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

• 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
  Aristotle, for one, wasn’t all that impressed by Odysseus’s adventures. In the seventeenth chapter of his Poetics he observes, apropos of the relationship of a story’s “essential” meaning to its constituent episodes, that the storyline of the Odyssey is not long. A man has been away from his homeland for many years, and Poseidon is […]
• 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 […]
• The Freedom to Be Woke
  In the never-ending debate about freedom of speech on college campuses, conservatives have long condemned “cancel culture,” an attitude of intolerance toward conservative ideas. They are not wrong that liberal and left-wing views predominate at many top universities, and that many students and some faculty resist exposure to ideas they oppose. And to the extent […]
• Against Slop
  “The whole field of AI alignment—ensuring that machine intelligence can peacefully coexist with humanity—grew out of the pervasive anxiety that we might create monsters.” This is, Meghan O’Gieblyn argues in our June 25, 2026, issue, a distinctly parental anxiety, a primordial kind of maternal metaphor that appears over and over again in writing and interviews about AI development. […]
• Spreading Static
  In mid-February I found myself stuck for two days at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport, stranded by a winter freeze. It had been a month since Iran’s security forces massacred thousands of protesters on January 8 and 9—dates that will be central to the story of the Islamic Republic’s decline in whatever history is eventually written. In […]
• Machine Aesthetics
  The thirteen paintings in Altoon Sultan’s exhibition at Hoffman Donahue take up little of the gallery’s wall space. Hung low, with varying distances between them, the works never exceed fourteen inches on a given side. But what they show is big. Big in a literal sense—Sultan paints cropped fragments of large agricultural machines that she […]
• Baghdad: The Illusion of Peace
  Close to midnight on Tuesday, April 7, a loud explosion rattled my family’s house in a suburb of Baghdad. A column of white smoke shadowed the alleys nearby. Men murmured, milling about in the street. Policemen drove past, unsure what had landed where. Downstairs, two days before her eleventh birthday, my niece shivered in her […]
• Sodade
  The bar is no more than a narrow hall. There is barely enough space between the stools and the wall to walk through to a larger room at the back. Beyond the drawn curtains separating the spaces, two musicians are conducting a mic check before rows of mostly empty chairs. No one is paying attention […]
• From the Archive: “The Mayakovsky of MacDougal Street”
  Episode 20 of Private Life
• The Grain of the Note
  The carnyx is an ancient bronze trumpet, once used by Iron Age warriors who relied on its otherworldly blood-curdling cry to fill their opponents with the literal fear of God. The composer Liza Lim conceived her forthcoming work Tongue of the Land, crafted for the Dutch trumpeter Marco Blaauw, around the demands of this long-forgotten […]
• ‘Extraordinarily Profitable Fiduciary Rapport’
  The old saying “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” is, in fact, not all that old, and not really a saying. It was written by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for an advertising campaign in 2003, nearly thirty years after John Gregory Dunne traveled to Sin City and broke its now golden […]
• An Uncertain Triumphalism
  America’s centennial in 1876 was celebrated with a grand exhibition that projected an image of national unity and inventiveness in the anxious aftermath of civil war and recession.
• The Eyes Have It
  Carol Rama’s abstractions from the late 1960s conjure burned, brutalized bodies.
• [Maybe more often than most…]
  Maybe more often than most she buys mirrors.The pseudo-Biedermeier at the flea market—over its workaday planking a veneer of nicer wood. Nested chevronswhose tips center the breastbone.She breathes and the crosshairs lose her, re-hone.Her will to seek glass—viz., the tiny Carnegie-toy branch library she writes in.Its transparent saffron books floating through the Tiffany wall.Breton imagined […]
• Wonder & Disillusion
  The naturalist George Forster was fascinated by plants and animals, but he was also driven by a passionate belief in the rights of all people regardless of race, gender, or social status.
• The Late Bohemian
  Rosemary Tonks emulated French Symbolist poets before converting to Christianity and renouncing all her own works.
• Song of Our Cells
  Though a mystery to Darwin in his lifetime, the constant mutation of our genes is what allows for life’s magnificent diversity.
