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

• The Road to the Rent Freeze
  On the evening of June 25, minutes after New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to freeze the rent for a million rent-stabilized apartments across the five boroughs, I caught up with a tenant I know named Josie Wells. Standing outside the auditorium in East Harlem where the vote had just occurred, we spoke about […]
• Libya: The Dangerous Gamble
  On my last visit to Tripoli, this past June, the city often felt as if it had left the protracted conflicts of Libya’s post-Qaddafi era behind. At night, families were out in the streets catching a respite from the heat of the day. The occasional blasts were not gunfire but fireworks at wedding celebrations. Incoming […]
• Listening for the Unconscious
  “Couples therapy”—the words alone are enough to send many people running. But Orna Guralnik, the clinical psychologist and star of Showtime’s documentary series Couples Therapy, has people running to her office. She has become a household name as well as a watchful guide for couples as they navigate intimate and sometimes agonizing discussions, and for […]
• Moving Mountains
  On the morning of Monday, July 20, as the monsoon session of India’s parliament opened, tens of thousands of protesters surged down the radial streets leading to the heart of official New Delhi. Most of them were young people marching in response to a call issued by Sonam Wangchuk, a well-known climate activist, to bring […]
• Homer vs. Hollywood: Daniel Mendelsohn on Christopher Nolan’s
  In this special hour-long edition of NYRSeminars, Daniel Mendelsohn, Editor-at-Large of The New York Review and author of the most recent translation of Homer’s epic, discusses Christopher Nolan’s polarizing blockbuster adaptation of the Odyssey.
• A Taste of Infinity
  With his commitment to impractical and borderline impossible projects, the composer Dylan Mattingly has created a welcoming, abundant, sun-drenched musical landscape.
• Out of the Rubble
  In novels written immediately after World War II, Wolfgang Koeppen mined the conscience of Germany.
• Along the Ucayali River
  Sara Flores adapts the ancient designs of the Shipibo-Conibo tribe of Peru into large, pattern-based paintings.
• The Grand Master of Abjection
  Pope.L, best known for his performance art, also made drawings and paintings animated by his sense of the absurd and his concern for the marginalized.
• Where the Meanings Are
  Fairfield Porter was an insider among the East Coast elite, but his own portraits of life in Southampton and Maine give the charming impression of an outsider looking in.
• Home Invasions
  In John Lanchester’s novel Look What You Made Me Do, a couple’s private language is weaponized against them.
• Explosions in the Mind
  Fusing religious subjects with unerring technique, the Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán discovered a zone in oil paint that might well be called “sacred."
• Fridas for Everyone
  The face that sold a million mugs returned to museums and the operatic stage this spring, as if there was a yearning to reconnect with the real Frida Kahlo.
• A Gust from Another World
  The Search for Bridey Murphy caused a sensation in 1950s America, and while its tale of reincarnation was soon discredited, it revealed a deep cultural fascination with the supernatural.
• Blueprint
  Some friends call mine a spiritual problemand when they doI become the minister of the realand go on Zillowmoving my future into various crannies of Los Angeles.When one friend calls returning homemore practical,I find myself in our yardunder a colander of stars, tastingpasta I might never make againthe way he likes it, nakedwith flake-salt and […]
• The Nightjar
  The nightjar carries it lightlyBut the world’s heavy as a lamp in a gale.I watched it move through the olives and the hush,Over rooftops, stones, and cragged hills,Unclenched as it glistens in the gloam,Indifferent, sonorous, and true. As I write, a fly has drownedIn my jar of pungent lit wax,Its carcass still dancing from its […]
• Zoom
  Waiting for a call that didn’t happen I am sitting on the back porch with Frank O’Hara (Collected) when a goldfinch lands beside my head on the porch rail, lands so neatly so instantly so whoosh with all his yellowness yellowing and all his himness packed to the brim of him that a wave of […]
• Refusing to Look Away
  In Killing Spree, the poet Jorie Graham pursues an essentially ethical impulse to find a true language for the evil in the world.
• Whose Party?
  As Democratic Socialists rack up primary victories, the moderate wing of the Democratic Party looks increasingly out of touch.
• Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship
  Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s inside account of the Trump administration portrays a president with a vast appetite for power but who repeatedly backs down when the costs of his actions become too high.
