valley Guy, the Book Review, The New New Thing by Michael Lewis, October 1999

The Yanni Files, Op-Ed, January 1998

The Inner Game of Campaigning, Op-Ed, November 1980

Doing the College Hop, October 1971

Time

The Protester: Person of the Year, December 2011

Terror’s Half-Life, September 2011

1848 vs. 2011, March 2011

The End of Excess: Is This Crisis Good for America?, March 2009

1848: When America Came of Age, March 2007

The Inner Strengths of a Vulnerable City, September 2001 

A Spunky Tycoon, April 2001

Las Vegas, U.S.A., January 1994

Radio: Big Mouths, November 1993

Oprah and Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, October 1993

A Perfect MAD Man, June 1992

A Player Once Again, April 1992

THE SPECTATOR

The Agony of Victory, January 1994

The Freedom to Ridicule, December 1993

Can 42nd Street Be Born Again, September 1993

"57 Channels and Nothin’ On, September 1993

Requiem for A Heavyweight, September 1993

How Necessary Is PBS?, July 1993

The Great TV Violence Hype, July 1993

Are Beavis and Butt-head Arty?, June 1993

The Future Is Looking Too Cool, June 1993

The Clinton-Hollywood Co-Dependency, June 1993

Does Connie Chung Matter?, May 1993

It’s a Small World After All, May 1993

ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN

From The Sublime To the Meticulous, May 1993

Master Of All He Surveyed, October 1992

Finally Doing Right By Wright, July 1992

All’s Fair in Seville, April 1992 

Style California Dreamin, September 1991

Big Yet Still Beautiful, September 1990

A Cult Hero Gets His Due, April 1990

Getting Out and Mixing It Up in the Rialto, March 1990

A Crazy Building in Columbus, November 1989

A Grand Folly in Ottawa, July 1989

A Dreamer Who Is Fuzzy About the Details, March 1989

Fast Life Along the Skywalks, August 1988

An Architect for the New Age, April 1988

Renewal, But a Loss Of Funk, February 1988

Japan Is On The Go, September 1987

Rebuilding Berlin, July 1987

Building Beauty the Hard Way, October 1986

Gleams From a Gorgeous Twilight!, July 1986

Legacy of the Golden Arches, June 1986

His Was the Simplicity That Stun, March 1986

The Shape of Things to Come, December 1985

New York

Read all of Kurt's articles for New York here.

The Blockbuster Effect, Intelligencer, May 2011

2010: RomneyCare and Recession, December 2010

2001: Gore Moves In, December 2010

Is Democracy Killing Democracy?, February 2010

59. Because We’re Resilient, December 2010

Obamaism, November 2008

Whiplash City, October 2008

Boom-Bust-Boom Town, October 2008​

The Humor Deficit, The Imperial City, August 2008

Meet the Press Now, The Imperial City, July 2008

Felkerism, Feature, July 2008

I’m Not Totally Sure We Can, The Imperial City, June 2008

About That Crush on Obama, The Imperial City, May 2008

Falling Out of Love With Bill, The Imperial City, April 2008

Is Demography Destiny?, The Imperial City, February 2008

Anatomy of a Freak Show, The Imperial City, February 2008