https://www.nybooks.com en-US Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:12:48 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/05/society-gumbo-piper-french/ In 1951 the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that “in Sausalito people live on anything that floats.” Those midcentury houseboat dwellers were the antecedents of Marin County’s “anchor-outs,” people who live on the anchorage in Richardson Bay and therefore, as Piper French writes in her review of Joe Kloc’s Lost at Sea in our September 24 […]]]> Piper French, Maggie McGowan Sat, 05 Sep 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/05/society-gumbo-piper-french/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/05/an-exception-in-world-affairs-ratko-mladic/ Ratko Mladić’s death last week at eighty-three in The Hague—where he was serving a life sentence for committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide as the commander of the Bosnian Serb forces during the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995—is a reminder that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was the […]]]> Aryeh Neier Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:28:05 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/05/an-exception-in-world-affairs-ratko-mladic/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/the-dartmouth-exception-sian-beilock/ Among its peers in the Ivy League, Dartmouth was perfectly positioned to resist Trump’s attack on higher education. It chose not to.]]> Jacob Weisberg Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/the-dartmouth-exception-sian-beilock/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/an-ecosystem-of-her-own-maren-hassinger/ Maren Hassinger’s alchemical touch transforms the most resistant materials into evocations of the endlessly changing natural world.]]> Carolina A. Miranda Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/an-ecosystem-of-her-own-maren-hassinger/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/the-village-photographer-madeleine-de-sinety/ Madeleine de Sinéty sloughed off her aristocratic upbringing and spent her life capturing small-town life in Brittany and Maine.]]> Felix Bazalgette Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/the-village-photographer-madeleine-de-sinety/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/where-hatred-lies-on-antisemitism-mark-mazower/ A nuanced new history by Mark Mazower reminds us that antisemitism, an age-old threat to Jewish life, can be warped into a political tool—as we see today, when any criticism of Israel can be deemed antisemitic.]]> Omer Bartov Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/where-hatred-lies-on-antisemitism-mark-mazower/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/sittin-on-the-dock-of-the-bay-lost-at-sea-joe-kloc/ Joe Kloc’s portrait of a group of outsiders living on boats in Marin County provides a record of a community many wish would quietly disappear.]]> Piper French Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/sittin-on-the-dock-of-the-bay-lost-at-sea-joe-kloc/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/the-jealousy-comes-from-nowhere-winters-tale-delacorte-theater/ For actors in The Winter’s Tale, the fractured marriage at the center of the play is a barometer of relationships in our own time.]]> James Shapiro Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/the-jealousy-comes-from-nowhere-winters-tale-delacorte-theater/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/unraveling-medical-mysteries-elusive-body-sifferlin/ Patients with undiagnosed conditions suffer not only from their symptoms but also from the uncertainly of not knowing what afflicts them.]]> Jerome Groopman Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/unraveling-medical-mysteries-elusive-body-sifferlin/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/cherchez-les-femmes-female-perspective-museo-del-prado/ A new initiative at the Prado calls visitors’ attention to the many works in the collection acquired by royal women.]]> Ingrid D. Rowland Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/cherchez-les-femmes-female-perspective-museo-del-prado/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/is-morality-universal-the-diversity-of-morals-lukes/ In The Diversity of Morals, Steven Lukes attempts to reconcile philosophical arguments that there is one morality despite cultural differences with empirical studies that suggest it’s all relative.]]> Susan Neiman Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/is-morality-universal-the-diversity-of-morals-lukes/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/and-yet-it-warms-federal-judges-and-climate-change/ A new edition of a manual that helps federal judges understand scientific subjects included a chapter on climate change that was withdrawn after attacks by denialists.]]> Jed S. Rakoff Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/and-yet-it-warms-federal-judges-and-climate-change/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/data-and-dames-cloudthief-nathaniel-rich/ In Nathaniel Rich’s Cloudthief, a heist and a femme fatale plunge an ecojournalist into an all-too-real climate collapse.]]