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

• Promo Time
  “This is what it sounds like…” Readers of a certain generation will perhaps automatically complete this phrase by saying “when doves cry.” But it isn’t doves we’re talking about. It’s magpies. Prince’s funky epic of tortured love (“Why do we scream at each other?”) forms part of the extensive pop-culture back catalog ransacked by the […]
• My Elsewheres
  I’m a Black American woman who was formed in the twentieth century, amid the cold war and racial segregation that was entrenched even in the Bay Area. But how I think, the way I write, and where my imagination has taken me owe everything to places outside the United States. I call them my “elsewheres.” […]
• Sparkle and Status
  “Biography is a wonderful way into the past, because it’s life as experienced, day to day, subtly influenced by what is happening in politics or the movement of ideas.”
• Fifteen Below Zero
  Driving to St. Paul from the airport you pass under Fort Snelling, an enormous limestone structure from the early nineteenth century. In November 1862, following the bloody conclusion of the US–Dakota War, 1,700 people from the Dakota tribe were forced to march to Fort Snelling and kept in a concentration camp on the river flats […]
• The Crime of Witness
  Renée Good and Alex Pretti were murdered for daring to interfere with the Trump administration’s efforts to normalize abductions and state violence.
• Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams
  In 1945, as the spring air of the Japanese countryside poured in through the unfinished roof of their house, twelve-year-old Yoko Ono and her little brother, Keisuke, scions of the fabulously powerful Yasuda family, stared into the blue sky and starved. Their money was worthless, and their rural neighbors had little pity for the city […]
• The Politics of Raw Power
  On Wednesday a group of Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis pinned a man to the ground and, while he was immobilized, blasted pepper spray into his face at point-blank range. On Thursday the House of Representatives, with the necessary support of seven Democrats, passed a government spending bill that appropriated $10 billion to Immigrations and […]
• Is the Constitution ‘Dead, Dead, Dead’?
  The difficulty of amending the Constitution does not mean that it is a flawed and outdated relic of a distant past.
• Rolling with the Economic Tides
  Ian Kumekawa’s Empty Vessel follows the lifespan of one barge, from bunkhouse to floating prison to barracks and back, as it traces the shadowy outer limits of the maritime economy.
• Teacher’s Pet
  Jane DeLynn’s autobiographical novel In Thrall recounts a same-sex affair between a teenager and her closeted English teacher in the early 1960s, a time when exposure could be more traumatic than exploitation.
• Things Fall Apart
  Gabriele Tergit’s Effingers chronicles how one prosperous German Jewish family struggled to answer the question: When is it time to leave?
• The Undefined Gothic
  At the turn of the twentieth century, a Gothic fever swept Europe as artists searched for meaning in a lost age.
• Liberalism’s Pianist
  Can Igor Levit restore classical music’s claim to cultural and political authority, or is it irrevocably lost?
• Bangladesh’s Stalled Student Revolution
  The young radicals who ousted the country’s authoritarian prime minister have so far failed to implement the democratic reforms they promised. Will elections in February correct their course?
• Darfur’s Endless War
  As paramilitaries tear through their already devastated province, self-defense fighters in North Darfur have taken up arms to defend their homes.
• Bang the Drumstick Slowly
  About 26 billion chickens occupy Earth, but apart from the lucky ones in backyards, most are condemned to the hellscape that is industrial farming.
• Childhood
  I did die. Dying was a venetian blind, all parts working together but not in the same direction.Like a succulent, an aloe leaf—break it and it heals.I died like boxes in a storage locker—no hurry to open.Died like a myth—the watermonster leapt out, snatched me from myself. There was a honed instrument—there was a small […]
• Two Odes by Ricardo Reis
  42/I [1923–1924] Seated securely on the solid pillar            Of the verses in which I remain,I have no fear of the endless future influx            Of times and oblivion;For the mind, when it steadfastly sees in itself            The reflections of the world,Becomes malleable clay, and it is the world            That creates art, not the mind.Just as the external instant engraves its […]
• Whose Hemisphere?
  The US capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro reinforces the Trump administration’s capacity to invent any pretext to justify the use of armed force.
• All That Glitters
  The science of gemstones has always been intertwined with their value as luxury items.
• Trump’s Attack on Philanthropy
  Universities, law firms, and news media have already been targeted by the administration. As the Justice Department pushes to investigate the Open Society Foundations, it seems that philanthropies that support critical voices may be next.
• Epic Ambitions
  A new life of Gertrude Stein treats her as a philosopher of language to trust, not explain—and gathers force from archival discoveries and intriguing plots of her reception and reputation.
• Wars of Religion
  It is a problem of organization, angelsIn their syndicates look down, elitesHave always looked down on us, she said,But if everyone refuses to dieSimultaneously, a kind of general strikeThen they will have no choiceBut to come to the table, she said, strikingHer fists on the table, which caused our drinksWhich were also candlesTo spill. It […]
• Neigh!
  A dispatch from the Art Editor
• A More Pliant Chavista
  President Trump’s decision to support Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s new leader makes clear that oil, not democracy, is his main concern.
• Life Storage
  At St. Michael’s, small graves sit in view of Home Depot. The triangular cemetery rests in the middle of a highway interchange, bounded on all three sides by humming roads that cordon its hills off from a sunbaked world of outlet stores and cheap motels. In the children’s section, headstones press up against the fence […]
• Nepal’s Republic of Amnesia
  Four months after the revolt that overthrew the government of Nepal, Kathmandu seems calm. The new interim government has officially recognized the protests, led by Gen-Z activists, as the third “people’s movement” in the country’s history. Renovations have started on some of the buildings torched this past September, although the parliament remains a charred shell. […]
• In the Despot Archives
  After Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin was ousted from power in 1979, his regime left behind mountains of paperwork generated by the state bureaucracy. Years later, the historian Derek Peterson painstakingly assembled it into an archive. As Helen Epstein writes in our January 15, 2026, issue, “crucial documents were buried under layers of old bicycles, junked […]
• Machado Agonistes
  María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has been calling for a foreign—read: US-led—military intervention in her country for years. Since at least 2019 she has insisted that using outside force to overthrow the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was the only way to restore democracy to Venezuela. […]
• Dead Ringers
  The first time I saw a sculpture by Tatiana Trouvé, in an uncommonly dim gallery at a museum in Mougins, in southern France, I assumed that I had found three blankets stacked tidily on a chair, supporting a book. The piece was called The Guardian. It was, I would later learn, one of a series by […]
• The Gray Tick
  In July 1987 the Hajj ceremony in Mecca turned into a bloodbath. Shia pilgrims, mostly Iranians, staged a protest, chanting against America, Israel, and Saddam Hussein. Saudi security forces confronted them. Violence erupted. Nearly four hundred people were killed. I was seven years old. My favorite uncle happened to be among the pilgrims that year. […]
• Community Poetry
  In her poem “The Swan, No. 20 (Hilma af Klint)” from the Review’s October 23, 2025, issue, Victoria Chang delineates the line of beauty (a word that appears five times in the poem) that she discovers while contemplating the eponymous painting. Chang translates af Klint’s combination of abstraction and representation—a shell, a fractured field of […]
• 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 […]

