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

• ‘Tell Me Your Worst’ 
  The Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck told her models to stay silent and look away from her while she worked. She would not tolerate conversation or a returned gaze. As a result her paintings show the many ways art can present a person indirectly: in profile, eyes closed, staring off in the distance or looking askance, […]
• Indecorous Decorations
  Around the year 1400 a young woman in Central Europe was given a saddle made of bone, likely for her wedding day. As she rode from her parents’ home to that of her new husband, she sat upon carved scenes of lovers embracing and men banging drums or clutching their belts. In France, at about […]
• Syphoning Morale
  Soon after the outbreak of war in Iran, as America was blitzing the country from a distance with a fusillade of bombs and missiles, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth exulted that we were “punching them while they’re down.” In those early days a US submarine sunk an Iranian naval vessel thousands of miles from the […]
• From the Rooftops of Tehran
  We in Iran own our grief, mourning all by ourselves.
• Mark Polizzotti on André Breton, Translation, and Surrealism
  In this episode of Private Life, Jarrett Earnest is joined by Mark Polizzotti to discuss André Breton’s surrealist novel, Nadja, originally published in 1928 and translated into English by Polizzotti for NYRB Classics in 2025. Click the “Subscribe” link in the player above to follow this podcast on your favorite listening platform. Polizzotti gives insight into the […]
• The Neocons’ Revenge?
  Since Donald Trump’s improbable first win in 2016, pundits have passed countless hours trying to understand how his rise, and the populist movement that powered it, have changed American conservatism. If Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party was, famously, a three-legged stool consisting of social traditionalists, free-market champions, and foreign interventionists, Trump’s MAGA coalition has swelled its […]
• Bottling the World Economy
  Amid the destruction of the US–Israeli war against Iran, much of the world’s attention has fixed on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes. In normal times ships traversing the Strait—which runs between Oman and the United Arab Emirates on one […]
• The Gaza Doctrine
  On Friday, March 13, nearly two weeks into the Lebanese front of “Operation Roaring Lion,” Israeli forces bombed Burj Qalaouiyah, a village in the country’s south. The strike destroyed a health care center, killing twelve doctors, paramedics, nurses, and patients; The New York Times reported that “only one severely injured worker survived.” Among the victims, […]
• Spirit in the Sky
  What do Italian astronomers, cloistered nuns, levitating saints, and the “sexy dreams” of desert church fathers have in common? In the pages of the Review, they’re all the domain of the critic and scholar Erin Maglaque. Maglaque is a student of archival texts, often written by women, that challenge conventional secular and religious interpretations of […]
• Elegy for Rafah
  Since the beginning of the year, my phone has been a window through which I watch the Rafah crossing from my bedroom in Paris three thousand kilometers away. Every piece of news about it awakes something in me that neither the cold of this city nor the long distance can quiet. After nine months in […]
• Rigging the Vote: Trump’s Threats to Elections
  Sue Halpern hosts the attorney and voting rights expert Marc Elias for a wide-ranging conversation on threats to American voting rights, including gerrymandering, ballot seizures, and the SAVE Act. This conversation originally aired on March 12, 2026.
• In Defense of Algebra
  The mathematician Paul Lockhart believes to his core that math is the purest of the arts, and anyone can learn to love it.
• Dantès’s Inferno
  When I first read The Count of Monte Cristo, it offered something irresistible: the possibility of reinvention. If, against all odds, Edmond Dantès could remake himself, so could I.
• The Possibility of Humor
  In his novel A Fool’s Kabbalah, Steve Stern writes in a manic whirl of disturbing and hilarious images as he follows the great historian of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem on his journey to gather up the remains of a vanished civilization.
• Possessing the Painful Parts
  Tyriek White’s We Are a Haunting traces the lives of Black Brooklynites dealing with the porous boundaries between the past and the present as they forge lives amid the detritus that others have discarded.
• Who Built France?
  A new history explores France’s empire from the perspective of the indigenous and enslaved people who participated, willingly or not, in its creation.
• ‘Not Insane!’
  The Firesign Theatre, a comedy group formed in the 1960s, created surreal albums that mixed satire and science fiction, and inspired a generation of misfits.
• Ondine
  To speak freely, I could never land on anything worth talking about    but from the moment they shut me up, I’ve been full of things to say.It’s not that the mind is tricking itself but that the mind itself is a trick    played on silence by the body. You might imagine a cool black pond completely devoid […]
• The Tennissance
  Two young tennis stars have revived the sport by embodying the sort of athletic-aesthetic duality that made Nadal and Federer so fascinating.
• The Marbles & the Muses
  A.E. Stallings’s reflections on the Elgin Marbles illustrate how beautiful objects have the power to inspire both the noblest effusions and the pettiest efforts at acquisition.
• Mother Daughter Sister Wife
  A new anthology of female Hungarian poets engages with the nation’s often tragic history through various forms of reticence, misdirection, and playfulness.
• A Man-Made Disaster
  There has never been a moral and historical reckoning with the horrors inflicted by the Allied firebombing of Japan during World War II.
• Rivals of the Landscape
  The more we learn about J.M. W. Turner and John Constable, the more extraordinary it seems that two such breathtakingly original painters could emerge and flourish at the same time in the British art world.
