Top Book News provided by The New York Review of Books©

• Iran Transformed
  On February 28 Israeli warplanes assassinated Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader, by dropping thirty bombs on his compound in Tehran. It was the opening salvo of the US and Israel’s joint war of choice. Within a day missile attacks and aircraft sorties had done grave damage across the country: in southern Iran airstrikes hit a girls […]
• En Pointe 
  “I’m struck by ballet’s ability to create something extraordinarily beautiful out of something so difficult and so taxing on the brain and body.”
• The Lie of ‘Preventive’ War
  In January, during a lengthy New York Times interview with President Donald Trump, one of the paper’s reporters asked him whether he saw “any checks” to his “power on the world stage.” Yes, he answered: “There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s […]
• Tick, Tick…Boom!
  Andrew Ross Sorkin’s history of the 1929 stock market crash reminds us that financial bubbles are inevitable—and that another one may be about to pop.
• ‘Dirty Work’
  The Israeli writer S. Yizhar’s 1949 novella Khirbet Khizeh portrays the violent reality of the Nakba. For decades it was part of the canon of Hebrew literature. That has changed.
• Who Speaks for Us?
  The representatives of our two-party system have made it into a weapon that works against the people.
• Artistic License
  When an angel in a recently restored Roman chapel was seen to resemble Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, it touched off a very Italian scandal.
• The Island That Held Them
  In David Greig’s novel The Book of I, a monk, a Viking, and a ‘mead wife’ navigate a world torn between paganism and Christianity.
• The Beach Where All Babies Are Born
  We mailed ourselves the moonstones home.Ten pounds of them, a private beachThat cuts and cuts and cuts the feet.Where all babies are born, but not any of mine. Who strews the gifts, who distributesThem, who carries them, what mailman.The stones were the way ToveJansson drew them. Empty circles,Somehow heavy. Shingle, beautifulMurmurous word. I think oftenOf […]
• Untitled
  When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 and promised to find inventive ways to make journalism profitable in the digital age, he seemed like a godsend. He wasn’t.
• Rembrandt’s DNA
  The Leiden Collection—one of the largest private collections of Dutch art in the world—was conceived as a “lending library for Old Masters,” animated by the humanist spirit found in Rembrandt’s paintings.
• A Most Particular Life
  The diary of the sixteenth-century physician Felix Platter is without precedent in early modern literature.
• Diversity by Other Means
  Progressives may have lost the battle for racial affirmative action, but ironically, Supreme Court decisions should allow colleges to give advantage to groups defined by their income, geography, or heritage.
• All of Us Yahoos
  A new history of satire wants to limit the genre to its political ramifications, but satirists are often interested in the whole person and their capacity for vice.
• China’s Leader Manqué
  Chiang Kai-shek had enormous flaws as a leader, but something was nonetheless lost to China when he and his Republican government were forced into exile on Taiwan.
• God’s Impertinent Prophets
  A new history brings to light the dissenting women who wrote, preached, and testified during England’s tumultuous seventeenth century, claiming the standing to speak as excluded outsiders who had un unfiltered knowledge of God.
• Clown Show
  In every era a certain kind of unprincipled demagogue driven by an insatiable need for attention and a sense of what will capture the public's imagination rises to the fore. In the early years of France’s Third Republic, it was the ludicrous Marquis de Morès.
• Policy, Not Biology
  To the Editors: This is a response to “The Anti-Trans Playbook,” published by Paisley Currah in The New York Review of Books on December 18, 2025. Currah misleads readers regarding the positions held by the authors. Currah’s opinion piece is wrong on the facts, the law, and the science, and reaches unsupportable conclusions. Currah imagines […]
• Fool’s Errands
  It took Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu many years of persistent effort before he succeeded in finding a US president willing to help him realize his ambition to neutralize Iran, and maybe even end the Islamic Republic. Barack Obama pursued the diplomatic path, signing a nuclear deal in 2015. This was not to the liking […]
• From the Archive: “The Mystery of JonBenét Ramsey”
  In the June 24, 1999, issue of The New York Review of Books, Joyce Carol Oates wrote about the murder of JonBenét Ramsey and dissected America’s fascination with “the category of nonfiction known as ‘true crime.’” Click the “Subscribe” link in the player above to follow this podcast on your favorite listening platform. In this episode of Private […]
• ‘The Devil Himself’
  At first I am afraid to enter the library. I have arrived at the US Department of Justice website because my attention got snagged by a random post on Bluesky, or possibly X, and I want to see whether it is real. The post showed an email thread between Jeffrey Epstein and a correspondent whose […]
• For the Fossil Record
  “I took the opportunity to observe the surviving lemurs in their natural habitats—and it was love at first sight.”
