Top Book News provided by The New York Review of Books©
- A Critic in the Court“We can only do our job,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his draft opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, “which is to interpret the law.” “These claims to neutrality and humility should make you nauseous and irate,” writes Liza Batkin in “Deceit in Plain Sight,” her contribution to the Review’s symposium about the […]
- Must We Grow?For about fifteen years, from the late 1990s through the early 2010s, my partner and I lived off the electrical grid in rural Colorado. Our two-room house, which he had built, was insulated with straw bales; it had a woodstove for heat, an on-demand propane-powered water heater, and a composting toilet. The plumbing—enough for a […]
- The End of Aspirations In the windowless clinic where I work, the back hallway is lined with a row of small, square rooms. Inside each room is a desk, a computer screen, a box of tissues, two chairs, and little else. This is where the clinic counselors meet with patients who have come in for their abortions. In […]
- Could Internet Culture Be Different?There’s a diagram of the Internet that I show my students every semester. It was drawn in December 1969 and features four circles, four boxes, and four lines. The circles represent four institutions—UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, the University of Utah, and the Stanford Research Institute—while the boxes represent giant mainframe computers on their campuses. Those […]
- ‘He Loved Handing Out Decorations’Soviet party leaders tend to get the biographies they deserve. Stephen Kotkin’s unfolding trilogy about Stalin is almost superhuman in scope and ambition. William Taubman’s volumes about Khrushchev and Gorbachev are vivid, buoyant, and dramatic. Susanne Schattenberg’s new biography of Brezhnev is almost as bland as its subject. According to Schattenberg, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was […]
- The Monsters in Cabinet 13Un-su Kim’s The Cabinet begins with an account of the peculiar fate of Ludger Sylbaris, one of those historical misfits whose story appears in compendia of strange-but-true curiosities, popular accounts of natural disasters, and travel guide sidebars. A native of Martinique, Sylbaris was imprisoned in the city of Saint-Pierre when Mount Pelée erupted on May […]
- Benjamin’s Rival TemptersIn April 1940 Gershom Scholem wrote from Jerusalem to Theodor Adorno in New York about their mutual friend in Paris: “I am very worried about Walter Benjamin, from whom I have heard nothing, even in answer to my inquiries, since early December 1939…. If you know anything, please write to me.” Three months later, Adorno […]
- Mothers Under PressureIn an unusual confluence of transformative historical events, 1984 saw both the debut of the Apple Macintosh, with its monumental impact on personal computing, and the publication of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, the pregnancy guide that would go on to sell more than 22 million copies—the book a fire breath of terror conveying […]
- CataractIt doesn’t fall it gathers the doctor explainedThat’s just what people named it when I took offThe bandage blinded by the unblocked lightAt first I panicked brightness falls from the airThe lens that you were born with flexes but darkensFilm noir betrayals Niagara none can wellBehold with eyes what underneath him liesThe new lens rigid […]
- Subjects of Considerable GossipGreta Garbo was born in 1905 in one of the poorest sections of Stockholm. She lived in a cold-water flat with no indoor toilet. Salka Viertel was born in 1889 into a well-to-do Jewish family living on an estate of rolling meadows and orchards in Galicia, near what is now Lviv, Ukraine. Their stories, which […]
- A Game of Low StakesIf you are writing a comedy about imitation, plagiarism, or simply the monotonous sameness of so much contemporary literature, so much contemporary discourse, it makes sense perhaps to borrow the title of your work from one of the most celebrated novels of all time and to write it in one of the most radical and […]
- ‘The Ultimate Asian Woman’“Envy,” the psychologist Peter van Sommers writes, “concerns what you would like to have but don’t possess,” whereas jealousy “concerns what you have and do not wish to lose.” Elaine Hsieh Chou’s hilarious and harrowing debut novel, Disorientation, is set in a place saturated with both emotions, where envy and jealousy shift and interact in […]
- Rehearsal for GenocideThe war in Ukraine has simultaneously forced to the surface and upended the memory of a history that had fallen into oblivion. The past, we see once more, can be reinvented and reinterpreted. In 2014 Slava Ukraini became the slogan of an independent, westward-looking Ukraine, when the Euromaidan protests resulted in the ousting of its […]
- November with AnimalsThe sunflowers have gone to seed.A squirrel made off with the head of oneHolding it square in his little paws, like a sandwich.The laying hen won’t lay, though she looks Up to the job. The moon went from small to half to full.Popular opinion about the future turned sour again.The gourds had swelled, and plump were […]
- A Style of Revolt“Whether he poses or is real,” Thom Gunn wrote in one of the first poems inspired by Elvis Presley, “no cat/Bothers to say.” To many British men who came of age during the austere and repressive 1950s, from the formidably erudite and Cambridge-educated Gunn to streetwise Scousers such as John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Presley […]
- ‘Why Biology Is Not Destiny’: An ExchangeTo the Editors: Marcus Feldman and Jessica Riskin did not like my book. Or rather, they did not like a book called The Genetic Lottery by an author named “Kathryn Paige Harden,” but their review [NYR, April 21] so badly distorts my arguments that I have the curious impression that Feldman and Riskin somehow got […]
- QueryFor a volume of the letters of Susan Sontag, I would be grateful to hear from those who corresponded with her. Benjamin Taylorbenjtay@aol.com
- The Boundaries of KinshipFrom the opening lines of Wedding Band, her 1966 play about an interracial relationship in World War I–era South Carolina, Alice Childress keeps her keen eye trained on life’s essentials: money, food, human connection. Mattie trails her daughter Teeta around the stage in search of a lost quarter. In her anger, the mother explains the […]
- Policing WomanhoodThe draft of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson leaked on the anniversary of the Memphis Massacre, a turning point on the way to what looked like freedom. Over the first three days of May in 1866, white residents of Memphis brutalized, murdered, and sexually assaulted the city’s Black residents. Seven men […]