• Deciphering Dame Muriel
  In Electric Spark, Frances Wilson attempts to crack the ingenious codes that were of prime importance in Muriel Spark’s life and writing.
• Crowds and Lovers
  In his novel G., John Berger shifts between the revolutionary possibilities of mass demonstrations and of erotic encounters, ultimately writing a historical novel about the present.
• Shenzhen Express
  In Shenzhen, the successes and failures of China’s remarkable new economy are on full display.
• Interminable Ignorance
  Why has the will to ignorance become so virulent in our time?
• Richard Hell Reads from
  Episode 6 of Private Life
• Lebanon’s Negations
  Since Monday, March 2, Israel’s armed forces have launched daily airstrikes on Lebanon. Begun after Hezbollah fired a small volley of rockets into Israel in response to the killing of Ali Khamenei (causing no casualties), the Israeli strikes have so far killed more than nine hundred people and displaced more than a million out of […]
• Charade Night
  A dispatch from the Art Editor
• ‘Like a Gossamer Sheet’
  “The first time I experienced life on the West Bank, staying over in Palestinian homes, a whole new horizon opened up for me. I entered into that life, its personal friendships, its language, its ravishing landscapes, and its evident suffering. All of it felt meaningful and real.”
• Of Fire and Rain
  Rain I One balmy winter day in 1991, during the first Gulf War, I was sitting by the window in my classroom watching the clear blue sky above Ahvaz, the city in Iran’s southwest where I grew up. The teacher was working through a physics problem on the blackboard when, on the horizon, I noticed […]
• Longing for My Tehran
  Since the outbreak of the current war between Israel and Iran—much like during the previous one last summer—I have been sought after for interviews by foreign media. An Iranian-born pro-Palestinian Israeli political activist is, it seems, a highly desirable commodity. Some want me to explain the Israeli position, others the Iranian one, still others to […]
• Since
  Brianna knew her husband would claim the pregnancy was an act of God. Their marriage was falling apart. She was fed up with his infidelity and with managing their kids and home on her own. The couple had recently separated when she realized her period was late. Deciding to get the abortion was easy. Beyond […]
• Signifying Absolutely Nothing
  Trump’s war of choice in Iran is a performance of horrific military strength that betrays a stark political weakness.
• A Bitter Education
  In its quiescence to the West’s war on Iran, India is squandering a precious legacy.
• Richard Hell on
  In this episode of Private Life, Richard Hell joins Jarrett Earnest to discuss his novel Godlike (newly reissued by NYRB Classics), his creative process, the love of poetry, and the stories behind his work.   Click the “Subscribe” link in the player above to follow this podcast on your favorite listening platform. Richard Hell is a writer and […]
• The Docteur Is In
  In January 1960 Brussels hosted a “Round Table” conference of Congolese and European leaders to negotiate the future of the Belgian Congo. Anticolonial resistance had surged across Africa over the previous decade; in the Congo the antagonism had reached its peak in 1959 after colonial authorities killed dozens—possibly hundreds—of protesters in the infamous Léopoldville riots. […]
• The New War on Speech
  Partway through his second inaugural address on January 20, Donald Trump started listing the executive orders he planned to sign that day. Among others, he said he would “declare a national emergency at our southern border,” designate “cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” put an end to the Green New Deal, start a full “overhaul of […]
• 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 […]
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• ‘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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.”

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.
• Symphony Space to Undergo a $45 Million Makeover
  The Upper West Side performing arts venue will take its programming across the city while its doors close for a 15-month overhaul.
• Book Review: ‘The Confessions of Samuel Pepys,’ by Guy de la Bédoyère
  Samuel Pepys’s journals are an invaluable record of British history. A new book reconsiders his infamous sexual exploits.
• In a New Memoir, Arsenio Hall Recalls His High-Flying Years as a Talk-Show Host
  Eddie Murphy, Snoop Dogg and Bill Clinton (naturally) show up in his gossipy new memoir. He isn’t very sentimental.
• 29 New Books to Read in April: Emma Straub, Patrick Radden Keefe, TJ Klune and More
  Novels by Emma Straub, Ben Lerner and TJ Klune; nonfiction by Patrick Radden Keefe and Lena Dunham; a road trip history of the United States; and more.
• Doctors Believed Woody Brown Would Never Understand Language. He’s Publishing a Novel.
  Doctors believed that Woody Brown would never be able to speak or process language. He went to graduate school and is publishing his debut novel.
• ‘The Wild Party’ Is a Vivacious Play That Started as a Scandalous Poem
  One hundred years after it was banned for its depiction of hedonism, the rhythmic, jazz-soaked poetry of Joseph Moncure March continues to find new life.
• Book Review: ‘Transcription,’ by Ben Lerner
  In “Transcription,” Ben Lerner considers a famous father, a loyal protégé and a distant son, bound by devotion and separated by miscommunication.
• Book Review: ‘The Keeper,’ by Tana French
  “The Keeper,” the final book in her Cal Hooper trilogy, returns readers to an insular village in rural western Ireland.