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: ‘Football,’ by Chuck Klosterman
  In his new book, the writer goes deep on a sport that dominates American cultural life — but possibly not for long.
• What’s With That Voice People Use When Reciting Poetry?
  It’s been described as embarrassing, clichéd or “unhelpful singsong.” Many poets dislike it too, but it’s a style they’ve learned from each other.
• X.J. Kennedy, a Poet of Wit Who Clung to Rhyme and Meter, Dies at 96
  Spurning the free verse of many of his contemporaries, he held to an older tradition. He also wrote spirited poems for children.
• Gavin Newsom Memoir Describes Difficult Childhood, Contrary to Image
  Mr. Newsom, the California governor and a potential presidential candidate, writes that the privileged caricature of his background is mistaken.
• Book Review: ‘The End of Romance,’ by Lily Meyer
  In the slyly charming “The End of Romance,” Lily Meyer puts a graduate student with big ideas about love and autonomy to the personal test.
• New Thrillers Spiked With Dread and Menace
  Our columnist on three excellent, twisty new novels.
• Book Review: ‘Superfan,’ by Jenny Tinghui Zhang
  “Superfan,” by Jenny Tinghui Zhang, explores the parallel struggles of a K-Pop-inspired star and the lonely college student who adores him.
• Book Club: Let’s Discuss ‘The Hounding,’ by Xenobe Purvis
  In this debut novel, set in 1700s England, five sisters are rumored to turn into a pack of dogs.
• Book Club: Read ‘Wuthering Heights,’ by Emily Brontë, With the Book Review
  In February, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss Emily Brontë’s Gothic story of love and revenge.
• Book Review: ‘The Oak and the Larch,’ by Sophie Pinkham
  In “The Oak and the Larch,” Sophie Pinkham examines a vast history and culture through the branches of its ancient trees.
• Book Review: ‘Basket Ball: The Story of the All-American Game,’ by Kadir Nelson
  In his long-awaited follow-up to “We Are the Ship,” Kadir Nelson paints people, places and endeavors relegated to oblivion’s sidelines back onto the hardwood.
• Books Our Editors Love This Week
  Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
• Will Eisner’s Comics and Graphic Novel IP is Up for Sale
  The intellectual property of Will Eisner, who gives his name to the most prestigious award in American comics, is up for sale.
• 27 New Books to Read in February: Toni Morrison, Tayari Jones, Lauren Groff, Michael Pollan and More
  Previously unpublished Toni Morrison; fiction by Tayari Jones, Lauren Groff and Mario Vargas Llosa; Gavin Newsom’s memoir; and more.
• 10 Thrilling Mystery Books Set in a Cabin
  These unforgettable novels set in isolated locations will make you think twice about where to vacation this year.
• ‘Ulysses,’ ‘Watch Me Walk’ and Other Festival Shows Revisit the Past
  “Watch Me Walk,” “Ulysses” and other offerings from Under the Radar and the Exponential Festival engage with personal histories and the works of literary lions.
• Book Review: ‘The Mattering Instinct,’ by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein; ‘Mattering,’ by Jennifer Breheny Wallace
  Two new books delve into our primal desire to feel valued and worthy of attention.
• January’s Best New Mystery Novels
  Our columnist on four standout new releases.
• ‘The Outsiders’ Musical Recoups on Broadway
  “The Outsiders” is the first new musical to open since 2022 to become profitable.
• Did Don DeLillo Invent Hockey Erotica?
  Nearly half a century before “Heated Rivalry” skated its way to screens, a budding literary talent pseudonymously published some sporty smut of his own.
• Book Review: ‘Hated by All the Right People,’ by Jason Zengerle
  In “Hated by All the Right People,” the journalist Jason Zengerle looks at the conservative pundit’s many transformations.
• Book Review: ‘Island at the Edge of the World,’ by Mike Pitts
  In his “Island at the Edge of the World,” the British archaeologist Mike Pitts delves into the misconceptions and legends surrounding a complex ancient culture.
• Book Review: ‘Until the Last Gun Is Silent,’ by Matthew F. Delmont
  In “Until the Last Gun Is Silent,” Matthew F. Delmont shows how the conflict consumed a civil rights leader and tore a soldier apart.

The Chronicle of Higher Education©

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