- The Yeehaw PapyrusPrinces shall come out of Egypt;Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God Psalm 68:31 Cowboy hat from GucciWrangler on my bootyCan’t nobody tell me nothing Lil Nas X Of the many armored costumes black artists have worn in America, the pharaoh and the cowboy are perennial favorites. Who could forget Michael Jackson in […]
- Unsteady GroundThe leaked draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will shift the ground underneath millions of American women. Except in the highly unlikely event that one or two of the Justices publicly changes their mind, we will all wake up one day this summer and experience a fundamental right being pulled out from […]
- Big Stories, Little StoriesIn the May 26, 2022, issue of the magazine, E. Tammy Kim reviews The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War, a new history of the war drawn from case files from American prisoner of war camps that have recently been declassified after decades in government archives. Included in these documents are photographs and transcripts of […]
- Our Lives in Their HandsWhen I read about the Supreme Court’s draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, a memory came to me of my mother with my father in the yard of our cinder-block home in Lowndes County, Alabama. They were talking to reporters about how my mother had been sterilized at the age of twenty-six. The […]
- Stealing the Crown JewelsThe end of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey would be catastrophic for American women, generations of whom have lived with access to abortion. Near the end of his draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, however, Justice Samuel Alito gives a cynically upbeat prediction about its potential effects. Rather than […]
- Before the FallThe day before the leak of Samuel Alito’s retrograde Supreme Court draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which appears to be on the verge of overturning long-standing abortion rights, I happened to be on an airplane, watching The Eyes of Tammy Faye—a recent biopic, based on a documentary of the same name, […]
- Weak ProtagonistsThis Thursday, Louisiana state lawmakers are scheduled to discuss on the House floor a bill, HB 813, that would enshrine personhood rights “from the moment of fertilization” and criminalize abortion. Just a few years ago, even in states where Republicans have gerrymandered themselves ironclad majorities, when fanatical lawmakers proposed similar personhood bills Republican leadership usually […]
- Uprooting RightsAs a professor of law and of history, I’m naturally interested in the ways that people in the legal field—law professors, lawyers, and judges—use history, and the way historians use the law. Each sometimes draw upon the others’ discipline to bolster arguments they wish to make. The tendency is at its most consequential when judges […]
- ‘Can You Describe This?’Why does life feel different to me since Monday night, when I opened Twitter and saw the news? “And the stone word fell / On my still-living breast. / Never mind, I was ready. / I will manage somehow,” Anna Akhmatova writes in “The Sentence,” a poem I keep thinking of when I consider my […]
- A Cruel VoteOn a sunny day in 2018 Irish women danced, sang, and cheered on the grounds of Dublin Castle when the ban on abortion in Ireland was finally voted out of existence. I wasn’t there, I did not dance, I stayed at home and wept over my computer keyboard, to the concern of my children. The […]
- IntentionsSome identifying details have been changed for patient privacy. I am a hospital pediatrician in Texas, where since 2021 a law has been in force that outlaws abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Under SB 8, anyone who “abets” or “intends” to abet a later abortion can be sued. The law is deliberately vague: […]
- A Heedless MajorityThe conventional wisdom is that one cannot judge a Supreme Court justice by his or her first few years on the Court. There is nothing that really prepares one for the awesome power—and responsibility—that a Supreme Court justice holds. Justices typically take some time to find their feet, and tread lightly as they grow into […]
- Art of PlaceIn our May 12 issue, Carolina A. Miranda appraises New Orleans’s fifth citywide art triennial, “Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow,” an exhibition that brought together “historical, environmental, and spiritual themes” in works by artists from around the world that were nonetheless “firmly rooted in New Orleans.” The show sprawled across the city and included sculptural […]
- A Lesson from IrelandIn a couple of weeks’ time, on May 25, Ireland will mark the fourth anniversary of the abortion referendum, when, with broad cross-party support, 66.4 percent of the population voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution. Adopted following a deeply divisive referendum in 1983, “the Eighth” asserted the right to life of […]
- Deceit in Plain SightJustice Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization would have you believe that the forthcoming decision to overrule Roe v. Wade is a display of great judicial restraint and independence. The draft is written in the language of solemn duty: we do not want to take away abortion rights, the conservative justices […]
- AspirationsIn the windowless clinic where I work, the back hallway is lined with a row of small square rooms. Inside each room is a desk, a computer screen, a box of tissues, two chairs, and little else. This is where the clinic counselors meet with patients—mostly women, some trans or nonbinary patients, anyone with a […]
- Beyond the BetrayalOn the morning of August 4, 1944, everything seemed normal at Prinsengracht 263, a tall, narrow building along a canal in Amsterdam’s Jordaan neighborhood. On the ground floor, the workers in the warehouse of a pectin and spice producer formerly known as Opekta/Pectacon—now registered under a false name, since its Jewish founder, Otto Frank, was […]
- The Iron Grip of the CFA FrancWhat is wrong with Africa? Of the world’s twenty-five poorest countries, twenty-one lie south of the Sahara. Crowded streets and informal markets from Dakar to Mombasa teem with hawkers selling candles, batteries, matches, toys, condoms, plastic cups, nylon wedding gowns, fake jewelry, and other cheap imports, but the region itself manufactures almost nothing. Forty percent […]
- Under Their SkinThe first fictional spacecraft were thrilling, vehicles for exploration and discovery, but it wasn’t long before writers realized that spaceships would also be workplaces like their waterborne counterparts, with tight quarters where repetitive tasks and interpersonal friction are occasionally interrupted by interludes of existential peril. The most familiar pop-cultural depiction of this, Ridley Scott’s 1979 […]
