https://www.nybooks.com en-US Sat, 17 Oct 2026 02:48:53 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/17/switching-on-lola-seaton/ In our October 22 issue, Lola Seaton reviews Jonathan Buckley’s latest novel, One Boat. “Buckley’s best fiction,” she writes, “is refreshingly free of self-regard: lovingly crafted but out of devotion to his characters rather than to exhibit his technical gifts.” This commitment to the lives of the people in his stories makes his books “alive […]]]> Lola Seaton, Lauren Kane Sat, 17 Oct 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/17/switching-on-lola-seaton/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/poem-david-plante/ No, no, I don’t believe in my poems, Not really, but I defer to the poet in me Who belies belief with a fact that Requires no belief, to write a poem In which fire is the poetic Element, fire burning in a wood At night, the leaves falling in flames From trees, and he […]]]> David Plante Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/poem-david-plante/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/rebel-rebel-the-invention-of-george-sand-sampson/ George Sand’s scandalous life, including a decade-long affair with Chopin, has obscured the influence of her many novels.]]> Kathryn Hughes Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/rebel-rebel-the-invention-of-george-sand-sampson/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/work-poem-claire-devoogd/ I’m too broke to make the work Or I don’t care enough about the work To be as broke as I should let myself be To have the time to make the work I work too hard to make the work Or my indolence is too great to take that pleasure In the work that […]]]> Claire DeVoogd Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/work-poem-claire-devoogd/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/march-13-2020-shane-mccrae/ Because the islands bright white          solid stone Reach down through shifting mud beneath the creek Except what might be seen          by radar meek Orisons sounding the meek’s due          but none Near for use          things lost in their pocks are gone Never to be regained          I lost a week Ago an action          figure’s golden beak- Shaped […]]]> Shane McCrae Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/march-13-2020-shane-mccrae/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/the-plot-to-delete-democracy-nerd-reich-duran/ In The Nerd Reich Gil Durán shows how Silicon Valley billionaires have pushed a fringe ideology—what is popularly called techno-fascism but is closer in aspiration to straight-up totalitarianism—into the affairs of state.]]> Sue Halpern Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/the-plot-to-delete-democracy-nerd-reich-duran/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/making-light-of-a-dark-past-la-bola-negra/ La Bola Negra sidesteps the vicious politics of the Spanish Civil War to tell a story about gay sexual freedom.]]> Colm Tóibín Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/making-light-of-a-dark-past-la-bola-negra/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/mapping-mississippi-white-bennie-thompson/ Bennie Thompson’s trailblazing career came after the success of the Voting Rights Act and could end with its fall.]]> Jeffrey Toobin Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/mapping-mississippi-white-bennie-thompson/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/vermeers-vanishing-act-johannes-vermeer/ Why is it that so many smart, inquisitive writers, smitten by the elusiveness of Vermeer’s pictures, should work so hard to wrestle that elusiveness into submission?]]> Susan Tallman Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/vermeers-vanishing-act-johannes-vermeer/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/yemen-the-endless-siege-the-yemen-model-stark/ The “Yemen Model” of American foreign policy has proved a catastrophic failure, leaving brutal proxies better armed and ordinary Yemenis less safe.]]> Nicolas Niarchos Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/yemen-the-endless-siege-the-yemen-model-stark/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/unfinished-business-big-kiss-bye-bye-claire-louise-bennett/ Claire-Louise Bennett’s novels have found a new language to evoke the often circular, abstracted nature of human consciousness.]]> Meghan O’Gieblyn Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/unfinished-business-big-kiss-bye-bye-claire-louise-bennett/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/burning-bright-for-now-tigers-between-empires/ The Amur tiger and the jaguar are among the most elusive big cats in the world. Biologists have spent years tracking them down to save them.]]> Colin Thubron Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/burning-bright-for-now-tigers-between-empires/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/talk-to-it-chatbots-artificial-intimacy-inventing-eliza/ This is the chatbots’ original sin: they are programmed to deceive us.]]> James Gleick Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/talk-to-it-chatbots-artificial-intimacy-inventing-eliza/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/whither-american-socialism-eugene-v-debs/ Since the time of Eugene V. Debs, socialists have struggled to persuade Americans that they could create a more just society.]]