Articles Written By Clay Risen
TMN Contributing Writer Clay Risen’s first attempt to build a website fell apart after he learned that risen.com had been bought by a hardcore Christian rock band. Clay is the author of A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination. He lives in Brooklyn.
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The Non-Expert
Letters to a Young Philanderer
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we channel our inner Governor Sanford to explain the ways of windbags nationwide.
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The Non-Expert
I’ll Tell You No Lies
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we guide a reader who peppers her friends with questions, but finds they won’t reciprocate her curiosity.
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Spoofs & Satire
The Cougar Who Would Be Queen
Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor has been called a bigot and a racist—and that’s just week one. A memo to Republican politicians outlining the next phase of attack.
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The Non-Expert
The Superstitious Life
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. In honor of Friday the 13th, we coach a reader on effective use of superstition.
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New York, New York
The Night New York Avoided a Riot
In the days following Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, more than 100 cities experienced significant civil disturbance. In New York, everyone expected riots. What happened next.
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Op-Ed
A New Beijing, in Focus
Don’ be distracted by the hubbub surrounding the impressive buildings Beijing is constructing for the Olympics. It’s the people of the Chinese capital who need your attention.
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Notes From the Exit Row
The Vacation Question
We vacation to remove ourselves from our everyday experience—but what satisfies the itch more: huddling in a Cold War housing block or lounging poolside at Sandals? From 2008, a look at the line between far away and too far away.
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Op-Ed
Following Function
While America’s urban poverty is a visible and often-addressed problem, the nation’s rural poor live a life apart. Examining one architecture program’s work to connect them with what they really need.
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Spoofs & Satire
Stimulating
The government says your stimulus check will soon be in the mail, but when you finally receive it, should you invest it—or instead blow it on something the economy won’t ever forget?
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Profiles
Our Champion
When the New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp died recently from lung cancer, America lost one of its most riveting writers—one of the best critics we’ve ever had, and quite possibly among the worst.
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Op-Ed
A New Social Construct
Modernism may be dead, but the world desperately needs radically new ideas about living, working, and governing in the 21st-century city.
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Profiles
Ozymandias’s Washington
Though the U.S. capital is home to scores of memorials, just a handful of them command the attention of most visitors. A tour of Washington’s other monuments.