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

• The Power of the Source
  The night Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York, I was at a dinner gathering of fair housing and tenants’ rights advocates in New Jersey. The occasion was celebratory—we were marking fifty years since the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled against exclusionary zoning in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, setting in motion […]
• The Scrolling Eye
  In early October Sinn Féin, one of the parties supporting Catherine Connolly’s bid for the presidency of Ireland, posted a clip of her playing ball in the concrete backyard of public housing, and it became clear that she would win. Connolly had made an ill-judged visit to Assad’s Syria in 2018, in the company of […]
• Our Moments
  The situation in which we find ourselves at the beginning of Amit Chaudhuri’s A New World is familiar, from life and in fiction: He had come back in April, the aftermath of the lawsuit and the court proceedings in two countries still fresh, the voices echoing behind him. This is a divorce novel, or rather […]
• Mamdanism Without Guarantees
  In an age when all of planning discourse has been reduced to a choice between YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) and NIMBY (“not in my backyard”), Zohran Mamdani dodged the binary and offered something different. In his affordable housing plan, he criticized the city’s dependence on neighborhood rezonings, which channel growth toward particular locations, while […]
• A Council Divided
  Ever since the late 1980s, when a Supreme Court ruling and resulting revised city charter essentially remade New York City’s government in the hope of resolving its sheer unconstitutionality and pervasive corruption, the overwhelmingly Democratic fifty-one-person City Council has acted as a foil to two Republicans (Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg), two Democrats (Bill de […]
• ‘Imagination for the Other Fellow’
  In his victory speech, Zohran Mamdani vowed to put forward “the most ambitious agenda” New York City had seen since the administration of Fiorello La Guardia, whom he’s unhesitatingly named its greatest mayor. Fans and pundits have frequently wrapped Mamdani in La Guardia’s mythic mantle: La Guardia too was a courageous maverick bent on delivering […]
• Trump’s War
  “It was a brilliant operation, actually.” So claimed Donald Trump early this morning in a phone call with The New York Times about the US military’s overnight invasion and bombing of Venezuela, culminating in the abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who have been brought to New York to face an indictment […]
• Policies of Denial
  On November 14 the Guardian reported, on the basis of internal military documents, that the United States was “planning for the long-term division of Gaza.” Reconstruction of the devastated territory, according to the report, would begin in the Israeli-controlled half of the Strip, east of the “yellow line,” which dozens of Palestinians have been killed […]
• Sanctuary City
  Come January, New York City will be led by an immigrant—and, in a series of firsts, by a Muslim Indian American from Uganda. This kind of representation is meaningful in and of itself for many New Yorkers who hail from elsewhere, “especially when immigrant communities are being grabbed off the streets,” as Ana María Archila […]
• Wielding the Ice Pick
  There is a steeliness to Zohran Mamdani that wasn’t obvious when he first appeared as a candidate for mayor, ablaze with ideas while extending a panoramic embrace to New York’s most invisible communities that inspired a surge of new voters in November. I remember watching a video of him entering a community room bursting with […]
• Until the Next Storm
  Climate policy didn’t feature much in this mayoral election, possibly because much of the exciting legislation necessary to start moving New York toward a carbon-free future has already been passed. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), signed in 2019, which commits the state to net zero emissions by 2050, is one of the […]
• Democratic Excellence
  Zohran Mamdani has introduced several changes to American politics—joining ideological maximalism to policy minimalism, crafting a winning political identity as a Muslim socialist, taking a stand on Palestine, listening to voters. One innovation has not received the attention it deserves: his pledge, on election night, to “leave mediocrity in our past” and make “excellence…the expectation […]
• The Radiance of Tentative Hope
  In less suspenseful years a mayoral election in New York City would be a purely local event, but in precarious 2025 it was a national and even international one as well. The United States is still, in all its potentially catastrophic disarray and decline, the most powerful geopolitical entity on earth. Any little fuse might […]
• Leaving Khartoum
  On the afternoon of Friday, April 14, 2023, as the last days of Ramadan drew to an end, I went to have iftar with my extended family in Omdurman, across the Nile from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. It had been a while since I had last seen them there. Born in the US to Sudanese parents, […]
• At What Cost?
  New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani plans to absorb individual costs into the collective life of the city, but whether that will be enough is an open question.
• Bamfordtown
  Maria Bamford’s wild and constantly inventive stand-up style relies on her never flinching from the most difficult realities.