> James Walton Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/data-and-dames-cloudthief-nathaniel-rich/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/september-october-november-lawrence-joseph/ And then having been surgically put to a robotic knife. The body’s fate objectified in an online medical chart. Your Exam Images Click Here to View Your Images. Duodenal tubular adenoma. Impression: no evidence of recurrent or metastatic disease. Coronal and sagittal reconstructions were performed. This fluid collection is noted immediately adjacent to the pancreatico- […]]]> Lawrence Joseph Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/september-october-november-lawrence-joseph/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/upstate-jeffrey-yang/ How far do you have to go before the state turns up? Verily, verily along the river and back to the plots of native shrubs and vines by these hills or mountains. While duties are confused with tariffs for the safety of a bowling ball, the world spins on thin ice. It being harder, the […]]]> Jeffrey Yang Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/upstate-jeffrey-yang/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/farinelli-david-pollard/ The beauty of that voice is paradoxical, slicing the flesh into a sound of ghostly fire beyond relinquishment. It is the dying fall, the little death that passes into tremors of the air, a tender blade, corporeal; steeped in an alchemy of milk and opiates of wine drunk with the sacrifice of such white humors. […]]]> David Pollard Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/farinelli-david-pollard/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/venezuela-under-the-rubble-william-neuman/ This summer’s earthquakes exposed the hollow core of the country’s new, Trump-instated government, leaving ordinary citizens all but alone in recovering from catastrophe.]]> William Neuman Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/venezuela-under-the-rubble-william-neuman/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/when-luther-vandrosss-father-puts-a-dollar-under-his-sons-pillow-sharon-olds/ When our kids were young, I thought I was going to be as good a parent to them as my parents had not been to me—maybe exactly as good. On the radio, as I drive, a father is putting a sign of kindness under his boy’s sleeping head, I am on a dirt road, I […]]]> Sharon Olds Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/when-luther-vandrosss-father-puts-a-dollar-under-his-sons-pillow-sharon-olds/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/chills-of-the-unsaid-the-palm-house-gwendoline-riley/ In its skewering of London’s literary egos, Gwendoline Riley’s The Palm House takes a step away from her previous parent-dominated novels, but it too is told by a middle-aged woman struggling to come to terms with her childhood and adolescence.]]> Miranda Seymour Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/chills-of-the-unsaid-the-palm-house-gwendoline-riley/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/wishing-it-so-meghan-ogieblyn/ As AI erodes our attention spans and expressiveness, philosophers like Simone Weil and Arthur Schopenhauer offer profound insights on what it means to be an individual.]]> Meghan O’Gieblyn Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/wishing-it-so-meghan-ogieblyn/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/looking-class-the-connoisseur-the-goldsmiths-debt/ Timely questions lurk at the heart of connoisseurship: What counts as originality, what value do we place on it, how do we protect it?]]> Susan Tallman Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/looking-class-the-connoisseur-the-goldsmiths-debt/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/a-fury-of-dark-energies-peter-matthiessen-true-nature/ A biography of Peter Matthiessen captures his antithetical actions and character while never losing sight of his ardent attentiveness to the natural world.]]> Joy Williams Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/a-fury-of-dark-energies-peter-matthiessen-true-nature/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/qusra-under-siege-david-shulman/ Another Palestinian village in the West Bank has been attacked by Israeli settlers. The lack of response by the army and police reveals how deeply corrupted they are by the colonialist agenda.]]> David Shulman Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/09/24/qusra-under-siege-david-shulman/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/01/itching-for-a-fight-isaac-chotiner-merve-emre/ I don’t understand why people talk to Isaac Chotiner. His reputation as the best interviewer-assassin at work today—maybe ever—precedes him. I suspect that each guest thinks he will be the one to finally best Chotiner. And he makes good use of this hubris. He calmly and respectfully dismantles the tendentious arguments people make about everything […]]]> Merve Emre, Isaac Chotiner Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/09/01/itching-for-a-fight-isaac-chotiner-merve-emre/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/30/every-tiny-molecule-of-ash-delhi-protests/ On a muggy morning in late July, when tens of thousands of protesters thronged to central New Delhi to head toward parliament, they seemed to already have a sense that their march might be historic. Most were students and young graduates, many of whom had traveled from towns hundreds of miles away to