Cities are for colliding with people unlike you. If your vision of a city is allergic to the existence of people unlike you, you may not actually like this city or any city.

When I wrote this in 2018, even many on the left half thought it wrongheaded. Now Bill Kristol is saying it. Progress.

What will have saved America in the end is that they just weren’t that good at authoritarianism.

MAN IN THE MIRROR is an instant New York Times bestseller. I am in shock. And everlastingly grateful to so many people who poured their heart into this book and shared my faith that people are ready for complexity again, ready to see each other’s humanity across the chasms.

I reviewed @janetreitman’s “richly empathetic, morally complex, many-windowed new book” for @nytimesbooks. It’s “an intimate history of post-9/11 America,” it bravely humanizes all kinds of people, and it distills who we let ourselves become after 9/11. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/books/review/th...Mostrar mais

I ask people to let me write about them for a living. Which makes it only fair, but highly nerve-racking, to let a writer do the same with me. @GiniaNYT is one of our finest noticers and clearest seers. This is her profile. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/style/anand-gir...Mostrar mais

One way to view the Trump-Mamdani relationship: Both have ardent bases that felt abandoned, rightly or wrongly. In a democracy, one might show respect to a leader who has connected with many without respecting him yourself. You’re showing respect to those who feel seen by him.

The reception to Nikole Hannah-Jones shows how many have lost the faculty to process ideas through any filter but “Do I agree?” Others like “What is this telling me that I didn’t know”?, “How have I been in this situation?”, “What would it feel like?” are absent. Read books!

No one is coming to save us. Today in @nytimes, an essay based on my new book, MAN IN THE MIRROR, on a subway killing that divided America — and revealed what it has in common: Abandonment. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/opinion/america...Mostrar mais

The AI CEOs are demonstrating one of the core WINNERS TAKE ALL moves: By naming, and framing their way, a social problem they’ve also caused, they appoint themselves leaders of the search for solutions when they should be asking for the society’s mercy.

The same cluster of people constantly telling us we may soon live forever but also all be dead, we’re on the cusp of untold riches but also will have no jobs, the best is yet to come but also this is your last chance to grab resources, is a form of collective psychological abuse.

I am making a tasty new cheese that if someone bites it everyone with an “A” in their name will perish but this cheese must be built because if I don’t build it someone will make a cheese that kills people with another letter in their name so back I go to making my lil cheese

I can finally share: I’ve been working on a YouTube docuseries to accompany my new book, MAN IN THE MIRROR. I still believe books should speak for themselves. But we also have to meet people where they are. Here’s a try. The trailer just dropped. youtu.be/ybyMmeCHMK0Mostrar mais

I’m thrilled to announce the MAN IN THE MIRROR book tour. Join me for a conversation about our cities, our country, and our common humanity. Info at anand.ly

“The best New York book since THE POWER BROKER” I almost fainted Thank you, Sarah McNally and @mcnallyjackson Join the reading circle: mcnallyjackson.com/book/9780593802014s

America can’t stop talking about AOC this week because of two intersecting phenomena: her mastery of the politics of vulnerability, and her deft playing of the inside-outside game, one foot in the movement, one in the halls of power. I wrote about her rise to power and the origi…Mostrar mais

This is the opposite of what anyone is interested in on this platform, but: I wrote about how the incentives of the age nudged me from curiosity to certitude, and how a good friend woke me up. the.ink/p/i-didnt-like-my-friends-interven...Mostrar mais

The most underrated trait in modern American life is the ability to be curious about what you may not see. If a political candidate doesn’t appeal to you but appeals to many, it is not interesting to say they’re not appealing. If an idea that discomfits you is ascendant, your ref…Mostrar mais

City of comebacks.

Theo Baker just wanted to go to college. He ended up at the rapacious, awkward center of the world, where a rising dweebocracy is plotting to rule, a new Wall Street but in Silicon Valley, with more pimples and less eye contact. My review of @tab_delete: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/books/review/th...Mostrar mais

Now you’re posting here about me posting here. And now I’m posting here about you posting here about me posting here. This is how the billionaires win!