• The Empire Gives Back
  What does a fair policy of museum repatriation look like? A new book considers the issue in terms of human rights, cultural sovereignty, and stewardship.
• God of the Gaps
  Ross Douthat’s usual contrarian approach, in his recent book Believe, leads to a curiously impotent, watered-down account of religious experience.
• It’s a Gas
  I’m writing this in the last days of the northern hemisphere’s autumn in 2025. Over recent weeks we’ve seen a hurricane hit Jamaica with wind speeds a few hundred feet above sea level topping 250 miles per hour and a rainstorm in central Vietnam that dropped a nearly unprecedented five feet of rain inside of […]
• All the Sad Unliterary Men
  David Szalay’s recent novel Flesh captures with unsparing accuracy the consciousness of an ordinary man in helpless decline.
• Satie’s Spell
  Erik Satie took down the arrogance of late Romantic classical music, gently but ruthlessly taking up its vocabulary and removing all the excess, including authorship.
• A Talent for Living
  In Beryl Bainbridge’s novels, to die is an awfully big adventure—and so is to live.
• High Mountains
  I am very tall. I also am tall. I have these great big treesthat bristle my ridges. Rare cresses softenmy altitudes. And morels burstlike fists from my fragrant earthin locations I disclose onlyto select foragers. I refuse to be foraged.Okapi graze me exclusively,their great spiral hornscatching the late sunas it scatters the riverlight.And when they […]
• Uganda’s Two Tyrants
  Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni both confronted, in different brutal ways, the challenges of governing a postcolonial nation.
• The Most Rancorous Line
  How did the Mason–Dixon Line—meant to resolve a longstanding colonial border dispute—come to represent the US’s foundational divide between slavery and freedom?
• Hype and Fraud in India
  Little known today, Fitz-James O’Brien deserves serious attention for developing some of science fiction’s most familiar tropes—among them microcosmic worlds, invisible monsters, time slips, and robots.
• Albergo Caffaro
  i.m. Saskia Hamilton I opened the windowto clouded sun + a floodof jasmine or was it fakejasmine the scentrushed in the room asudden garden + you werealready dead I did not know ityou did not know itnow I feel nothingthe feelings will comea surprise like the jasmineperfuming a city renownedfor its bankers and tradeits strade […]
• Panoply of the Weird
  Little known today, Fitz-James O’Brien deserves serious attention for developing some of science fiction’s most familiar tropes—among them microcosmic worlds, invisible monsters, time slips, and robots.
• Blood Work
  A rare genetic mutation is best treated the nineteenth-century way, with bloodletting, showing up the strengths and weaknesses of the NHS.
• L’Affaire Carlson
  On November 5 the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, convened an uncomfortable meeting. “I made a mistake, and I let you down,” he told a hall full of the conservative think tank’s staff and fellows in a video leaked to The Washington Free Beacon. A week earlier Roberts had recorded a staunch defense […]
• A Christmas Story
  The Bible is unquestionably the most scrutinized “book” in history. Yet certain obvious facts about it nonetheless escape notice. For example, as Diarmaid MacCulloch points out in the Review’s December 18, 2025, the Bible is not in fact a book, but “books,” as its original Greek name (biblia) attests: sixty-six of them, or seventy-three, or seventy-six, depending […]
• ‘Minimum Victory’
  On December 1, a group of prominent Ukrainian intellectuals and politicians published a manifesto in Ukrainska Pravda about how the war might end. “It is difficult to speak of victory,” it begins, “when the enemy is mounting unprecedented and at times successful ground attacks.” Already in August, when the group started drafting the text, Ukraine’s […]
• ‘They Killed Our People’
  In the spring of 2008, at a small desk piled with papers and notebooks, Lisa Hicks-Gilbert sat spellbound in front of a laptop. After a lifetime of zigzagging around Arkansas, raising two children on her own while cleaning houses and working in restaurant kitchens, she had settled into the first job that left her time […]
• East Side Story
  The Hungarian poet Géza Röhrig, the Shark Tank shark Kevin O’Leary, and Timothée Chalamet walk into a bar. The bar is the restaurant of the London Ritz, and it’s 1952. Gwyneth Paltrow is also there, at another table. O’Leary, playing the part of the ink tycoon Milton Rockwell in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, notices the […]
• A Medicine Ball in Your Stocking
  The final art newsletter of 2025 covers the art and illustrations in the Review’s Holiday Issue and has a more practical purpose than previous newsletters: I’ve been inundated with gift guides for things I can’t afford, so I’ve decided to make my own guide. Herewith, twelve tried-and-true gifts that I’ll be giving or have already […]
• ‘The Ancient and Long-Forgotten Language of Cinematography’
  Films are rarely made in response to film critics, so it is unlikely that Bi Gan’s wildly ambitious new film was inspired Susan Sontag’s 1996 essay “The Decay of Cinema.” In any case, Bi was six years old, living in Kaili, China, when Sontag declared in The New York Times that “cinema’s 100 years seem […]
• The Liberator
  One of the first things I thought of when I heard that Frank Gehry had died was a line from Orson Welles’s 1941 masterpiece, Citizen Kane. A reporter visits the title character’s former business manager, Mr. Bernstein, to interview him following the newspaper mogul’s death, and he comments that the old man had known Kane […]
• The Scramble for the Seafloor
  Since 1779 photosynthesis has been the standard-issue explanation for the continuation of life on earth: plants absorb sunlight, which fuels their metabolism, and create oxygen as waste. This is such basic, grade-school science that it normally wouldn’t bear mentioning, but in July 2024 a team led by Andrew Sweetman at the Scottish Association for Marine […]

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.