attend their […]]]> Poorna Swami Sun, 30 Aug 2026 06:38:33 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/30/every-tiny-molecule-of-ash-delhi-protests/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/30/youll-never-catch-him-coyote-vs-acme-road-runner/ Paul Julian just wanted everyone to get out of the way. Maneuvering down the narrow hallways on the Warner Brothers studio lot while carrying a very long, freshly painted background, the artist (who had worked as a WPA muralist before his animation gig) would emit a car horn–esque “beep-beep” to warn his colleagues of his […]]]> Lucas Adams Sun, 30 Aug 2026 06:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/30/youll-never-catch-him-coyote-vs-acme-road-runner/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/29/expatriate-dreams-nahid-siamdoust/ “It was out of estisal that some Iranians chose war,” writes Nahid Siamdoust in the NYR Online. Estisal, which, loosely translated from Persian, means “having no options” or a state of helplessness, is also, she contends, what has made some Iranians vulnerable to the disinformation being spread by both state and private media—a perhaps more […]]]> Nahid Siamdoust, Janhavi Munde Sat, 29 Aug 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/29/expatriate-dreams-nahid-siamdoust/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/28/the-center-of-all-creation/ I first learned of Ossabaw Island from Musa Mayer’s Night Studio (1988), a memoir of her life as Philip Guston’s daughter. At the time I was writing a short story about Guston and had grown fixated on his wife, Musa McKim, who’d given up painting for poetry. McKim’s time at Ossabaw in 1974 was one […]]]> Christopher Alessandrini Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:46:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/28/the-center-of-all-creation/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/27/the-cruel-and-the-frail/ “What is happening in the world today,” Thomas Merton wrote to Czesław Miłosz in 1959, responding to the latter’s book The Captive Mind, “is a wholesale collapse of man’s capacity to love.” Merton did not believe in the cold war’s strident moral opposition between the free and unfree worlds. Whether in the West or in […]]]> Marina Garcés, Mohsin Hamid, Nesrine Malik, Ece Temelkuran, Thomas Banchoff, Pankaj Mishra Thu, 27 Aug 2026 07:22:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/27/the-cruel-and-the-frail/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/27/let-us-fall-for-whatever-we-want-to-diane-williams/ “I Liked Rex”: this is the title of the title story in Diane Williams’s new collection. These three words, subject, verb, and object, form a complete sentence, one that echoes a line from the famous mid-century primer See Spot Run. Spot was a dog. Might Rex be one, too? In a sense, he is: a […]]]> Merve Emre Thu, 27 Aug 2026 07:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/27/let-us-fall-for-whatever-we-want-to-diane-williams/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/26/the-other-donald-leanne-shapton/ A dispatch from the Art Editor]]> Leanne Shapton Wed, 26 Aug 2026 16:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/26/the-other-donald-leanne-shapton/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/25/life-in-the-fortress-qian-zhongshu/ I first read Fortress Besieged as a teenager, when the novel, originally published in 1947 and out of print for decades, became a bestseller in China after it was adapted into a TV series in 1990. The book was so popular that its characters quickly became, in the public imagination, types—in fact, archetypes—as though a […]]]> Yiyun Li Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/25/life-in-the-fortress-qian-zhongshu/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/25/the-return-of-the-teen-crime-panic-raise-the-age/ In the early hours of Sunday, August 3, 2025, Edward Coristine, a nineteen-year-old computer programmer who had achieved notoriety as an employee of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, was walking a friend back to her car near U Street in Washington, D.C., when they crossed paths with a group of teenagers. According to prosecutors, […]]]> Dana Liebelson Tue, 25 Aug 2026 07:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/25/the-return-of-the-teen-crime-panic-raise-the-age/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/23/the-voodoo-thing-dr-john-david-toop/ One afternoon around 1990, as a teenager working my after-school job in an optometrist’s basement office, I was listening to a local college radio station when the DJ, needing a break, decided to play the entire B-side of a record. I had never heard anything like it. Sludgy grooves, wails of unidentifiable wind instruments, and […]]]> Ted Reichman Sun, 23 Aug 2026 07:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/23/the-voodoo-thing-dr-john-david-toop/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/22/i-dont-want-dead-art-tina-girouard/ When the artifacts of an artist’s life are collected as an archive, they change from river to reservoir, their ideas no longer circulating in the artist’s mind but left for others to navigate. Orienting oneself in the archive of a performance artist can be especially fraught because it consists of the ephemera around a performance […]]]> Nicole Rudick Sat, 