Peter C. Baker
Pacific Standard
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Past articles by Peter:
The Limits of Home Cooking
A richly reported new book offers powerful insights into the cooking habits—and daily struggles—of working-class Americans. → Read More
How Health Insurers, Big Pharma, and Slanted Science Are Ruining Good Mental Health Care
In Saving Talk Therapy, Enrico Gnaulati argues that in-depth, long-term, interpersonal psychotherapy remains one of the best tools for alleviating emotional suffering. → Read More
Emergency Responders on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Ieva Jusionyte explores the spirit of first response in an area where dangers don't care about boundaries. → Read More
From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back
Katya Cengel tracks the lives of four families following the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. → Read More
The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States
A nervous storm cloud of historical might-have-beens—a fitting companion to our age of diffuse paranoia. → Read More
Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side
Sociologist Eve Ewing analyzes the closings from multiple angles. → Read More
What Happens When a Black Man Tries to Embrace White Gun Culture
RJ Young's memoir recounts how he tried to endear himself to his white in-laws by learning how to shoot. Both love affairs eventually fell apart. → Read More
The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else)
Ken Auletta's latest book explores the chaotic world of contemporary advertising. → Read More
A Cure for White Fragility
A new book argues that we can't overcome racism unless white people are willing to be a little uncomfortable. → Read More
Keeping Up With the Bundys: What Really Happened at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge
A new book with an imperfect narrator demonstrates the benefits—and limits—of taking right-wing extremists at their word. → Read More
Nina McCall and the Quarantining and Surveillance of Women During World War I
Behind the nationwide program that empowered health authorities to surveil women, quarantine them in miserable conditions, and force them to undergo painful and ineffective treatments. → Read More
The Bureaucratized Pointlessness of Bullshit Jobs
With help from readers who wrote to him about their workplace experiences, anthropologist David Graeber develops a taxonomy of bullshit jobs. → Read More
A Historian's Take on the Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages
Historian Annelise Orleck traveled to Mexico, Cambodia, and Bangladesh, plus all across America, to interview low-wage workers fighting for better conditions and pay. → Read More
How America Uses Digital Tools to Punish Its Poor
A new book argues that America uses digital tools to sequester and punish its poorest citizens. But can we really blame technology? → Read More
Are Aging Americans Hyper Anxious About Dementia?
In the last decade, researchers have started to raise concerns about what they call "dementia worry." → Read More
Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation
Political writer Liza Featherstone uses focus groups as a lens on the past, present, and future of the American project. → Read More
The Hidden World of Police on Steroids
Professor John Hoberman turns his attention to cops. → Read More
Silicon Valley's Culture of 'Know-It-Alls'
Journalist Noam Cohen's new book argues that Silicon Valley is a social wrecking ball, but is that perspective enough to create change? → Read More
Have Recreational Vehicles Killed the American Dream?
In her new book, journalist Jessica Bruder argues that, in post-2008 America, the nostalgic vision of RVs and other "wheel estate" is incomplete. → Read More
How Heightism Changes Our Understanding of Strength and Competence
In her new book, lawyer Tanya Osensky argues that constantly monitoring height is a symptom and driver of a pervasive "heightism" that unjustly frames tallness as powerful and shortness as weak. → Read More