- The Babel WithinA few weeks ago I was invited to the book festival in Trieste, in northeast Italy, a city of divided loyalties and complicated history. At its center is an old Austro-Hungarian port; some of its street signs are bilingual, in Italian and Slovenian. The city was “Tergeste” to the Romans, founded on the site of […]
- An Impulse Felt Round the World“The surreal today is measured on the scale of our defeats.” Georges Henein, a founding member of a Cairo group of Surrealists, was responding to a questionnaire that a Paris review had sent him concerning the state of the movement in 1946, twenty-two years on from André Breton’s inaugural Manifeste du surréalisme. What defeats had […]
- A Permanent BattleOn New Year’s Day, I went to a bookstore in Cheonan, South Korea, to buy a wall map of the country. The label said, simply, “Map of Korea,” so when I got home and unfolded it, I was surprised to see that it showed both North and South—the entire peninsula and its hundreds of surrounding […]
- Who Should Regulate?Does the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have the authority to impose a mask mandate on people who travel on planes, trains, and buses? In April a federal district court in Florida offered a clear answer: Absolutely not. The court gave an exceedingly narrow reading to the CDC’s powers under laws enacted by Congress. […]
- After George HerbertCome, my Motorway, my Equals Sign, my Higher Race,Such a Motorway as wheels with stars,Such an Equals Sign as time plus space,Such a Higher Race as cable cars. Come, my Bedside Light, my Takeaway, my Calloused Hand,Such a Bedside Light as lanternfish,Such a Takeaway as takes a stand,Such a Calloused Hand as makes a wish. […]
- The Forest of CricketsHard night, you’re in my breathing now. Come with me, since you have no choice,since you’ve been, in a way, abducted. Every breath will demonstrate my power. We move through a forest of crickets. Their tiny bodies are elderly, arthritic;they sense the fall already moving in, who were babies just yesterday, who were children at dawn. They stiffen into clothespins. […]
- Our Hypocrisy on War CrimesThere is the war, and then there is the war about the war. Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine is being fought in fields and cities, in the air and at sea. It is also, however, being contested through language. Is it a war or a “special military operation”? Is it an unprovoked invasion or a […]
- Shadows Across the DecadesSome way through Francisco Goldman’s Monkey Boy, the novel’s narrator—an accomplished writer in middle age called Francisco Goldberg, whose name isn’t his only resemblance to the author—recalls “the day I became a journalist.” As an aspiring writer of fiction in his early twenties, he left New York for his mother’s homeland in Central America, intending […]
- How Do Whispers Become Movements?The most thrilling part of Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), John Reed’s account of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, is not the storming of the Winter Palace or Leon Trotsky’s impassioned speeches. It is the citizens’ debates—described as “hot,” “endless,” “violent,” and “stormy”—over what course the revolution should take, or even whether it […]
- Schemes Gone AwryWhen Richard Wilbur undertook in 1952 to translate Molière’s The Misanthrope, it was as compensation for his inability (despite having received a grant for the purpose) to write verse plays of his own: “They didn’t come off. They were very bad, extremely wooden.” With his first two books of poetry, The Beautiful Changes (1947) and […]
- A Fable of AgencyIn The Allure of the Archives (1989), a gem of a book, the French historian Arlette Farge talks about unearthing, insofar as it’s possible, a past that’s not quite past—particularly in relation to the lives of women, whose histories have often been hidden, forgotten, or written over, women spoken about but whom we seldom hear […]
- Cousin Bob & Cousin WendyTo the Editors: During the recent annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, a senior Sanskrit scholar offered me a “good news, bad news” proposition. The good news was that our newly revised single-volume edition of the Princeton University Press translation of the ancient Sanskrit epic the Ramayana of Valmiki had been reviewed in this […]
- Provocation from Another SoulIn our May 12 issue, Christopher Benfey reviewed Here and There, an essay collection by the philosopher Stanley Cavell, who died in 2018. Cavell is renowned for the enormous range of his writing, on subjects including the “ordinary language” philosophy that arose from the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and J.L. Austin, the importance of Kant’s […]
- The Racing Brain of Martin Vaughn-JamesMartin Vaughn-James was born amid the apocalypse and never recovered. As he said on more than one occasion, his birth in Bristol on December 5, 1943, occurred “during an air raid.” The visual landscape of his childhood, he wrote, consisted of “abandoned airfields, weed-covered bomb-sites, enigmatic bits of shell-casings, helmets, rusting away in woods and […]
- At Saul Steinberg’s Table“A writer who draws” is how Saul Steinberg described himself. Twenty years after his death, the graphic artist remains best known as the swiftfooted and bonkers satirist behind over eighty covers for The New Yorker. In the beloved artist catalogs he assembled for Viking and Knopf throughout his career, he played with the slippery ability […]
“We can only do our job,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his draft opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, “which is to interpret the law.” “These claims to neutrality and humility should make you nauseous and irate,” writes Liza Batkin in “Deceit in Plain Sight,” her contribution to the Review’s symposium about the […]
For about fifteen years, from the late 1990s through the early 2010s, my partner and I lived off the electrical grid in rural Colorado. Our two-room house, which he had built, was insulated with straw bales; it had a woodstove for heat, an on-demand propane-powered water heater, and a composting toilet. The plumbing—enough for a […]
Aspirations In the windowless clinic where I work, the back hallway is lined with a row of small, square rooms. Inside each room is a desk, a computer screen, a box of tissues, two chairs, and little else. This is where the clinic counselors meet with patients who have come in for their abortions. In […]
There’s a diagram of the Internet that I show my students every semester. It was drawn in December 1969 and features four circles, four boxes, and four lines. The circles represent four institutions—UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, the University of Utah, and the Stanford Research Institute—while the boxes represent giant mainframe computers on their campuses. Those […]