22 Aug 2026 10:40:07 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/22/i-dont-want-dead-art-tina-girouard/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/22/braving-the-labyrinth-geoffrey-obrien/ Geoffrey O’Brien is one of those writers who can write about anything: opera, British postwar film, crime fiction, the Third Reich, Grant Wood, Patti Smith, Duke Ellington, Seinfeld. Yet these subjects are often united by a kind of nostalgia—one prompted by pop culture artifacts. His essay from our August 20, 2026, issue, “A Gust from Another […]]]> Geoffrey O’Brien, Lauren Kane Sat, 22 Aug 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/22/braving-the-labyrinth-geoffrey-obrien/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/19/ghosts-of-amrum/ The story of Amrum—a German movie about the last days and immediate aftermath of World War II as experienced by a twelve-year-old boy on the isolated North Sea island from which the film takes its title—is both familiar and exotic. Drawn from the autobiographical writings of the actor and filmmaker Hark Bohm, most familiar for […]]]> J. Hoberman Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:45:13 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/19/ghosts-of-amrum/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/18/socrates-turf-agnes-callard-merve-emre/ The philosopher Agnes Callard is one of the most genuinely curious thinkers I have ever met. Whether she’s writing about unrequited love, parenting, politics in the classroom, or the moral failures of people who like to travel, I get a thrill hearing her examine ordinary life from unexpected angles. And I love to disagree with […]]]> Merve Emre, Agnes Callard Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/18/socrates-turf-agnes-callard-merve-emre/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/16/insincerity-case-maddies-secret-john-early/ I often like John Early’s work. I love John Early’s taste. I came to one of my favorite movies, the bracing, pensive 1990 Canadian docudrama Strangers in Good Company, after he hosted a screening of it at New York’s Metrograph in 2021. On both TV and film, he’s regularly cast as frustrated and venal divas […]]]> Daniel M. Lavery Sun, 16 Aug 2026 06:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/16/insincerity-case-maddies-secret-john-early/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/15/from-the-horses-mouth-lisa-hanawalt/ “Punwise, I didn’t feel too reined in on BoJack. If I was champing at the bit to use a joke somewhere, I could usually find a place to trot it out!”]]> Lisa Hanawalt, Leanne Shapton Sat, 15 Aug 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/15/from-the-horses-mouth-lisa-hanawalt/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/14/what-does-a-puta-want-putafeminism/ In 1984, the year before Brazil transitioned from a military dictatorship to a tenuous democracy, a young woman named Gabriela Leite attended a national meeting for sex workers held by a progressive ministry of the Catholic Church. There she shocked those assembled by taking the microphone and unabashedly calling herself a prostitute. As she recalled […]]]> Meg Weeks Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/14/what-does-a-puta-want-putafeminism/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/13/the-silent-art-kate-millett/ Kate Millett would never be more active or more in demand than she was in 1972. Two summers earlier, her debut book had made her a household name. Begun as her thesis for a literature Ph.D., Sexual Politics swelled into a wide-ranging examination of sex as a terrain of political contest and patriarchy as a […]]]> Sam Huber Thu, 13 Aug 2026 07:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/13/the-silent-art-kate-millett/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/12/jerry-survives/ As an artist in the second half of the twentieth century, Jerry Moriarty did everything you weren’t supposed to do: he painted people, he painted places, and, perhaps worst of all, he told stories with pictures. It’s important to note how not-accepted this was between the 1950s and 1970s, in the messy aftermath of abstract […]]]> Chris Ware Wed, 12 Aug 2026 09:47:57 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/12/jerry-survives/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/11/the-profiler-rachel-syme/ It seems as though Rachel Syme has interviewed all the grandes dames of New York and Los Angeles. She drank cosmopolitans with Carol Burnett, accompanied Sarah Jessica Parker to the ballet, shopped at Rachel Comey with Parker Posey, gabbed with Patti LuPone over Skype, and gabbed with Barbra Streisand on a landline. At a time […]]]> Merve Emre, Rachel Syme Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/11/the-profiler-rachel-syme/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/08/the-road-to-the-rent-freeze/ On the evening of June 25, minutes after New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to freeze the rent for a million rent-stabilized apartments across the five boroughs, I caught up with a tenant I know named Josie Wells. Standing outside the auditorium in East Harlem where the vote had just occurred, we spoke about […]]]> Tara Raghuveer Sat, 08 Aug 2026 13:22:29 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/08/the-road-to-the-rent-freeze/