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The November issue of The Monthly is full of writing that considers the kinds of communities – cultural, technological, political and social – that we build around ourselves, and the successes and failures in how they operate and serve us. The cover essay comes from Anna Krien, who is considering the odd case of the digital frontier: once loaded with promise and hope for a more connected future; now the home of dislocation and isolation. Krien takes in a generation’s worth of predictions and analysis, asking what we’ve lost in our willingness to subjugate our entire lives to the devices in our hands.

Failures of government, such as those revealed in the robodebt royal commission, tell us much about not just the motivations and blindnesses of our political leaders but also the systems and expectations of public service that underpin their approach to the business of governing. When it comes to setting the tone and protecting our institutions, perhaps no role in the public service is more responsible than the head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. For his essay, Jason Koutsoukis asks around about the person currently in the role: the intellectual, thoughtful Glyn Davis.

Don Watson’s reputation as one of Australia’s foremost and most consequential speechwriters means that when he suggests a speech for Kamala Harris on the eve of a US election, it’ll be worth reading. And this is a speech with a difference. Watson’s not in the prognostication business: this is neither concession nor victory speech. There are, he suggests, words that need to be spoken by an American leader regardless of the election outcome. It’s part mea culpa, part promise for what may yet come. Fresh from his Quarterly Essay tracking the race between Harris and Trump, Watson is at his acute best.

Sebastian Smee declares himself a longstanding fan of the late Canadian writer Alice Munro, one of the undisputed geniuses of the short story form. Following revelations after her death that fundamentally changed how the public understood Munro, Smee reconsiders her work – not despite the uncomfortable facts revealed about her personal failings, but in light of them. It’s an extraordinary and thoughtful work of literary analysis.

Plus Marieke Hardy and Andrea Goldsmith, Virginia Trioli and Kate Fitz-Gibbon, personal essays and criticism, native rodents and musical appreciation. The November Monthly has it all.