• The New Ellis Island
  A history of five families in El Paso reveals the city’s significance as a bellwether of America’s immigration policy.
• On the Precipice
  Critics who call André Breton’s Nadja a novel miss its most innovative aspects.
• Compromised Values
  Joe Manchin’s memoir reveals that the West Virginian Senator worshipped “work” at the expense of supporting his party’s efforts to help working people.
• The Judeo-Bolshevist Target
  Popular memory in the West tends to separate the Holocaust from the German war against the Soviet Union, but for the Nazi regime they were two faces of the same undertaking.
• Is the Artist Present?
  By transforming her own old paintings into new works of art, Eliza Douglas raises questions about sincerity and cynicism.
• Tornado
  I know less and less about who I am. Touching down, I lifta nail, a plank, take an entireyard and dress up like I’m going to spend the night dancing. Painting the townwhere I invented stillness by holding my breath. The way somecircle the drain before recognizingthey’re water. Even this river. This river reminds me […]
• Fashion Forward
  Why has the Metropolitan Museum of Art sold prime gallery space to the fashion industry?
• When India Reinvented Prints
  Two forceful exhibitions have shown how Indian artists and presses met the cultural upheaval of the nineteenth century with lithographic prints that rendered Hindu gods more approachable and helped to galvanize national identity.
• Space Oddity
  Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff’s Muskism examines how Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, by selling a vision of the future that very few people would want to inhabit.
• Hungary: The Flood
  Peter Magyar’s landslide electoral victory in April made clear that after sixteen years, Hungarians were tired of Viktor Orbán.
• Climate and Punishment
  Vigil finds George Saunders returning to the theme of his first novel, grief—this time not for a person but for a planet.
• Robert Glück on His Books, Frank O’Hara, and Dreams
  Episode 19 of Private Life
• Broken Promises in Cuban Miami
  Donald Trump has reversed the government’s longstanding benevolence toward Cuban asylum seekers, even as his administration exacerbates the crisis they fled.
• The Unraveling of Afghan Asylum
  Afees Monsef has a grave magnetism that makes him easy to find, even in a crowd.1 We first met in the spring of 2025, at a gathering in the basement of the Hazrati Abu Bakr Siddique mosque in Flushing, two years after he and his family of eight crossed the US–Mexico border fleeing persecution by […]
• Spare Me the Hedgehoggery
  “I’m not fond of efforts to see ourselves reflected in places where we aren’t: better, I think, to let the past be the past in all its irreducible bloody-minded weirdness.”
• Resistance Choirs
  For centuries the Lenape people had hunting grounds and fishing camps in an area they called Penadnic, in the rocky hills of upper Manhattan. Wrested away from its original inhabitants by Dutch and British settlers following the infamous “sale” of the island to the Dutch colonial governor Peter Minuit in 1626, the land passed through […]
• Through the Looking Glass
  A dispatch from the Art Editor
• Safety Is When There’s No One Dying
  The Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund is based in the Blue Building, a medical center across from the American University of Beirut, in the city’s Hamra district. Many of the children whose care it sponsors have come to Lebanon from Gaza, mostly by way of Egypt, after an intensive vetting process involving the Israeli state […]
• From the Archive: “Chronicles of Love and Loss” by Helen Vendler
  Episode 18 of Private Life
• ‘An Eternal Indoors’
  It is a persistent wonder of the Internet that so much can, at times, be built from so little. A simple doorway opens to a vast labyrinth, assembled by the seemingly infinite labors of the obsessed and anonymous. The foundation of Backrooms, the new film by Kane Parsons—which has made him, at twenty years old, […]

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: ‘Unsayable,’ by Michael Cunningham
  Blending autobiography with meditations on craft, “Unsayable” feels destined for the graduation gift bag.
• Book Review: ‘The Frenchmen,’ by Emily Eakin
  In “The Frenchmen,” Emily Eakin traces the rise and fall of postmodernist philosophy, and the surprising ways its influence lingers.