• Interview: Tilda Swinton on Her Favorite Books and Favorite Collaborators
  Starring in the 1992 film adaptation helped launch an eclectic career. “Ongoing” is the book that accompanies a retrospective on her work.
• Dav Pilkey, the Man Behind ‘Dog Man,’ Aims to Please
  “I’m writing for the kid I used to be,” says Dav Pilkey, who defied expectations to create three blockbuster graphic-novel series.
• Philip Yancey, Prominent Christian Author, Admits to Extramarital Affair
  He said he would retire from writing and public speaking.
• The Most Beautiful Home Libraries T Magazine Has Covered
  From Connecticut to Cairo, reading spots that will seem like paradise to book- and design-lovers alike.
• New Nonfiction Books to Read This Year
  Memoirs by Sylvester Stallone and the founder of Barstool Sports; essays from celebrated novelists Jesmyn Ward and Jayne Anne Phillips; and more.
• New Novels to Read This Year
  Tayari Jones, Ann Patchett, George Saunders and Veronica Roth return with new novels; Jennette McCurdy makes her fiction debut; and more.
• Venezuelan Opposition Leader Machado Will Publish a New Book
  “The Freedom Manifesto,” by María Corina Machado, will lay out the Nobel laureate’s vision for a “new era,” its publisher said.
• Book Review: ‘The Spy in the Archive,’ by Gordon Corera
  In his enthralling “The Spy in the Archive,” Gordon Corera tells the story of an unlikely hero embedded within the heart of the agency.
• Book Review: ‘Watching Over Her,’ by Jean-Baptiste Andrea
  In the Goncourt winner “Watching Over Her,” Jean-Baptiste Andrea traces the personal and political entanglements of a sculptor whose swagger belies his physical stature.
• Book Review: ‘Advance Britannia,’ by Alan Allport
  In “Advance Britannia,” Alan Allport shows the fighting from the perspective of England and its colonies.
• Book Review: ‘The Architect of New York,’ by Javier Moro
  Javier Moro’s new novel focuses on a 19th-century architect who left an indelible imprint on the city.
• Book Review: ‘This Is Where the Serpent Lives,’ by Daniyal Mueenuddin
  “This Is Where the Serpent Lives,” by Daniyal Mueenuddin, recalls the power of Russian classics.
• The Most Anticipated Book Adaptations of 2026: Movies and TV Shows
  “People We Meet on Vacation,” “Wuthering Heights” and “Project Hail Mary” are some of this year’s most anticipated adaptations.
• Book Review: ‘Why We Drink Too Much,’ by Charles Knowles
  In a useful entry in the growing canon of “quit lit,” Charles Knowles blends science and memoir to persuade readers to cut down on alcohol.
• Richard Pollak, 91, Dies; Edited Magazine That Criticized the Media
  He was a founder of More, which skewered the foibles of the press in the 1970s, and later wrote a critical biography of the psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim.
• Book Review: ‘American Reich,’ by Eric Lichtblau
  In “American Reich,” the former New York Times journalist Eric Lichtblau dissects the culture of hate that led to the death of a gay man in Southern California.
• Book Review: ‘Calamity Before Jane,’ by Noah Van Sciver
  A new graphic novel both celebrates and demystifies the colorful frontier icon, while also correcting some of her taller tales.

The Chronicle of Higher Education©

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