Soviet party leaders tend to get the biographies they deserve. Stephen Kotkin’s unfolding trilogy about Stalin is almost superhuman in scope and ambition. William Taubman’s volumes about Khrushchev and Gorbachev are vivid, buoyant, and dramatic. Susanne Schattenberg’s new biography of Brezhnev is almost as bland as its subject. According to Schattenberg, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was […]
Un-su Kim’s The Cabinet begins with an account of the peculiar fate of Ludger Sylbaris, one of those historical misfits whose story appears in compendia of strange-but-true curiosities, popular accounts of natural disasters, and travel guide sidebars. A native of Martinique, Sylbaris was imprisoned in the city of Saint-Pierre when Mount Pelée erupted on May […]
In April 1940 Gershom Scholem wrote from Jerusalem to Theodor Adorno in New York about their mutual friend in Paris: “I am very worried about Walter Benjamin, from whom I have heard nothing, even in answer to my inquiries, since early December 1939…. If you know anything, please write to me.” Three months later, Adorno […]
In an unusual confluence of transformative historical events, 1984 saw both the debut of the Apple Macintosh, with its monumental impact on personal computing, and the publication of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, the pregnancy guide that would go on to sell more than 22 million copies—the book a fire breath of terror conveying […]
It doesn’t fall it gathers the doctor explainedThat’s just what people named it when I took offThe bandage blinded by the unblocked lightAt first I panicked brightness falls from the airThe lens that you were born with flexes but darkensFilm noir betrayals Niagara none can wellBehold with eyes what underneath him liesThe new lens rigid […]
Greta Garbo was born in 1905 in one of the poorest sections of Stockholm. She lived in a cold-water flat with no indoor toilet. Salka Viertel was born in 1889 into a well-to-do Jewish family living on an estate of rolling meadows and orchards in Galicia, near what is now Lviv, Ukraine. Their stories, which […]
If you are writing a comedy about imitation, plagiarism, or simply the monotonous sameness of so much contemporary literature, so much contemporary discourse, it makes sense perhaps to borrow the title of your work from one of the most celebrated novels of all time and to write it in one of the most radical and […]
“Envy,” the psychologist Peter van Sommers writes, “concerns what you would like to have but don’t possess,” whereas jealousy “concerns what you have and do not wish to lose.” Elaine Hsieh Chou’s hilarious and harrowing debut novel, Disorientation, is set in a place saturated with both emotions, where envy and jealousy shift and interact in […]
The war in Ukraine has simultaneously forced to the surface and upended the memory of a history that had fallen into oblivion. The past, we see once more, can be reinvented and reinterpreted. In 2014 Slava Ukraini became the slogan of an independent, westward-looking Ukraine, when the Euromaidan protests resulted in the ousting of its […]
The sunflowers have gone to seed.A squirrel made off with the head of oneHolding it square in his little paws, like a sandwich.The laying hen won’t lay, though she looks Up to the job. The moon went from small to half to full.Popular opinion about the future turned sour again.The gourds had swelled, and plump were […]
“Whether he poses or is real,” Thom Gunn wrote in one of the first poems inspired by Elvis Presley, “no cat/Bothers to say.” To many British men who came of age during the austere and repressive 1950s, from the formidably erudite and Cambridge-educated Gunn to streetwise Scousers such as John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Presley […]
To the Editors: Marcus Feldman and Jessica Riskin did not like my book. Or rather, they did not like a book called The Genetic Lottery by an author named “Kathryn Paige Harden,” but their review [NYR, April 21] so badly distorts my arguments that I have the curious impression that Feldman and Riskin somehow got […]
For a volume of the letters of Susan Sontag, I would be grateful to hear from those who corresponded with her. Benjamin Taylorbenjtay@aol.com
From the opening lines of Wedding Band, her 1966 play about an interracial relationship in World War I–era South Carolina, Alice Childress keeps her keen eye trained on life’s essentials: money, food, human connection. Mattie trails her daughter Teeta around the stage in search of a lost quarter. In her anger, the mother explains the […]
The draft of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson leaked on the anniversary of the Memphis Massacre, a turning point on the way to what looked like freedom. Over the first three days of May in 1866, white residents of Memphis brutalized, murdered, and sexually assaulted the city’s Black residents. Seven men […]
Princes shall come out of Egypt;Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God Psalm 68:31 Cowboy hat from GucciWrangler on my bootyCan’t nobody tell me nothing Lil Nas X Of the many armored costumes black artists have worn in America, the pharaoh and the cowboy are perennial favorites. Who could forget Michael Jackson in […]
The leaked draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will shift the ground underneath millions of American women. Except in the highly unlikely event that one or two of the Justices publicly changes their mind, we will all wake up one day this summer and experience a fundamental right being pulled out from […]
In the May 26, 2022, issue of the magazine, E. Tammy Kim reviews The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War, a new history of the war drawn from case files from American prisoner of war camps that have recently been declassified after decades in government archives. Included in these documents are photographs and transcripts of […]
When I read about the Supreme Court’s draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, a memory came to me of my mother with my father in the yard of our cinder-block home in Lowndes County, Alabama. They were talking to reporters about how my mother had been sterilized at the age of twenty-six. The […]
The end of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey would be catastrophic for American women, generations of whom have lived with access to abortion. Near the end of his draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, however, Justice Samuel Alito gives a cynically upbeat prediction about its potential effects. Rather than […]
The day before the leak of Samuel Alito’s retrograde Supreme Court draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which appears to be on the verge of overturning long-standing abortion rights, I happened to be on an airplane, watching The Eyes of Tammy Faye—a recent biopic, based on a documentary of the same name, […]
