Keen On Archives

Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat

A shocking and unputdownable exposé of the United States meat industry, the devastating failures of the country’s food system, and the growing disappointment of alternative meat producers claiming to revolutionize the future of food. Perfect for fans of Kochland, The Meat Racket, and The Secret Life of Groceries. […Learn More]

Still Broke: Walmart’s Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism

Fifteen years ago, Walmart was the most controversial company in America. By offering incredibly low prices, it had come to dominate the retail landscape. But with this dominance came a suite of ethical concerns. Walmart was accused of wiping out mom-and-pop businesses across the country; ruthlessly pressuring suppliers to cut costs, even if it meant closing up U.S. factories and moving production overseas; and, above all, not taking adequate care of its own employees, who were paid so little that many wound up on public assistance. […Learn More]

The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice, and the American City

landmark work of intimate reporting on inequality, race, class, and violence, told through a murder and intersecting lives in an iconic American neighborhood.

One New Haven summer evening in 2006, a retired grandfather was shot point-blank by a young stranger. A hasty police investigation culminated in innocent sixteen-year-old Bobby being sentenced to prison for thirty-eight years. New Haven native and acclaimed author Nicholas Dawidoff returned home and spent eight years reporting the deeper story of this injustice, and what it reveals about the enduring legacies of social and economic disparity. […Learn More]

The First City on Mars: An Urban Planner’s Guide to Settling the Red Planet

Hundreds of novels, films, and TV shows have speculated about what it would be like for us Earthlings to build cities on Mars. To make it a reality, however, these dreamers are in sore need of additional conceptual tools in their belt—particularly, a rich knowledge of city planning and design. […Learn More]

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation

From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the 1619 Project comes a landmark book that tells the full story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation. […Learn More]

Between Light and Storm: How We Live with Other Species

A landmark examination of the fraught relationship between humans and animals, taking the reader from Genesis to climate change.

Beginning with the very origins of life on Earth, Woolfson considers prehistoric human-animal interaction and traces the millennia-long evolution of conceptions of the soul and conscience in relation to the animal kingdom, and the consequences of our belief in human superiority. […Learn More]

Solito: A Memoir

Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks. […Learn More]

Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy

The story of how economic reasoning came to dominate Washington between the 1960s and 1980s—and why it continues to constrain progressive ambitions today

For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. […Learn More]

Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Plane

For the first time in millennia, we have the opportunity to transform not only our food system but our entire relationship to the living world.

Farming is the world’s greatest cause of environmental destruction—and the one we are least prepared to talk about. We criticize urban sprawl, but farming sprawls across thirty times as much land. We have plowed, fenced, and grazed great tracts of the planet, felling forests, killing wildlife, and poisoning rivers and oceans to feed ourselves. Yet millions still go hungry and the price of food is rising faster than ever. […Learn More]

Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made a President

In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” Born in 1882 to a wealthy, influential family and blessed with an abundance of charm and charisma, he seemed destined for high office. Yet for all his gifts, the young Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and an ability to think strategically. Those qualities, so essential to his success as president, were skills he acquired during his seven-year journey through illness and recovery. […Learn More]