• Language Is the Medium
  To the Editors: I read Dan Chiasson’s reflections on AI [“Think for Yourself,” NYR, June 25] with sympathy and interest, and thought the statement he issued to his students was absolutely first class. If I were still in the teaching game I would set it in front of my classes, too (with my fingers crossed […]
• Jackie Robinson’s Worst Nightmare
  To the Editors: In Andrew Katzenstein’s review of A.M. Gittlitz’s Metropolitans [NYR, June 25] he writes that Jackie Robinson was “a loyal Republican until Barry Goldwater’s nomination in 1964.” This is an exaggeration. Robinson was a Republican-leaning independent, whose main issue was always the advancement of the cause of civil rights and full Black citizenship. […]
• ‘Take that Phony Dream and Burn It’
  Just a few weeks before Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949, President Harry Truman elaborated his “Fair Deal” for the American people in his State of the Union address. “We have rejected the discredited theory that the fortunes of the Nation should be in the hands of a […]
• Close Calls
  In the Supreme Court’s recently concluded term, it showed that it is willing to constrain Trump but less willing to accept limits on its own authority.
• People Want to Be Heard
  Sarah Stillman is a staff writer at The New Yorker and one of the most decorated investigative reporters of her generation. She has won several National Magazine Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. Her work draws attention to the men and women forced to do the bidding of the American security state—the […]
• Life on the List
  Late one night in May 2016, Naif al-Qaysi was riding shotgun in an old Landcruiser as it barreled down an empty highway through the desert connecting Saudi Arabia and Yemen. For the past six months Naif, then thirty-three, had been the governor of Al-Bayda, a large mountainous region in central Yemen, which he was trying […]
• All of Life
  In the Review’s June 25 issue, Joe Dunthorne writes about a recent oral history of the New York School poets and poses himself a challenge: “How to analyze a poetics of irreverence and improvisation—of life experienced in a perpetual present—without stifling precisely these qualities?” His essay suggests that the poetry in the scene, by writers […]
• La Querelle des Femmes
  In 2015, I was on a panel at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design titled “Do We Need Exhibitions Just for Women?” As I remember, most of the participants agreed that we did, though some expressed concerns about ghettoization or weariness at having a conversation they’d had many times before. As the youngest participant, […]
• Secondhand Memory
  In 1954, with the ending of French colonial rule in Southeast Asia, the Geneva Accords established Laos as an independent state, led by the Royal Lao government. Five years later, however, the Pathet Lao, backed by the communist government of North Vietnam, initiated a civil war that escalated, along with the Vietnam War, until 1975. […]
• Target Practice
  In April 2024 international news sources circulated a video of a talk delivered by a senior Israeli military official during a tech conference at Tel Aviv University about a year earlier. The speaker, whose face is not shown, introduces himself only as “Colonel Yoav,” the head of data science and AI for Unit 8200, an […]
• From the Archive: “A Little Iliad” by Daniel Mendelsohn
  This episode is a reading of Daniel Mendelsohn’s review of the film Troy, an adaptation of the Iliad, from the Review’s June 24, 2004, issue. It is read by the countertenor and opera director Anthony Roth Costanzo. Among many other roles, Costanzo has performed as Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus and Akhnaten in Philip Glass’s […]
• Gaza’s Deadly Soil
  Long before October 2023, Gaza’s people suffered international sanctions, a humiliating occupation, and periodic Israeli bombardments. Few could leave the enclave, even for medical care; the destruction of crucial infrastructure meant that clean water and electricity were intermittent; and thousands of men, women, and children were killed in periodic wars. Even peaceful protests were met […]
• Consulting the Oracle
  In the fall of 2022, I saw the novelist Sheila Heti give a presentation on her conversations with early AI chat bots. Their names were Eliza, Alice, and George, and they had wild, undisciplined opinions about art, selfhood, and God. Talking to them seemed to come naturally to Heti. For several years, she had been […]
• The DNC Against Itself
  “Democracy is a very old institution,” explains the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the 2024 election, belatedly released in May. “And yet what keeps democracy going is the ability of those who seek to lead to look at the data and determine the source of success as well as setbacks.” The report that followed did […]
• The War of the South
  Each of Iran’s recent wars has been quick to acquire a name. On the day Israel stopped bombing Iran in June 2025, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to declare the conflict over and, to nobody’s surprise, place himself at the center of the story. “I would like to congratulate both Countries,” he said, “Israel […]
• ‘So-Called International Law’
  On July 13 Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a campaign to destroy the International Criminal Court. Calling the ICC “a global tribunal staffed by unelected globalist bureaucrats who claim their power is almost unlimited,” he charged the court with “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles but with statutes, compacts, […]
• Artful Weaving
  The most authentic thing about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is its densely braided narrative, but its tormented hero sounds like the heroes of Christopher Nolan movies.