• Thrilling Crime Books for Fans of Tana French
  If you’ve blazed through all of the beloved crime novelist’s works, here are more thrillers that may be up your dark alley.
• Have We Been Mispronouncing Thoreau’s Name for Centuries?
  George Clooney, Meryl Streep and other voice actors had to be persuaded, but a new PBS documentary (mostly) leads by example in stressing the first syllable.
• Overlooked No More: Gertrude Chandler Warner, Author of ‘The Boxcar Children’
  Her best-selling series, about four children who live in a train car and solve mysteries, inspired sequels, spinoffs and animated films.
• Coleman Barks, Who Popularized the Islamic Poet Rumi in the West, Dies at 88
  Although he did not speak a word of Persian, his interpretations of the 13th-century mystic’s work made Rumi a New Age icon for millions.
• Want More ‘Love Story’? Read These Books Inspired by the Kennedys and ’90s New York.
  If the TV show has you craving 1990s glam, upper-crust romance and doomed dynasties, these books have got you covered.
• Book Club: Read ‘The Renovation,’ by Kenan Orhan, With the Book Review
  In April, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss Kenan Orhan’s novel about a woman whose bathroom is transformed into a Turkish prison cell.
• Dazzling, Immersive New Historical Fiction
  Our columnist on the month’s best books.
• Book Review: ‘A Potion, a Powder, a Little Bit of Magic: Or, Like Lightning in an Umbrella Storm,’ by Philip Stead
  Philip Stead’s “A Potion, a Powder, a Little Bit of Magic” gleefully ignores all the storytelling rules.
• How a Determined Scholar Captured the Breadth of Blackface
  Scouring estate sales, eBay and family basements, Rhae Lynn Barnes amassed a disturbing collection to write “Darkology,” her groundbreaking new book.
• Han Kang Among National Book Critics Circle Award Winners
  This year’s winners include the latest novel by the South Korean Nobel laureate in literature and a memoir by one of India’s best known novelists.
• Books Our Editors Loved This Week
  Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
• Carole Radziwill on FX’s ‘Love Story’ and Returning to ‘Real Housewives’
  Her deceased loved ones are characters on a hit TV show, her name is in the Epstein files and she’s returning to “Real Housewives.” What does she make of it all?
• Book Review: ‘The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution,’ by Mark Peterson
  In a new book, the historian Mark Peterson argues that our founding document is rooted in ideals of expansion and conquest ill suited to the nation we’ve become.
• 8 Thriller Books About Housewives Getting Revenge
  The author Elizabeth Arnott recommends thrilling tales of domestic vengeance and feminine power.
• A Free Home for San Francisco Artists, From Dave Eggers and Friends
  The writer, and the artist JD Beltran, have come up with Art + Water, to host exhibitions, give 30 artists studio space, and offer community events.
• Tracy Kidder, Author of ‘The Soul of a New Machine,’ Dies at 80
  A Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative journalist, he wrote deeply reported books that often focused on heroic goodness in people.
• Book Review: ‘The Insatiable Machine,’ by Trevor Jackson
  A new history by Trevor Jackson argues that the economic system that transformed global living standards depends on endless growth impossible to sustain.
• Book Review: ‘How Flowers Made Our World,’ by David George Haskell
  In “How Flowers Made Our World,” David George Haskell makes a case for their soft power.
• Book Review: ‘The Universal Baseball Association,’ by Robert Coover
  Just in time for the start of the season, Robert Coover’s prescient 1968 novel is back in print.
• Book Review: ‘American Men,’ by Jordan Ritter Conn; ‘Who Needs Friends,’ by Andrew McCarthy
  “American Men,” by Jordan Ritter Conn, and “Who Needs Friends,” by Andrew McCarthy, report from the front lines of the epidemic of male loneliness.
• Book Review: ‘A Treacherous Secret Agent,’ by Marjorie Garber
  In a new book, the Harvard scholar Marjorie Garber suggests how Americans targeted during the Red Scare used literature to confound their interrogators.
• ‘Lonesome Dove,’ ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and the Power of the Book Review in the Age Before Algorithms
  How The Washington Post’s now-defunct Book World transformed the careers of two giants of American literature.
• Book Review: ‘Open Space,’ by David Ariosto
  “Open Space,” by David Ariosto, suggests there are few limits on human ingenuity that could prevent us from colonizing the cosmos.
• John Lithgow as Roald Dahl in ‘Giant’: A Study in Monstrosity
  In Mark Rosenblatt’s play, a powerful portrayal of the beloved children’s book author who almost gleefully exposes his bigotry.
• Brian Doherty, 57, Dies; Chronicled Libertarians and Other Outsiders
  Fascinated by the fringes, he wrote a definitive history of libertarianism and books about underground comics and the Burning Man festival.
• Book Review: ‘Almost Life,’ by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
  In Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s novel “Almost Life,” a passionate love affair between two college women gives way to a lifetime of what-ifs.
• What’s It Like to Be Back in Print After 20 Years? A Bit Odd.
  Nancy Lemann published her first novel at 28. Then came “the doom.” Now she’s back in the spotlight, and not exactly comfortable with it.

The Chronicle of Higher Education©

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