> Michael Kazin Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/whither-american-socialism-eugene-v-debs/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/privatized-stress-working-title-i-want-to-change-leslie/ Saul Leslie’s A Working Title I Want to Change, a satire about the British supermarket chain Tesco, joins a spate of recent novels about people trying to survive the gig economy.]]> Daisy Hildyard Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/privatized-stress-working-title-i-want-to-change-leslie/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/out-from-underground-weathermen/ Fifty years after the last Weather Underground bomb exploded, former members and their children reassess the costs of the group’s violent struggle.]]> Adam Hochschild Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/out-from-underground-weathermen/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/indefensible-delights-what-we-did-before-our-moth-days-wallace-shawn/ Wallace Shawn’s plays expose the ways in which civilized society is maintained by a violence that is everywhere denied.]]> Adam Thirlwell Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/indefensible-delights-what-we-did-before-our-moth-days-wallace-shawn/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/turning-around-the-easel-emily-mae-smith/ The painter Emily Mae Smith hands over her brush to a character borrowed from pop culture—a gesture with symbolic depth.]]> Will Heinrich Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/turning-around-the-easel-emily-mae-smith/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/a-city-all-his-own-baldwin-lee/ In his view camera pictures of New York in the late 1970s, Baldwin Lee made the photographic tradition of the city as empty stage set his own.]]> Joel Smith Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/a-city-all-his-own-baldwin-lee/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/the-sheer-size-of-it-all-edward-burtynsky/ Edward Burtynsky’s photographs chronicle the gigantic scale of the scarred landscapes created by twentieth-century extractive industries.]]> Bill McKibben Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/the-sheer-size-of-it-all-edward-burtynsky/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/14/the-return-of-child-labor/ For years I have been haunted by a grainy video I saw in 2023, when I was interviewing poultry processing workers in Green Forest, Arkansas. In those months I spoke often with the organizer Magaly Licolli, who directs Venceremos, a grassroots organization dedicated to protecting the rights of poultry workers. One day we were sitting […]]]> Alice Driver Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/14/the-return-of-child-labor/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/14/rachel-kushner-reads-from-love-and-death-in-the-american-novel/ Season 2, Episode 4 of Private Life]]> Leslie A. Fiedler, Rachel Kushner Wed, 14 Oct 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/14/rachel-kushner-reads-from-love-and-death-in-the-american-novel/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/13/thomas-jefferson-with-annette-gordon-reed/ Season 1, Episode 1 of Endgame]]> Annette Gordon-Reed, Fintan O’Toole Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:13:38 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/13/thomas-jefferson-with-annette-gordon-reed/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/the-dream-of-ai-primacy/ The US drive to win the AI race against China now feeds a fantasy of permanent American dominance in global affairs.]]> Julian Gewirtz Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/the-dream-of-ai-primacy/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/11/our-1989-house-of-hopes/ On October 7, 1989, East Germany celebrated its fortieth anniversary with a military parade down Karl-Marx-Allee—an old-fashioned display of state power as protests against Communist rule spread across the country. Opponents of the regime were galled by the phalanxes of goose-stepping soldiers and columns of tanks. That same day, representatives of East Berlin’s theaters gathered […]]]> Ian Johnson Sun, 11 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/11/our-1989-house-of-hopes/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/10/between-earth-and-sky-dovzhenko/ Oleksandr Dovzhenko was a connoisseur of clouds. In many of his shots, the big sky of Ukraine’s fields and steppe swallows the frame. When tiny human forms emerge upward into the heavens, they come as a surprise. As they grow they become monumental, often viewed from below. This is a fairly standard technique in Soviet […]]]> Sophie Pinkham Sat, 10 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/10/between-earth-and-sky-dovzhenko/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/10/the-composer-matthew-aucoin/ In the Review’s October 22 issue, Matthew Aucoin surveys Philip Glass’s six-decade musical career, occasioned by the premiere of his new symphony, Lincoln, at Tanglewood this past summer. “Any artist who invents a distinctive, instantly recognizable mood is sure to leave a mark on the