• 7 Other ‘Odyssey’ Movie Adaptations to Stream Now
  For decades, filmmakers have been borrowing plot lines and metaphors from Homer’s epic for adventures set in different eras and realities.
• Book Review: ‘The Mortons,’ by Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld
  In “The Mortons,” a young hit woman — a prodigy at killing — is tested by inherited secrets and her own morality.
• Book Review: ‘Bitchy!,’ by Roberta Gregory
  A new compendium of Roberta Gregory’s comics does away with delicacy in the name of feminism.
• Book Review: ‘Cool Machine,’ by Colson Whitehead
  The final installment of his Harlem crime trilogy is full of heists, cultural shifts and nostalgia for 1980s New York.
• To Sell Homer’s ‘Odyssey,’ Book Publishers Get Creative
  The market for the epic poem is as crowded as a certain Ithacan palace, and publishers have had to get crafty to attract readers to their editions.
• Book Review: ‘The Lost Founder,’ by Jesse Wegman
  In “The Lost Founder,” the journalist Jesse Wegman looks back at a largely forgotten and singular voice that helped make the United States what it is today.
• The Scariest Place in New Jersey Set the Stage for Her Novel
  Caitlin Mullen drew on eerie expeditions to the Pine Barrens for her new mystery novel, “Heather.”
• Walt Odets, Who Delved Into the Minds of Gay Men, Dies at 79
  A psychologist, he wrote during the AIDS crisis about survivor’s guilt and depression in his H.I.V.-negative patients.
• What to Know Before Seeing ‘The Odyssey’: Plot, Characters and More
  Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem has monster battles, a sorceress and dozens of thirsty suitors. Here’s a primer.
• Book Review: ‘Yellow Pine,’ by Claire Vaye Watkins
  In Claire Vaye Watkins’s novel “Yellow Pine,” a single woman having an existential crisis decides now is the time to have a child.
• The Rediscovery of Country Original Gary Stewart
  Gary Stewart spent a few years on top, but was largely forgotten after his tragic death in 2003. Now a new generation is rediscovering the onetime “king of honky-tonk.”
• ‘Heartstopper Forever’: What to Know Before Seeing the Movie
  The Netflix series and its feature-length finale are based on the graphic novels by Alice Oseman. Here’s a reminder of the events of the characters and where their stories left off.
• The Children’s Books of Seymour Chwast
  A new collection of the famous graphic designer Seymour Chwast’s work for children “unearths a cache of lost treasures.”
• Want More of the ‘Odyssey’? Read These Books Next.
  Informative histories, modern retellings and genre-bending homages will take you back to the long road to Ithaca.
• Books Our Editors Loved This Week
  Reading recommendations from critics and editors at The New York Times.
• The Only Thing Riskier Than Telling an Abortion Joke
  For the comedian Alison Leiby, talking about her choice to be child-free is more polarizing to audiences than anything else.
• Romance Novels Filled With Dazzling Fireworks
  Our columnist on three of the year’s most anticipated books.
• Book Review: ‘I Want You to Be Happy,’ by Jem Calder
  Jem Calder’s novel, “I Want You to Be Happy,” follows the flailing situationship between two aspiring writers with a 12-year age gap.
• Book Review: ‘Journey to Nowhere,’ by Shiva Naipaul
  In “Journey to Nowhere,” Shiva Naipaul reports on the aftermath of a cult’s disastrous turn away from idealism.
• Archaeologists Unearth a 2,400-Year-Old Sanctuary for the Worship of Odysseus
  The ruins of a 2,400-year-old complex suggest that, to the Greeks of antiquity, Homer’s protagonist was not just a character in a poem but a figure of genuine devotion.
• Book Review: ‘They Stole a City,’ by Lauren Collins
  A new book by the journalist Lauren Collins chronicles the ongoing effects of the violent takeover of Wilmington, N.C., on those living in its aftermath.
• Book Review: ‘Air,’ by Christian Kracht
  In “Air,” by the Swiss writer Christian Kracht, a decorator’s unusual commission leads abruptly into another universe.

The Chronicle of Higher Education©

• An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.