• Building the Electrostate
  In the United States today, officials at all levels of government generally act as if private enterprise is the only way to provide goods and services. Yet a bastion of public ownership survives: more than a quarter of electricity customers—including the residents of Los Angeles, Omaha, San Antonio, Seattle, Jacksonville, and Tupelo, along with tens […]
• Joyce Carol Oates on True Crime, Her Improbable Life, and Joan Didion
  Episode 3 of Private Life
• The Stony Dark Within
  This is the 150th anniversary of Rilke’s birth. Or, you might say, the 99th anniversary of his death. I asked a small group of students if they knew of Rilke, the poet, if they had read Rilke. They did not. Had not. They were seventeen, eighteen years old. One immediately addressed his phone. Assessed that […]
• Trading with the Enemy
  Friday’s Supreme Court decision rebuffing President Trump’s signature foreign policy initiative—worldwide tariffs imposed pursuant to an asserted national emergency—was extraordinary in multiple respects. In its nearly 250-year history, the Court has rarely ruled against presidential assertions of emergency power. It authorized, for example, the imprisonment of war critics during World War I, and the internment […]
• Timekeepers
  Brazil’s military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985, retaliated fiercely against whoever contested its monopoly over the country’s public image. Opponents of the regime were kidnapped, tortured, and in some cases disappeared. Artworks deemed subversive or morally corrupt were banned and censored, if not destroyed. At the 1967 São Paulo Biennial cops stormed the […]
• Home Free
  “Every writer, sooner or later, must face the fact that our characters are taken directly from our own lives, so there will be friends, relatives, and acquaintances who are going to feel like they’ve been pushed under the bus.”
• The Men Who Sold the World
  Social disaster is becoming increasingly affordable. On February 12 the Trump administration rescinded the Endangerment Finding, a 2009 EPA determination that “the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases…in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” For more than sixteen years the finding had required […]
• Gaslight
  The case of Gisèle Pelicot, who for more than a decade was violated by her husband and dozens of other men, should mark the end of the regime that puts on women the responsibility for avoiding assault.
• Evil in the West Bank
  As long as the daily horrors in the occupied territories continue and the extreme right remains in power, democracy in Israel will be sick at the core.
• Poisonous Objects
  Two exhibitions in Los Angeles respond to the racist monuments to Confederate soldiers that have been erected all over the United States.
• If These Walls Could Talk
  In A House for Miss Pauline, the Jamaican novelist Diana McCaulay examines her family’s shadowy history by telling the story of a woman who builds her house with the remains of the manor of a former slave plantation.
• ‘We Think They’ll Kill Someone’
  Indigenous communities in Mexico who oppose the construction of megaprojects on their lands do so at great risk.
• Paths of Resistance
  Those who challenged the Nazi regime knew they were almost certainly doomed to failure. What roused them from complacency to defiance?
• Alexei Ratmansky’s Leap of Faith
  Having wrested himself from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, the great choreographer has sought to remake himself and his work in Denmark.
• Road Trippers
  In a thirty-three day ramble along the Hudson and Connecticut rivers in 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison encountered many of the issues that would end up plaguing the United States.
• ‘An Entirely New Domain of Knowledge’
  The Torah scholars who came to be called “rabbis” emerged as figures of authority after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE and the later exile of Jews from Judaea—and created Judaism’s founding literature.
• As Kennedy Went
  Justice Anthony Kennedy often confounded Supreme Court observers with his seemingly unpredictable opinions, but during the years when a majority could be achieved only through some measure of compromise, he wielded enormous power over the Constitution’s contemporary meaning.
• The Wandering Physicist
  Luis Alvarez brought a scientific pragmatism to many of the twentieth century’s greatest mysteries, including the secrets of pyramids, the Kennedy assassination, and the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
• The Poet’s Double
  In the early years of the Soviet Union, Konstantin Vaginov wrote fiction and poetry characterized by a sense of doubleness, ambiguity, and perverse humor.