history of their art form,” Aucoin writes. “And Glass did […]]]> Matthew Aucoin, Daniel Drake Sat, 10 Oct 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/10/the-composer-matthew-aucoin/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/07/edwin-frank-on-love-and-death-in-the-american-novel/ Season 2, Episode 3 of Private Life]]> Edwin Frank, Jarrett Earnest Wed, 07 Oct 2026 19:40:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/07/edwin-frank-on-love-and-death-in-the-american-novel/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/07/ming-smiths-ming-smiths/ Perhaps the most obvious thing in our surroundings which is an occasion for “unselfing” … is what is popularly called beauty. … I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a […]]]> Namwali Serpell Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:49:17 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/07/ming-smiths-ming-smiths/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/06/the-wexford-touch/ Among all the music and opera festivals of Europe, Salzburg might be the grandest, or it certainly thinks it is; the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade is the prettiest, with Schubert played and sung amid the lovely hills of the Bregenzerwald overlooking the upper Rhine; and Bayreuth is without doubt the most grueling. Richard Wagner characteristically decreed that […]]]> Geoffrey Wheatcroft Tue, 06 Oct 2026 09:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/06/the-wexford-touch/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/04/a-delicate-repair-benin-bronzes/ The late Nigerian sculptor Erhabor Emokpae is perhaps best known for his bronze replica of the sixteenth-century ivory mask of Queen Idia, the kingdom of Benin’s premier iyoba, or queen mother. The year was 1977. Nigeria had attained political independence from Britain less than two decades earlier and been through a bitter civil war in […]]]> Kovie Biakolo Sun, 04 Oct 2026 07:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/04/a-delicate-repair-benin-bronzes/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/03/protesting-with-panache-poorna-swami/ Writing for the NYR Online from India’s Cockroach Janata Party protests this summer, Poorna Swami explained the young protesters’ outrage at the corruption and authoritarianism of the Modi government, offered a concise history of antigovernment agitation in India, and laid out the complicated social forces that brought these students together in the street across lines […]]]> Poorna Swami, Nawal Arjini Sat, 03 Oct 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/03/protesting-with-panache-poorna-swami/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/02/the-private-life-of-power/ I met Karan Mahajan, the Indian-American novelist and essayist, in 2018, when we were both fellows at the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library. Karan was beginning to write The Complex, his novel that has just been released; I was finishing The Enigma of Clarence Thomas. I was drawn to Karan right away. […]]]> Karan Mahajan, Corey Robin Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/02/the-private-life-of-power/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/how-tech-rules-silicon-empires-srnicek/ One of the hallmarks of the modern corporation is the separation of ownership from control. The firm is owned by shareholders but led by managers, who answer to shareholders only indirectly. Actually, it’s weirder than that. The corporation owns itself. Shareholders merely own stock, which is a claim on the firm’s assets and earnings. Elements […]]]> Ben Tarnoff Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/how-tech-rules-silicon-empires-srnicek/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/eradicating-the-fourth-branch-noah-feldman/ By ending the independence of federal agencies, the Supreme Court has taken another step toward the creation of an elected presidential dictatorship.]]> Noah Feldman Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/eradicating-the-fourth-branch-noah-feldman/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/the-elusive-glamour-of-peter-hujar-and-paul-thek/ A dual biography of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek is a tantalizing portrait of the artists and their epoch, just before the catastrophe of AIDS.]]> Alan Hollinghurst Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/the-elusive-glamour-of-peter-hujar-and-paul-thek/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/catalytic-ghosts-gliff-glyph-ali-smith/ In any story by the Scottish writer Ali Smith, you are likely to find a precocious young person who delivers a dose of naked truth, exposing the shams of contemporary mores and politics. You may also find a ghost. These figures often serve as catalysts. They shake other characters awake and chivy them along toward […]]]> Regina Marler Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/catalytic-ghosts-gliff-glyph-ali-smith/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/the-art-of-extraction-sentient-earth/ A group exhibition explores humans’ ubiquitous but varied habit of plundering their environments for raw materials and more.]]