This Thursday, Louisiana state lawmakers are scheduled to discuss on the House floor a bill, HB 813, that would enshrine personhood rights “from the moment of fertilization” and criminalize abortion. Just a few years ago, even in states where Republicans have gerrymandered themselves ironclad majorities, when fanatical lawmakers proposed similar personhood bills Republican leadership usually […]
As a professor of law and of history, I’m naturally interested in the ways that people in the legal field—law professors, lawyers, and judges—use history, and the way historians use the law. Each sometimes draw upon the others’ discipline to bolster arguments they wish to make. The tendency is at its most consequential when judges […]
Why does life feel different to me since Monday night, when I opened Twitter and saw the news? “And the stone word fell / On my still-living breast. / Never mind, I was ready. / I will manage somehow,” Anna Akhmatova writes in “The Sentence,” a poem I keep thinking of when I consider my […]
On a sunny day in 2018 Irish women danced, sang, and cheered on the grounds of Dublin Castle when the ban on abortion in Ireland was finally voted out of existence. I wasn’t there, I did not dance, I stayed at home and wept over my computer keyboard, to the concern of my children. The […]
Some identifying details have been changed for patient privacy. I am a hospital pediatrician in Texas, where since 2021 a law has been in force that outlaws abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Under SB 8, anyone who “abets” or “intends” to abet a later abortion can be sued. The law is deliberately vague: […]
The conventional wisdom is that one cannot judge a Supreme Court justice by his or her first few years on the Court. There is nothing that really prepares one for the awesome power—and responsibility—that a Supreme Court justice holds. Justices typically take some time to find their feet, and tread lightly as they grow into […]
In our May 12 issue, Carolina A. Miranda appraises New Orleans’s fifth citywide art triennial, “Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow,” an exhibition that brought together “historical, environmental, and spiritual themes” in works by artists from around the world that were nonetheless “firmly rooted in New Orleans.” The show sprawled across the city and included sculptural […]
In a couple of weeks’ time, on May 25, Ireland will mark the fourth anniversary of the abortion referendum, when, with broad cross-party support, 66.4 percent of the population voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution. Adopted following a deeply divisive referendum in 1983, “the Eighth” asserted the right to life of […]
Justice Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization would have you believe that the forthcoming decision to overrule Roe v. Wade is a display of great judicial restraint and independence. The draft is written in the language of solemn duty: we do not want to take away abortion rights, the conservative justices […]
In the windowless clinic where I work, the back hallway is lined with a row of small square rooms. Inside each room is a desk, a computer screen, a box of tissues, two chairs, and little else. This is where the clinic counselors meet with patients—mostly women, some trans or nonbinary patients, anyone with a […]
On the morning of August 4, 1944, everything seemed normal at Prinsengracht 263, a tall, narrow building along a canal in Amsterdam’s Jordaan neighborhood. On the ground floor, the workers in the warehouse of a pectin and spice producer formerly known as Opekta/Pectacon—now registered under a false name, since its Jewish founder, Otto Frank, was […]
What is wrong with Africa? Of the world’s twenty-five poorest countries, twenty-one lie south of the Sahara. Crowded streets and informal markets from Dakar to Mombasa teem with hawkers selling candles, batteries, matches, toys, condoms, plastic cups, nylon wedding gowns, fake jewelry, and other cheap imports, but the region itself manufactures almost nothing. Forty percent […]
The first fictional spacecraft were thrilling, vehicles for exploration and discovery, but it wasn’t long before writers realized that spaceships would also be workplaces like their waterborne counterparts, with tight quarters where repetitive tasks and interpersonal friction are occasionally interrupted by interludes of existential peril. The most familiar pop-cultural depiction of this, Ridley Scott’s 1979 […]
A few weeks ago I was invited to the book festival in Trieste, in northeast Italy, a city of divided loyalties and complicated history. At its center is an old Austro-Hungarian port; some of its street signs are bilingual, in Italian and Slovenian. The city was “Tergeste” to the Romans, founded on the site of […]
“The surreal today is measured on the scale of our defeats.” Georges Henein, a founding member of a Cairo group of Surrealists, was responding to a questionnaire that a Paris review had sent him concerning the state of the movement in 1946, twenty-two years on from André Breton’s inaugural Manifeste du surréalisme. What defeats had […]
On New Year’s Day, I went to a bookstore in Cheonan, South Korea, to buy a wall map of the country. The label said, simply, “Map of Korea,” so when I got home and unfolded it, I was surprised to see that it showed both North and South—the entire peninsula and its hundreds of surrounding […]
Does the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have the authority to impose a mask mandate on people who travel on planes, trains, and buses? In April a federal district court in Florida offered a clear answer: Absolutely not. The court gave an exceedingly narrow reading to the CDC’s powers under laws enacted by Congress. […]
Come, my Motorway, my Equals Sign, my Higher Race,Such a Motorway as wheels with stars,Such an Equals Sign as time plus space,Such a Higher Race as cable cars. Come, my Bedside Light, my Takeaway, my Calloused Hand,Such a Bedside Light as lanternfish,Such a Takeaway as takes a stand,Such a Calloused Hand as makes a wish. […]
Hard night, you’re in my breathing now. Come with me, since you have no choice,since you’ve been, in a way, abducted. Every breath will demonstrate my power. We move through a forest of crickets. Their tiny bodies are elderly, arthritic;they sense the fall already moving in, who were babies just yesterday, who were children at dawn. They stiffen into clothespins. […]
There is the war, and then there is the war about the war. Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine is being fought in fields and cities, in the air and at sea. It is also, however, being contested through language. Is it a war or a “special military operation”? Is it an unprovoked invasion or a […]
Some way through Francisco Goldman’s Monkey Boy, the novel’s narrator—an accomplished writer in middle age called Francisco Goldberg, whose name isn’t his only resemblance to the author—recalls “the day I became a journalist.” As an aspiring writer of fiction in his early twenties, he left New York for his mother’s homeland in Central America, intending […]