• A Real Live Socialist
  What Bernie Sanders brought to the job of mayor of Burlington and what he did with it help explain what matters to him and how he fits into American political argument.
• Deeper Than They Thought
  Although Margaret Kennedy has been largely forgotten as a popular writer, in her novels she wielded the most cunning techniques of literary modernism.
• Sappho 27
  σὺ τοῦτ᾿ ἀλλ᾿ ὄττι τάχιστα It makes me ill to think about it too,how the people I love the mostsometimes treat me the worst. Don’t let that be you. Let’s go to their wedding, and drink their aperitifs,and nibble a few petits fours. I’ll offer a toast,then we’ll leave by the service door. Let them […]
• Jason Statham Asks Nothing of Me
  And for this I’m grateful. The scene:I’m in my convalescent’s nest—a corner of the sofa.Floral pajamas, oily roots. The pain refersinto my shoulders, as they foretold. A flashof the anesthetist: This will feel cold. Your face will prickle. A male voice: She’s out. Let’s do this. Now, in the weeks betweenvisits to the theater, I […]
• From the Archive: “Working Girls: The Brontës”
  Click the “Subscribe” link in the player above to follow this podcast on your favorite listening platform. In the May 4, 1972, issue of The New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Hardwick wrote about the lives and work of the Brontë sisters on the occasion of Winifred Gérin’s then-new biography of Emily (preceded by Gérin’s biographies […]
• Cold Plunge
  A dispatch from the Art Editor
• A Bitter Winter in Ukraine
  Four years after their full-scale invasion, the Russians are trying to freeze Ukraine into submission by relentlessly attacking the country’s energy grid.
• Contempt of Court
  Since the Trump administration began its strategy of indefinitely detaining people it has targeted for deportation, federal judges across the country and ideological spectrum have been rejecting their efforts, ordering that detainees be released or given bond hearings in more than 1,600 cases. Yet Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have repeatedly defied or ignored the […]
• Authoritarianism from Below
  As National Guard troops and federal officers swarmed Washington, D.C., in August, sent by President Donald Trump to confront what he declared a “crime emergency,” members of the city council expressed their outrage. Janeese Lewis George, who represents a northern ward with many immigrant residents that was immediately crawling with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) […]
• Medicaid Undone
  One year ago President Donald Trump promised to “love and cherish” Medicaid. Alas, his affection for the public insurance program was short-lived. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) he signed into law on July 4—the most sweeping health care legislation since Barack Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA)—slashes about $1 trillion in federal […]
• Pieces of Gaza
  Until 2024, the objects on display in “Trésors sauvés de Gaza” (“Treasures Saved from Gaza”), an exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris that closed last December, had been sitting in crates in Geneva for seventeen years awaiting their return to the Gaza Strip, where they were destined for a museum not yet […]
• Darryl Pinckney on Memoir, Friendship, and Elizabeth Hardwick
  In the first episode of our podcast Private Life, Darryl Pinckney talks with host Jarrett Earnest about his close friend and former teacher Elizabeth Hardwick.
• ‘Fill It with Reality’
  In 1962 Françoise Ega, a Martinican woman working odd jobs and raising five children in Marseille, stumbled upon a newspaper article about Carolina Maria de Jesus, a Black Brazilian woman who, “hunched over” in a favela and using “pieces of paper that [she] found in the trash,” wrote a highly acclaimed memoir, Quarto de despejo, […]

New York Times Books©

• Martin Amis: An Appreciation
  Our critic assesses the achievement of Martin Amis, Britain’s most famous literary son.
• Book Review: ‘NB by J.C.,’ by James Campbell
  “NB by J.C.” collects the variegated musings of James Campbell in the Times Literary Supplement.
• In ‘Fires in the Dark,’ Kay Redfield Jamison Turns to Healers
  In “Fires in the Dark,” Jamison, known for her expertise on manic depression, delves into the quest to heal. Her new book, she says, is a “love song to psychotherapy.”
• The Detective Novel ‘Whose Body?,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers, Turns 100
  Dorothy L. Sayers dealt with emotional and financial instability by writing “Whose Body?,” the first of many to star the detective Lord Peter Wimsey.