> Travis Diehl Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/the-art-of-extraction-sentient-earth/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/parsley-sage-rosemary-and-ree-mayer-morton/ “Flesh mixed with gowns, like kneaded satin; that is the substance of flowers.” The line comes from The Voice of Things (1942), a book of prose poems by Francis Ponge in which he muses on the beauty of the commonplace—the erratic flight of butterflies, the pleasure of opening and closing doors—eager to see past an […]]]> Nicole Rudick Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/parsley-sage-rosemary-and-ree-mayer-morton/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/message-in-a-bottle-jurgen-habermas/ Over the course of his life Jürgen Habermas sought to honor the principle that in a modern democracy the only legitimate force should be the unforced force of the better argument.]]> Peter E. Gordon Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/message-in-a-bottle-jurgen-habermas/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/small-is-beautiful-one-boat-buckley/ Jonathan Buckley's books embody the idea of writing as self-effacing transmission; their attentiveness to minor characters may be what the novel was built to do, but today it can feel radical.]]> Lola Seaton Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/small-is-beautiful-one-boat-buckley/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/possessed-of-alchemystic-powers-ithell-colquhoun/ In 1949 Ithell Colquhoun—artist, writer, and occultist—produced a manifesto, titled “The Mantic Stain,” in which she called on her readers to follow French Surrealism’s practice of “pure psychic automatism.” It was, Breton wrote, “the real working of thought. Dictation of thought, without any control exercised by reason, and beyond any preoccupation, aesthetic or moral.” “Mantic” […]]]> Marina Warner Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/possessed-of-alchemystic-powers-ithell-colquhoun/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/paging-dr-caligari-elaine-equi/ It’s not vertigo exactly, more a diagonal feeling as if a giant had picked up the room and were about to spill everything, you included. And then there is the tired-as-Sisyphus feeling from drawing a load of shadows up a painted hill. A film of spirits clouds our eyes, making it impossible to watch the […]]]> Elaine Equi Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/paging-dr-caligari-elaine-equi/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/pox-britannica-the-dreaded-pox-weisser/ Satan’s Harvest Home, an anonymous pamphlet published in London in 1749, offers a copious accounting of contemporary vices, with special attention to “the Present State of Whorecraft, Adultery, Fornication, Procuring, Pimping, Sodomy, And the Game at Flatts.” That state was strong, the pamphlet found, throughout “this good Protestant kingdom” and especially in the capital city […]]]> Catherine Nicholson Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/pox-britannica-the-dreaded-pox-weisser/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/the-virtuoso-of-repetition-philip-glass/ In both Philip Glass’s most avant-garde and his most commercially successful works, his music seems to accompany some unheard melody while inducing a state of blissful distraction.]]> Matthew Aucoin Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/the-virtuoso-of-repetition-philip-glass/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/let-a-hundred-websites-bloom-chinese-internet-exams/ The Internet and the smartphone have become formidable tools for the Chinese government to maintain tight control over society.]]> Howard W. French Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/let-a-hundred-websites-bloom-chinese-internet-exams/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/boxcar-to-nowhere-the-hobo-robert-suits/ American lore about hoboes has sugared over the economic and environmental forces that drove people from their homes and onto the rails and roads in the first place, as a new history lays out.]]> Caroline Fraser Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/boxcar-to-nowhere-the-hobo-robert-suits/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/crisis-arioso-ben-lerner/ Write me a libretto (what is a libretto) that tracks the plummeting finch populations in a nondespairing (what is a finch way, what are the ways of finches Put an “o” before             O, what are the ways to notate the bridge That depends on what is meant by suspension The government says: Because this is […]]]> Ben Lerner Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/crisis-arioso-ben-lerner/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/building-a-real-man-bodybuilding/ The Incredible Hulk, the Thing, He-Man, Superman—these cartoon heroes must fulfill some kind of longing. And as yearnings go, it’s an old one: the Hebrew tradition has Samson, the Greek Heracles, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the Irish Cú Chulainn. Every culture has its dreams of superhuman strength, often divine, certainly supernatural: Glooscap of the Mi’kmaq and […]]]> Gavin Francis Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/building-a-real-man-bodybuilding/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/second-chances-office-politics-wilfrid-sheed/ My friend the bon vivant bookseller Michael Seidenberg of Brazenhead Books, which he ran out of his apartment in New York City, died in 2019. I’d known him since 1978, when as a teenager I apprenticed myself to his first shop. Michael loved pressing “lost” books and authors on me, and on anyone. A visit […]]]> Jonathan Lethem Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/second-chances-office-politics-wilfrid-sheed/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/30/from-the-archive-the-perils-of-pauline/ In this episode of Private Life, the actress Holland Taylor reads Renata Adler’s essay “The Perils of Pauline,” an expansive assessment of Pauline Kael’s film criticism from the Review’s August 14, 1980, issue. Taylor has been working on films, television, and Broadway since the 1960s. She is a nine-time Emmy nominee, winning once, in 1999, […]]]> Renata Adler, Holland Taylor Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:01:46 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/30/from-the-archive-the-perils-of-pauline/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/29/from-fear-set-free-judith-shklar/ Humankind cannot bear very much uncertainty; to our dying day, we are all afraid of the dark. And so we perceive the world selectively, exaggerating the significance of particular things, downplaying others, and ignoring most of what bombards our senses, all so that we might be convinced, from now until bedtime, that we understand ourselves […]]]> Mark Lilla Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:02:59 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/29/from-fear-set-free-judith-shklar/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/getting-into-trouble-vaclav-havel/ Almost fifty years after the Czechoslovak human rights initiative Charter 77 was first reported in the Review’s pages, Václav Havel’s own long-lost account of his imprisonment now appears in English for the first time.]]> Václav Havel, Paul Wilson Tue, 29 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/10/22/getting-into-trouble-vaclav-havel/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/27/the-work-of-math-in-the-age-of-artificial-reproduction/ There are seven questions in pure mathematics deemed important enough by the Clay Mathematics Institute, a nonprofit foundation devoted to “furthering the beauty, power and universality of mathematical thought,” that each of their solutions carries a prize of $1 million. To date only one of these “Millennium Prize Problems,” as the foundation calls them, has […]]]> Dan Rockmore Sun, 27 Sep 2026 07:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/27/the-work-of-math-in-the-age-of-artificial-reproduction/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/26/a-plum-assignment-lena-beug-jason-logan/ The cover for our Fall Books Issue—a painting of ripe purple plums in a punnet, surrounded by hand-painted cover lines—was an unexpected collaboration between the Irish-born New Yorker Lena Beug, a commercials director, and the Canadian Jason Logan, who makes ink from natural pigments that he forages from rural and urban environments.  I had assigned the […]]]> Lena Beug, Jason Logan, Leanne Shapton Sat, 26 Sep 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/26/a-plum-assignment-lena-beug-jason-logan/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/23/lucy-sante-on-pauline-kael-film-criticism-and-pop-culture/ In the second season premiere of Private Life, host Jarrett Earnest is joined by the writer and critic Lucy Sante to discuss Pauline Kael’s career, pop culture writing, and Sante’s writing for the Review, where she has been a frequent contributor since the 1980s. The conversation focuses on “The Perils of Pauline” (published in the […]]]> Lucy Sante, Jarrett Earnest Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:24:11 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/23/lucy-sante-on-pauline-kael-film-criticism-and-pop-culture/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/23/sand-castles-la-derive-delsol/ To begin, a guessing game. The February 1967 issue of Cahiers du cinéma includes a “Dictionary of New French Cinema” comprising capsule commentaries on 157 directors. One of these offers the following superlative assessment: “She remains (now alongside Marguerite Duras) the greatest female auteur of our cinema.” Naming the recipient of this praise shouldn’t be […]]]> Erika Balsom Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:22:46 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/23/sand-castles-la-derive-delsol/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/19/certain-grain-of-stupidity-christopher-alessandrini/ In 1961, on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia, Eleanor “Sandy” Torrey West and her husband founded a residency, the Ossabaw Island Project (OIP). As Christopher Alessandrini writes in our October 8 issue, the island—which West had inherited from her patrician parents—was “a patchwork landscape of salt marshes and maritime forests, tidal creeks […]]]> Christopher Alessandrini, Nandini Krishnan Sat, 19 Sep 2026 10:45:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/19/certain-grain-of-stupidity-christopher-alessandrini/