The most thrilling part of Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), John Reed’s account of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, is not the storming of the Winter Palace or Leon Trotsky’s impassioned speeches. It is the citizens’ debates—described as “hot,” “endless,” “violent,” and “stormy”—over what course the revolution should take, or even whether it […]
When Richard Wilbur undertook in 1952 to translate Molière’s The Misanthrope, it was as compensation for his inability (despite having received a grant for the purpose) to write verse plays of his own: “They didn’t come off. They were very bad, extremely wooden.” With his first two books of poetry, The Beautiful Changes (1947) and […]
In The Allure of the Archives (1989), a gem of a book, the French historian Arlette Farge talks about unearthing, insofar as it’s possible, a past that’s not quite past—particularly in relation to the lives of women, whose histories have often been hidden, forgotten, or written over, women spoken about but whom we seldom hear […]
To the Editors: During the recent annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, a senior Sanskrit scholar offered me a “good news, bad news” proposition. The good news was that our newly revised single-volume edition of the Princeton University Press translation of the ancient Sanskrit epic the Ramayana of Valmiki had been reviewed in this […]
In our May 12 issue, Christopher Benfey reviewed Here and There, an essay collection by the philosopher Stanley Cavell, who died in 2018. Cavell is renowned for the enormous range of his writing, on subjects including the “ordinary language” philosophy that arose from the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and J.L. Austin, the importance of Kant’s […]
Martin Vaughn-James was born amid the apocalypse and never recovered. As he said on more than one occasion, his birth in Bristol on December 5, 1943, occurred “during an air raid.” The visual landscape of his childhood, he wrote, consisted of “abandoned airfields, weed-covered bomb-sites, enigmatic bits of shell-casings, helmets, rusting away in woods and […]
“A writer who draws” is how Saul Steinberg described himself. Twenty years after his death, the graphic artist remains best known as the swiftfooted and bonkers satirist behind over eighty covers for The New Yorker. In the beloved artist catalogs he assembled for Viking and Knopf throughout his career, he played with the slippery ability […]
New York Times Books©
- ‘Secret City,’ an Epic Narrative History of the Closet in the CapitalJames Kirchick’s new book tallies the cost of homophobia on lives and careers in Washington, D.C., from the days of F.D.R. to the Clinton presidency.
- Vacation Reading, UnpackedWhat do we want from the books we take with us when we travel? They can be a destination, a guide — or the tether that restores us to ourselves.
- Writers to Watch This SummerThree authors discuss their new novels and what brought them to write about a young woman in trouble, three brothers from Staten Island and an anxious parrot.
- Summer Reading SuggestionsA book for “White Lotus” fans, a coming-of-age story in the Canary Islands, Werner Herzog’s debut novel (yes, it’s grim) and more.
- A Library, a Pigeon and a CruiseOur critic recommends old and new books.
- Brian Morton on ‘Tasha: A Son’s Memoir’Morton discusses his first work of nonfiction, and Rachel Careau talks about translating “Chéri” and “The End of Chéri,” by Colette.
- Review: “Phil,” by Alan Shipnuck“Phil,” a new biography of the confounding golf star, arrives as he finds himself the subject of a public outcry.
- Review: ‘Evening Hero,’ by Marie Myung-ok LeeIn “The Evening Hero,” a retired Korean-born obstetrician navigates later adulthood in an unwelcoming American mining town.
- Review: ‘What the Ermine Saw,’ by Eden CollinsworthA history of Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th-Century portrait, “Lady With an Ermine,” is also a history of modern Europe.
- Amanda Claridge, Archaeologist of Ancient Rome, Dies at 72Her 1998 guide took a detailed look at the city and its many ruins, examining who built what and why.
- Paul O’Neill Book Excerpt: A Memorable Chat With Ted WilliamsIn his new book, the former Yankee Paul O’Neill recounts a conversation with the Hall of Famer Ted Williams that involved some crucial advice: “Don’t let anyone change you.”
- A New Psychological Thriller Explores the Grim Underbelly of Life as a Social Media ModeratorHanna Bervoets’s latest novel, “We Had to Remove This Post,” is a discomfiting mystery about the disturbing parts of social media that most people never see.
- Review: ‘Neruda on the Park,’ by Cleyvis NateraThe Dominican American family at the center of this debut lives in a New York City neighborhood threatened by luxury condominiums and high-rises.
- Newly Published, From Palestinian Poetry to Stories on Reproductive FreedomA selection of books published this week; plus, a peek at what our colleagues around the newsroom are reading.
- Roger Angell’s Best BooksA look back at some of The New Yorker writer and editor’s most beloved books.
- Roger Angell, Who Wrote About Baseball With Passion, Dies at 101In elegantly winding articles for The New Yorker loaded with inventive imagery, he wrote more like a fan than a sports journalist.
- Suzi Gablik, Art Critic Who Took Modernism to Task, Dies at 87As a collage artist and reviewer, she was an it-girl of avant-garde art. But she turned on that world in 1984 with her salvo of a book, “Has Modernism Failed?”
- Robert Goolrick Dies at 73; Became a Successful Novelist Late in LifeBeing fired as an advertising executive freed him to write a blistering memoir about his Southern family and an erotic novel that became a best seller.
- Elif Batuman’s Alter Ego Goes Back to College. Her Minor: Overthinking.In the follow-up to “The Idiot,” the protagonist returns to Harvard for another year of exquisite intellectual torment and underwhelming romance.
- 6 Audiobooks to Listen to NowThis month’s recommendations feature Viola Davis, a supernatural World War II horror novel and a steamy Jamaican romance.
- New Crime NovelsRobin Peguero’s novel, “With Prejudice,” features a tough-talking prosecutor who says, “The jury is a crew of misfits. The scraps that neither side particularly wanted.”
- Review: “You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty,” by Akwaeke EmeziIn Akwaeke Emezi’s latest novel, “You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty,” a young widow stumbles into new life and romance while grieving for her past love.
- New in Paperback: ‘Girlhood’ and ‘The World Without Us’Six new paperbacks to check out this week.
- A Hat Tip to 4 New Picture BooksThree off-the-top-of-the-head stories and a piece of fitting history.