America’s oligarchs say we shouldn’t tax them more because it would cramp their thinking up ideas to benefit us all. So we have an interest in knowing what they actually spend their time thinking about. The Epstein files offer an answer. Chapter three: the.ink/p/rich-brainMostrar mais

In the Epstein files photographs, women and girls are everywhere — that is, except during meals. My deep dive into what their literal absence from the table reveals about how these men operate. the.ink/p/never-eat-with-women

JUST ANNOUNCED: @thedrift_mag Presents: A Conversation About the Epstein Files on Tuesday, March 10th. Featuring @kfzbarrow and @rmpanovka in conversation with Brace Belden (of @TrueAnonPod), @DRBoguslaw, @azbrodsky, and @AnandWrites. 🎟️: livemu.sc/3ZMHG1J

It takes a village to raise a child, the proverb says. What the Epstein files show that it takes a powerful network to abuse so many children. This is what Jeffrey Epstein found in a social super-elite that now rightly bears his name: the Epstein class. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/opinion/ezra-kl...Mostrar mais

The recently released trove of Jeffrey Epstein's emails show that the powerful people around the sexual predator had no problem ignoring his crimes as long as it benefited them, says journalist @AnandWrites. www.democracynow.org/2025/11/25/anand_giri...

Well, you’re no peach yourself. But thank you for reading!

As discussed on @Morning_Joe, some fantastic questions to enliven your family or friends Thanksgiving table, from the brilliant @PriyaParker, a.k.a. my copilot. open.substack.com/pub/priyaparker/p/40-mag...Mostrar mais

Say what you will about Jeffrey Epstein, but he chose his friends well: a power elite he could trust to look away at his crimes because they had spent a generation looking away at so much other abuse and suffering, often pain that they had helped to cause.

I mean, fair

The clubby deal-making and moral racketeering of the Epstein class is now the United States’ governing philosophy. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/opinion/meaning...

.@AnandWrites powerfully articulates why I have been calling out the Epstein class. This fight is about justice for the survivors. It’s also about standing against elite impunity and a governing class that outsourced jobs for profits and got us into endless wars.

Everyone needs to read this fantastic essay by @AnandWrites to ground themselves in the underlying political dynamic in this country over the last decade. Americans “no longer feel included in the work of choosing their future.” This is why populist economics is popular and

🙏🏾

Really great piece from @AnandWrites www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/opinion/meaning...

Reading the Epstein emails, many ask: How could these eminent people all look away? But if the Epstein class has a talent, it’s looking away. Many in it worked up to disregarding Epstein’s victims by looking away at so much other abuse and suffering. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/opinion/meaning...Mostrar mais

Isn’t it dangerous, some in the power elite tsk-tsk, to use the term “Epstein class”? No. It’s essential. Some very influential people who just got back from Aspen, probably, would love this to remain a story about one guy and his abuses. It’s bigger. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/opinion/meaning...Mostrar mais

I wrote about the Epstein class. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/opinion/meaning...

The author of "Dopesick" is running for Congress. @roanoketimes had the scoop. Now watch our interview with @papergirlmacy in The Ink. the.ink/p/watch-she-wrote-dopesick-now-shes

Extraordinary reporting here. Chilling.

Sometimes I get curious about these guys who mock my appearance. Let me click around and see what they look like. And never in my life has this search led me to hair.

@AnandWrites 🤯

Hey @andrewcuomo. Enjoyed getting to ask you some questions. Let’s do a full-length interview for The Ink? DM me.

I asked @andrewcuomo what he failed to understand about the public mood that allowed such a powerful figure to be losing so badly to a political upstart.

I tried to do a public service by teaching @andrewcuomo how to pronounce @ZohranKMamdani’s name. You can’t lead a big, diverse city with Mayflower mouth.

Anand Giridharadas to Andrew Cuomo: "First of all, governor, it's 'Mamdani.' This is a very big, diverse city you want to lead. We should get the names right."

To help President Trump with his important plan to use cities as "training grounds," The Ink has drawn up potential military exercises in New York City. the.ink/p/riffs-trump-called-cities-military

You’re jealous because your hairline is receding faster than GDP in the fall of 2008.

Earthquake?!