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 Liberty, Op-Ed, July 2012
Our Politics Are Sick, Op-Ed, August 2011
We, Robot, Op-Ed, August 2011
The Madman Theory, Op-Ed, August 2011
Pop Culture in the Age of Obama, the 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 Trudeau, April 2005
The Disquieted American, the 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
Fallout, the 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 Dialectic, Op-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