- 10 New Books We Recommend This WeekSuggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
- Elspeth Barker, Author of a Beloved if Unsung Novel, Dies at 81Her “O Caledonia,” a Gothic coming-of-age story set in Scotland, has been called “one of the best least-known novels of the 20th century.”
- Frank Miller to Revisit Ronin and Sin CityFrank Miller Presents will revisit a couple of comic book creations of his, like Ronin and Sin City, and start a couple of new series.
- Is Motherhood Having a Moment? Ask Jessi Klein.In “I’ll Show Myself Out,” the comedy writer explores the joys and travails of life with a small child.
- Ann Leary Likes Scary Stories“I’m not choosy, as long as there’s a psychopath,” says the novelist, whose new book is “The Foundling.”
- ‘Atoms and Ashes,’ a Frightening Tour of Six Nuclear AccidentsSerhii Plokhy writes about Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and other disasters, and about the common impulse among governments “to hide information and, later, to spin or distort it.”
- Eileen Myles Watches Over an Ever-Changing New YorkNow guarding trees in Lower Manhattan, the poet and author of “Chelsea Girls” says: “Things that might have once been corny to me don’t feel corny anymore.”
- Colin Kaepernick to Publish a Young Adult Memoir“Colin Kaepernick: Change the Game,” an illustrated book, follows a young athlete choosing between baseball, which seems like a sure path, and football, where he feels he can be himself.
- Review: ‘Indelible City,’ by Louisa Lim; and ‘The Impossible City,’ by Karen CheungTo explain the city’s fraught present, two books look to its past.
- Review: ‘Heartbroke,’ by Chelsea Bieker; ‘Valleyesque,’ by Fernando A. Flores; and ‘Proof of Me,’ by Erica Plouffe LazureFrom California’s Central Valley to the Texas-Mexico border to rural North Carolina, fiction anchored by a strong sense of place.
- Who Was George Floyd?“His Name Is George Floyd,” by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, is a thorough recounting of the life of the man whose brutal murder set off historic protests.
- What Is the Federal Reserve’s Role in the Economy? Bernanke Knows.Ben S. Bernanke’s “21st Century Monetary Policy” is an insider’s account of the operations of the Fed.
- A Time-Traveling Daughter Just Wants Some Time With Her DadEmma Straub’s new novel, “This Time Tomorrow,” is a love letter to a bygone era on the Upper West Side and a timeless family bond.
- The Challenge of Making Art in a Culture That Cheapens ItIn Alexander Maksik’s “The Long Corner,” a writer leaves a dreary city for an enigmatic, possibly sinister artists’ colony.
- Book Review: ‘Avalon,’ by Nell ZinkZink’s new novel is about a girl’s life with a menacing stepfamily, an elusive love interest and a great ambition.
- A Colette for Our TimesA new translation by Rachel Careau breathes fresh life into Colette’s shockingly modern novels of May-December love.
- A Family of Geniuses and Their Search for TranscendenceDaniel Guebel’s novel “The Absolute” is a sweeping, century-spanning genealogy of creative obsessions.
- A Tale of Well-Meaning Visitors Reflects a Colonial LegacyIn Audrey Magee’s novel “The Colony,” an artist and a linguist go to work on an Irish island during a politically fraught season.
- America’s Wars Are Fought by Relatively Few People. That’s a Problem for Phil Klay.Klay’s essay collection, “Uncertain Ground,” examines what war has come to mean in the United States.
- When You’re This Hated, Everyone’s a SuspectIn “Who Killed Jane Stanford?” Richard White takes on a 1905 murder — and seamy cover-up — that has fascinated scholars for generations.
- Jhumpa Lahiri Leaves Her Comfort ZoneAn acclaimed author traces a journey away from her native language and discovers new selves in the process.
James Kirchick’s new book tallies the cost of homophobia on lives and careers in Washington, D.C., from the days of F.D.R. to the Clinton presidency.
What do we want from the books we take with us when we travel? They can be a destination, a guide — or the tether that restores us to ourselves.
Three authors discuss their new novels and what brought them to write about a young woman in trouble, three brothers from Staten Island and an anxious parrot.
A book for “White Lotus” fans, a coming-of-age story in the Canary Islands, Werner Herzog’s debut novel (yes, it’s grim) and more.
Our critic recommends old and new books.
Morton discusses his first work of nonfiction, and Rachel Careau talks about translating “Chéri” and “The End of Chéri,” by Colette.
“Phil,” a new biography of the confounding golf star, arrives as he finds himself the subject of a public outcry.
In “The Evening Hero,” a retired Korean-born obstetrician navigates later adulthood in an unwelcoming American mining town.
A history of Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th-Century portrait, “Lady With an Ermine,” is also a history of modern Europe.
Her 1998 guide took a detailed look at the city and its many ruins, examining who built what and why.
In his new book, the former Yankee Paul O’Neill recounts a conversation with the Hall of Famer Ted Williams that involved some crucial advice: “Don’t let anyone change you.”
Hanna Bervoets’s latest novel, “We Had to Remove This Post,” is a discomfiting mystery about the disturbing parts of social media that most people never see.
The Dominican American family at the center of this debut lives in a New York City neighborhood threatened by luxury condominiums and high-rises.
A selection of books published this week; plus, a peek at what our colleagues around the newsroom are reading.
A look back at some of The New Yorker writer and editor’s most beloved books.
In elegantly winding articles for The New Yorker loaded with inventive imagery, he wrote more like a fan than a sports journalist.
As a collage artist and reviewer, she was an it-girl of avant-garde art. But she turned on that world in 1984 with her salvo of a book, “Has Modernism Failed?”
Being fired as an advertising executive freed him to write a blistering memoir about his Southern family and an erotic novel that became a best seller.
In the follow-up to “The Idiot,” the protagonist returns to Harvard for another year of exquisite intellectual torment and underwhelming romance.
