Writing — Robert P. Baird

features

The Philosopher Inside DeepMind. Iason Gabriel, Google DeepMind, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. The Guardian Long Read, June 30, 2026.
The Crisis Whisperer. A profile of Adam Tooze. The Guardian Long Read, January 15, 2026.
Emerald Sea. The making and unmaking of a half-billion-dollar treasure hunt. Harper’s Magazine, April 2016.

More Features…

The Hotshots of Helltown. GQ, May 2019.
Putin, Trump, Ukraine. How Timothy Snyder Became the Leading Interpreter of Our Dark Times. The Guardian Long Read, March 30, 2023.
Total Life. A Profile of Kevin Young. Esquire, Dec./Jan. 2017/18.
On the Media Ambitions of Laurene Powell Jobs and the Emerson Collective. CJR, January 21, 2021.
‘The Left Edge of the Possible’. On The American Prospect. CJR, November 7, 2022.
The ABCs of Jacobin. The unlikely success of a socialist print magazine. CJR, January 2, 2019.
The Hidden Torture Cells of Bolivia. Narrative, Spring 2011.

The Invention of Whiteness: The Long History of a Dangerous Idea. Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. The Guardian Long Read, April 20, 2021.
Remembering Bill Knott. “Was he serious? You always wondered with Knott, but the mask never slipped.” The New Yorker, March 17, 2014.

More Essays…

Interdisciplinary Magic. Literary Hub, June 15, 2025.
Spend It All. Best American Poetry, January 13, 2012.
Michael Friedman’s Unwritten Columns. The Paris Review, September 13, 2017.
In Memoriam. Jenny Diski. The Paris Review, April 29, 2016.
Kirill Medvedev’s Personable Provocations. The New Yorker, September 30, 2013.
Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale remember New York’s country-music boomlet. The New Yorker, March 1, 2013.
Dante, Near and Far. Best American Poetry, January 9, 2012.
On negative reviewing. Mayday, April 1, 2009.
A Lume Spento. Digital Emunction, November 18, 2009.
The Mines at Potosí, Bolivia. Narrative, March 16, 2009.
Why Doesn’t Anyone Read Dante’s ‘Paradiso’? Slate, December 24, 2007.

God of the Gaps. On ‘Believe’, by Ross Douthat New York Review of Books, December 25, 2025.
Showers of Hats. On ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’, by George Saunders London Review of Books, March 30, 2017.

More Reviews…

On Stephen Harrigan’s Sorrowful Mysteries. The New York Times, April 17, 2025.
On William Logan’s Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods. The New York Times, August 31, 2018.
On David Means’s Hystopia. London Review of Books, August 11, 2016.
On Denise Levertov. London Review of Books, September 25, 2014.
On Robert Duncan. London Review of Books, October 24, 2013.
On Barry Hannah’s Long, Last, Happy. NY Observer, December 8, 2010.
On Deb Olin Unferth’s Revolution. NY Observer, February 9, 2011.
On Geoffrey O’Brien’s Early Autumn. Bookforum, November 5, 2010.
On Keith Waldrop’s Transcendental Studies. Bookforum, December 18, 2009.
On Elizabeth Benedict’s Mentors, Muses, and Monsters. Bookforum, November 9, 2009.
On Joseph Donahue’s Terra Lucida. Bookforum, Feb/Mar 2009.

Inside the Democrats’ Battle to Build Back Better. How House progressives tried to save Joe Biden’s landmark legislation. The New Yorker.
The Prosecution of President Donald Trump. How the House Democrats, in the face of certain defeat, decided to impeach the president anyway. The New Yorker.

More Politics Reporting…

What Went Wrong with Coronavirus Testing in the U.S.. An early report on COVID testing shortfalls. The New Yorker, March 16, 2020.

More COVID-19 Reporting…

Nancy’s Bookshelf. I spoke to Nancy Wiegman about ‘The Nimbus’ North State Public Radio, June 18, 2025.
White Mischief. I spoke to Ekow Eshun for his three-part audio documentary on whiteness. BBC Radio 4, October 4, 2021.

More Audio…

The Invention of Whiteness — Updated Podcast Edition. The Guardian Long Read, September 18, 2024.
The Idea of Whiteness. This is Hell!, May 3, 2021.
Is TestUtah Getting the Right Results? RadioWest, June 26, 2020.
A City at the Peak of Crisis. The New Yorker Radio Hour, April 24, 2020.
Where Are All the Tests? Slate What Next: TBD, March 27, 2020.

The Labyrinth. Torn turned and tattered Bowed burned and battered Poetry, July/August 2010.

More Poems…

The Spiritual Guide, by Miguel de Molinos. An unabridged English translation of a classic text of seventeenth-century Quietism. Part of the Classics of Western Spirituality series. Paulist Press, 2010.

More Translations…

Ten Questions. I answered P&W’s Ten Questions about the composition of ‘The Nimbus’. Poets & Writers, June 10, 2025.

Etc. Etc.…