• Daniel Mendelsohn on the Odyssey, Film Adaptations, and Translation
  In this episode of Private Life, Daniel Mendelsohn joins Jarrett Earnest to discuss his 2025 translation of Homer’s Odyssey and Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming film adaptation, premiering this week. They discuss the debate surrounding the film’s casting, the significance of descriptive language in translations, and the enduring place of Greek literature, history, and aesthetics in gay […]
• They Knew Too Much
  With Close Encounters of the Third Kind Steven Spielberg promised an encounter and delivered one. Disclosure Day announces a precisely scheduled disclosure but at the last moment, just as a world-changing message is about to be delivered, cuts off the mic. “Listen,” says Emily Blunt as Margaret Fairchild, the Kansas City meteorologist who is now […]
• The Best Tape You Can Get
  I’ve been listening to Chana Joffe-Walt for a long time now on This American Life, where she often takes over from Ira Glass to host special episodes on race, labor, and education. Independently, she hosted the New York Times podcast Nice White Parents, which focused on school segregation and how progressive Brooklyn families undermined racial […]

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.
• Richard Lingeman, Cultural Historian and Biographer, Dies at 95
  He spent decades as a magazine editor and wrote an acclaimed history of small-town America, as well as biographies of the novelists Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis.
• Book Review: ‘Sunrise,’ by Téa Obreht
  In “Sunrise,” Téa Obreht mashes up Western gothic, murder mystery and survival saga.
• Book Review: ‘A Tender Age,’ by Chang-rae Lee
  In his new book, Chang-rae Lee follows a 10-year-old into the social powder kegs of schoolyards and summer camps.
• Book Review: ‘Under the Falls,’ by Richard Russo
  In Richard Russo’s new novel, “Under the Falls,” a singer reckons with his troubled past and the community he left behind.
• Barack Obama to Host New Podcast, ‘A Great Book’
  The former president will discuss works by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Marilynne Robinson, among others, in a podcast that will premiere in September.
• Takeaways From Jason Arday’s Memoir
  The British scholar resigned from Cambridge after the university, which made him its youngest Black professor in 2023, began investigating his academic qualifications.
• Book Review: ‘The Jackal,’ by Joby Warrick
  In his new book, Joby Warrick traces the rise and fall of Carlos the Jackal, the notorious terrorist-for-hire.
• Book Review: “Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer”
  Julie Kliegman’s thorough biography of the transgender tennis player is fascinatingly complicated by her changed stance on gender and sports.
• Should You Be Ashamed to Put Down a Book You Don’t Enjoy?
  Is it shameful, or sensible, to put down a book you don’t enjoy? Three little letters, and social media, have turbocharged a longstanding debate.
• Edge of Your Seat
  A superfan of thrillers recommends some of her favorites.
• Book Review: ‘A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving,’ by Virginia Eubanks
  “A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving,” by Virginia Eubanks, is a memoir of what happened after her partner survived a brutal attack — and her own will to endure.
• Charles S. Faddis, Ex-C.I.A. Officer Who Pushed Conspiracy Theories, Dies at 68
  After 20 years in the C.I.A., he emerged as an outspoken critic of the agency and as a leader of the election-denial movement in Pennsylvania.
• Book Review: ‘The Responsible Party,’ by Claire Carusillo
  In “The Responsible Party,” a novel by Claire Carusillo, a woman named Claire Carusillo vapes her way through her wild family history.
• Thomas S. Hines, Who Helped Put L.A. Architecture on the Map, Dies at 89
  A historian at U.C.L.A., he showed how Los Angeles’s architects and planners made the city a global center for modernist design in the 20th century.
• 11 Books for Children Who Love the Wimpy Kid Series
  These recommendations should tide over fans of Jeff Kinney’s laugh-out-loud illustrated novels until the next installment.
• Books Our Editors Loved This Week
  Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
• ‘La Technique’ by Jacques Pépin Turns 50 Years Old
  In his groundbreaking “La Technique,” Jacques Pépin showed Americans how to do everything from carving swans out of apples to breaking down lamb.
• On PBS Kids, Jacqueline Woodson Reminds Children Their Stories Matter
  A new animated special, “The Day You Begin,” based on the best-selling picture book, emphasizes the richness that diversity brings to a community.
• John Carpenter Found a New Way to Give You Nightmares
  The director of slasher films that defined horror from the 1970s through the ’90s realizes his latest work, “Cathedral,” as both a graphic novel and a hard-rock album.
• Riley Sager on His Favorite Books and His New Thriller, ‘The Unknown’
  His 2023 thriller “The Only One Left” has been on the best-seller list there for nearly a year. “The Unknown,” his 10th novel, is out this month.
• Brilliant, Bloody New Mystery Novels
  Our critic on four terrific new releases.
• Star Scholar Jason Arday Resigns From Cambridge
  Jason Arday was hired by the University of Cambridge in 2023 as the youngest Black professor in its history. Doubt has since been cast on his academic qualifications and claims about his life.
• Ursula Hegi, Who Wrote Searing Novels About Nazi-Era Germany, Dies at 80
  “Stones From the River,” her best-known work and an early Oprah’s Book Club selection, was set in a fictional German town in the early 20th century.

The Chronicle of Higher Education©

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