This month’s recommendations feature Viola Davis, a supernatural World War II horror novel and a steamy Jamaican romance.
Robin Peguero’s novel, “With Prejudice,” features a tough-talking prosecutor who says, “The jury is a crew of misfits. The scraps that neither side particularly wanted.”
In Akwaeke Emezi’s latest novel, “You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty,” a young widow stumbles into new life and romance while grieving for her past love.
Six new paperbacks to check out this week.
Three off-the-top-of-the-head stories and a piece of fitting history.
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Her “O Caledonia,” a Gothic coming-of-age story set in Scotland, has been called “one of the best least-known novels of the 20th century.”
Frank Miller Presents will revisit a couple of comic book creations of his, like Ronin and Sin City, and start a couple of new series.
In “I’ll Show Myself Out,” the comedy writer explores the joys and travails of life with a small child.
“I’m not choosy, as long as there’s a psychopath,” says the novelist, whose new book is “The Foundling.”
Serhii Plokhy writes about Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and other disasters, and about the common impulse among governments “to hide information and, later, to spin or distort it.”
Now guarding trees in Lower Manhattan, the poet and author of “Chelsea Girls” says: “Things that might have once been corny to me don’t feel corny anymore.”
“Colin Kaepernick: Change the Game,” an illustrated book, follows a young athlete choosing between baseball, which seems like a sure path, and football, where he feels he can be himself.
To explain the city’s fraught present, two books look to its past.
From California’s Central Valley to the Texas-Mexico border to rural North Carolina, fiction anchored by a strong sense of place.
“His Name Is George Floyd,” by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, is a thorough recounting of the life of the man whose brutal murder set off historic protests.
Ben S. Bernanke’s “21st Century Monetary Policy” is an insider’s account of the operations of the Fed.
Emma Straub’s new novel, “This Time Tomorrow,” is a love letter to a bygone era on the Upper West Side and a timeless family bond.
In Alexander Maksik’s “The Long Corner,” a writer leaves a dreary city for an enigmatic, possibly sinister artists’ colony.
Zink’s new novel is about a girl’s life with a menacing stepfamily, an elusive love interest and a great ambition.
A new translation by Rachel Careau breathes fresh life into Colette’s shockingly modern novels of May-December love.
Daniel Guebel’s novel “The Absolute” is a sweeping, century-spanning genealogy of creative obsessions.
In Audrey Magee’s novel “The Colony,” an artist and a linguist go to work on an Irish island during a politically fraught season.
Klay’s essay collection, “Uncertain Ground,” examines what war has come to mean in the United States.
In “Who Killed Jane Stanford?” Richard White takes on a 1905 murder — and seamy cover-up — that has fascinated scholars for generations.
An acclaimed author traces a journey away from her native language and discovers new selves in the process.
The Chronicle of Higher Education©
- Yes, Professors 'Groom' Their StudentsTeaching always enlists students in a vision of the future.By Blake Smith
Teaching always enlists students in a vision of the future.
- Yes, Students Are Disengaged. What Else Is New?A recently identified phenomenon seems awfully familiar.By Robert Zaretsky
A recently identified phenomenon seems awfully familiar.
- ‘My Job Has Fundamentally Changed’Deans and department chairs on the challenges of an evolving campus workplace.By Megan Zahneis
Deans and department chairs on the challenges of an evolving campus workplace.
- No Fun for You!Academe's pleasure problem.By Douglas Dowland
Academe's pleasure problem.
- Digital Humanists Need to Learn How to CountA prominent recent book in the field suffers serious methodological pitfalls.By Mordechai Levy-Eichel and Daniel Scheinerman
A prominent recent book in the field suffers serious methodological pitfalls.
- When Academic Life Is a Horror ShowMariama Diallo's 'Master' satirizes on-campus racism in sharp but uneven strokes. By Mari N. Crabtree
Mariama Diallo's Master satirizes on-campus racism in sharp but uneven strokes.
- On the Uses and Abuses of Identity PoliticsThe philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on the academy, the elite, and the future of politics.By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
The philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on the academy, the elite, and the future of politics.
- Saving Academic Freedom From Free SpeechThe difference between the two is critical — and widely ignored.By Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth
The difference between the two is critical — and widely ignored.
- No More Letters of Recommendation!This hyperstylized, dishonest genre is useless for everyone.By Benjamin Schreier
This hyperstylized, dishonest genre is useless for everyone.
- What Are the Limits of Academic Freedom?A maddening new book fumbles an important debate. By Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
A maddening new book fumbles an important debate.
Teaching always enlists students in a vision of the future.By Blake Smith
Teaching always enlists students in a vision of the future.
A recently identified phenomenon seems awfully familiar.By Robert Zaretsky
A recently identified phenomenon seems awfully familiar.
Deans and department chairs on the challenges of an evolving campus workplace.By Megan Zahneis
Deans and department chairs on the challenges of an evolving campus workplace.
Academe's pleasure problem.By Douglas Dowland
Academe's pleasure problem.
A prominent recent book in the field suffers serious methodological pitfalls.By Mordechai Levy-Eichel and Daniel Scheinerman
A prominent recent book in the field suffers serious methodological pitfalls.
Mariama Diallo's 'Master' satirizes on-campus racism in sharp but uneven strokes. By Mari N. Crabtree
Mariama Diallo's Master satirizes on-campus racism in sharp but uneven strokes.
The philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on the academy, the elite, and the future of politics.By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
The philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on the academy, the elite, and the future of politics.
The difference between the two is critical — and widely ignored.By Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth
The difference between the two is critical — and widely ignored.
This hyperstylized, dishonest genre is useless for everyone.By Benjamin Schreier
This hyperstylized, dishonest genre is useless for everyone.
A maddening new book fumbles an important debate. By Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
A maddening new book fumbles an important debate.