• Book Review: ‘Dom Casmurro,’ by Machado de Assis
  “Dom Casmurro,” by Machado de Assis, teaches us to read — and reread — with precise detail and masterly obfuscation.
• Book Review: ‘The Late Americans,’ by Brandon Taylor
  Brandon Taylor’s novel circulates among Iowa City residents, some privileged, some not, but all aware that their possibilities are contracting.
• Martin Amis’s Best Books: A Guide
  The acclaimed British novelist was also an essayist, memoirist and critic of the first rank.
• The Best Romance Novels of 2024 (So Far)
  Looking for an escapist love story? Here are 2024’s sexiest, swooniest reads.
• What Book Should You Read Next?
  Finding a book you’ll love can be daunting. Let us help.
• Book Review: ‘Down Time,’ by Andrew Martin
  In Andrew Martin’s keenly observed new novel, a group of friends navigate a society reshaped by the pandemic.
• Book Review: ‘Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! A Memoir,’ by Liza Minnelli
  “Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!” is a familiar reminder that growing up in showbiz can lead to awards and adulation, but also to heartache.
• Book Review: ‘The Complex,’ by Karan Mahajan
  Karan Mahajan’s new novel, “The Complex,” tracks the fortunes of a political family in a rapidly changing India.
• Book Review: ‘Nonesuch,’ by Francis Spufford
  “Nonesuch,” the new novel by Francis Spufford, conjures a plot laced with magic to change the course of history.
• Greg Greeley, Former Amazon Executive, to Lead Simon & Schuster
  Greg Greeley, who once ran Amazon’s books and media business, will succeed Jonathan Karp as chief executive at one of the largest book publishers in the U.S.
• Book Review: ‘Gunk,’ by Saba Sams
  “Gunk,” a novel by Saba Sams, follows a woman through the trials and tenuous jobs of young adulthood.
• Book Review: ‘Whidbey,’ by T Kira Madden
  In “Whidbey,” three women reckon with the aftermath of sexual assault.
• He Wrote Judy Blume’s Life Story. She Won’t Talk About It.
  Mark Oppenheimer had many conversations with his subject for his new book. Then the relationship took a turn.
• Tatjana Wood, Award-Winning Comic Book Colorist, Dies at 99
  She was part of the acclaimed creative teams on comic book series for DC Comics, including Swamp Thing, which she called “Shvampy” in her German accent.
• Book Review: ‘Stories,’ by Helen Garner
  A newly released collection of the Australian master’s short fiction shows her sympathy, her virtuosity and her ear.
• Jeremy Larner, 88, Dies; Wrote ‘The Candidate,’ a Political Film Classic
  His Oscar-winning 1972 screenplay starred Robert Redford as an idealistic public interest lawyer making a run for the Senate.
• From 2014: Maya Angelou, Lyrical Witness of the Jim Crow South, Dies at 86
  Her landmark book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was among the first 20th-century autobiographies of a Black woman to reach a wide readership.
• The Avett Brothers’ Bassist on Writing a John Quincy Adams Book
  Bob Crawford discusses the leap from stage to page and why his new book, “America’s Founding Son,” feels so relevant.
• From 2019: Toni Morrison, Towering Novelist of the Black Experience, Dies at 88
  Ms. Morrison, who wrote “Beloved” and “Song of Solomon,” was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel in literature.
• From 2010: Lucille Clifton, Poet Who Explored Black Lives, Dies at 73
  A distinguished American poet, she examined the experience of being Black and female in the 20th century.
• From 1967: Dorothy Parker, Literary Wit, Dies at Age 73
  She enjoyed a lifelong reputation as a glittering, annihilating humorist. For her epitaph, she suggested, “Excuse My Dust.”
• From 1992: Audre Lorde, 58, a Poet, Memoirist and Lecturer, Dies
  Her large body of work, which included poetry, essays and autobiography, reflected her hatred of racial and sexual prejudice.
• From 1960: Zora Hurston, 57, Writer, Is Dead
  Although her books, written in the dialect of the Deep South, established her as one of the foremost writers of Black folklore, she died in obscurity.
• From 2006: Oriana Fallaci, Incisive Italian Journalist, Is Dead at 77
  An iconoclastic journalist, she was known for her war coverage and her aggressive, revealing interviews with the powerful.
• From 1957: Gabriela Mistral, Poet, Is Dead; Won Nobel Prize for Literature
  She was recognized in 1945 for three “Soñetos de la Muerte” (“Sonnets of Death”), which were first published in Chile in 1922.
• From 1968: Helen Keller, 87, Dies; She Became Symbol of Courage
  She overcame blindness and deafness, but insisted that there was nothing miraculous about her achievements.
• From 1975: Hannah Arendt, Political Scientist, Is Dead at 69
  She caused controversy with books like “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” published in 1963, which grew out of her coverage of Adolf Eichmann’s trial for The New Yorker.
• Tom Junod Would Like to Tell You About His Father
  A star writer from the heyday of magazines reveals the family secret behind his award-winning stories.
• New Nonfiction to Read This Spring
  Memoirs from Liza Minnelli and Arsenio Hall; essays from David Sedaris and Jesmyn Ward; plus histories, true crime, biographies and more.
• New Novels to Read This Spring
  New novels from Tana French, Emma Straub, Ben Lerner, Solvej Balle, Shannon Chakraborty, Tom Perrotta, Elizabeth Strout — and plenty more.
• New Chinese Picture Books
  In “Little Monk Writes Rain,” “Yulu’s Linen” and “Lost in Peach Blossom Paradise,” spirited children meet Eastern visual traditions that have a life of their own.
• Wallace Shawn’s ‘What We Did Before Our Moth Days’ Is Purgatory Done Right
  The playwright and his collaborator André Gregory are together again, delivering a sumptuous set of interlinked monologues about life, death and betrayal.
• António Lobo Antunes, One of Europe’s Most Revered Writers, Dies at 83
  In a career studded with literary awards, he was the author of dozens of books that grappled with his nation’s legacy of dictatorship and colonialism.
• Books Our Editors Loved This Week
  Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
• We Want Your Questions for the ‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Andy Weir
  The Book Review podcast is talking with Andy Weir about his book “Project Hail Mary” and its much-anticipated movie adaptation.
• Book Review: ‘Chosen Land,’ by Matthew Avery Sutton
  In “Chosen Land,” Matthew Avery Sutton argues that, despite the intentions of certain founders, the First Amendment guaranteed that the United States would be a godly country.
• Book Review: ‘Days of Love and Rage,’ by Anand Gopal
  In “Days of Love and Rage,” Anand Gopal creates an indelible portrait of revolution and civil war in Syria.
• Nerve-Shredding New Thriller Books
  Our columnist on the month’s best new books.
• Sam Heughan on the ‘Outlander’ Finale and His Favorite Books
  Waiting for readers of Diana Gabaldon’s series to see the episode is “exciting and nerve-racking,” says its star, who wrote five books during its 12-year run.
• Sarah J. Mass Announces Two New ‘ACOTAR’ Books on ‘Call Her Daddy’ Podcast
  The sixth book is scheduled to be released on Oct. 27, 2026, and the seventh on Jan. 12, 2027, the author announced on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
• Book Review: ‘Lake Effect,’ by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
  Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s new novel, “Lake Effect,” is the latest in a specific contemporary subgenre: “Four Adult Siblings Reconvene to Rehash Their Privileged but Fraught Adolescence.”
• Book Review: ‘Reproductive Wrongs,’ by Sarah Ruden
  In “Reproductive Wrongs,” the classicist Sarah Ruden traces efforts to exert political control over family planning back 2,000 years.
• Book Review: ‘Plastic Inc.,’ by Beth Gardiner
  A new book by the journalist Beth Gardiner argues that oil companies are upping production of the material as a safeguard against falling revenue.
• Book Review: ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye,’ by Ivana Sajko
  Ivana Sajko’s novel “Every Time We Say Goodbye” explores personal and political crises in lengthy, lyrical sentences.
• Why Bethany Collins Transcribed ‘Moby-Dick’ by Hand
  For Bethany Collins, Herman Melville’s novel is rife with centuries-old political anxieties that still resonate today.
• Hamnet, Hamlet and Oscar Wao: Three Lost Boys Across Time
  In the stage versions of two beloved books, the most impressive moments emerge when the productions stray from the source material.

The Chronicle of Higher Education©

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