https://www.nybooks.com/online/ Online comment from the writers of The New York Review of Books en-US Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:07:52 -0400 In 2022 Jonathan Keeperman, then a lecturer in the English department at the University of California, Irvine, who for years had moonlighted as a right-wing Internet provocateur, founded a boutique publisher called Passage Press. His goal, he told Ross Douthat in a New York Times interview last year, was to build a reactionary cultural apparatus that would […]]]> Daniel Lefferts Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/16/hardy-men-hardy-boys-passage-press/ There’s a recording I hold close, Joan Armatrading’s “Woncha Come on Home.” When the song was released in 1977, it was common for music producers to double-track vocal lines, recording two nearly identical takes and layering them on top of each other to produce a full, uniform sound. The vocals in “Woncha Come on Home,” […]]]> Sophie Abramowitz Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/16/she-knows-a-place-mavis-staples/ A dispatch from the Art Editor]]> Leanne Shapton Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/15/everything-but-the-leanne-shapton/ In March 2019 Namwali Serpell wrote for the NYR Online about a choose-your-own-adventure-style episode of the television show Black Mirror, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Hannah Arendt, and Violet Allen’s story “The Venus Effect,” among other subjects, in an expansive essay on about narrative empathy. In this episode of Private Life, “The Banality of Empathy” is read by the writer Lovia Gyarkye. […]]]> Namwali Serpell, Lovia Gyarkye Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:36:56 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/15/from-the-archive-the-banality-of-empathy/ Shortly before Christmas in 1969 a dense fog rolled in across the bayous of the Texas Gulf Coast. For more than four days it blanketed a vast region, as far west as San Antonio and as far east as Port Arthur. Flights were grounded, cars crashed, and all traffic halted in the Houston Ship Channel, […]]]> Scott W. Stern Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:36:58 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/13/go-out-and-sue-a-polluter/ “It would be a mistake to treat the Gulf as politically homogeneous. The war has clearly shown the weight of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but it has not eliminated the different calculations of other Gulf states.”]]> Adam Hanieh, Nawal Arjini Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/11/a-widening-gulf-adam-hanieh/ You could say that H. C. Westermann became an artist on the morning of March 19, 1945. While serving as a marine gunner on the USS Enterprise during World War II, the twenty-two-year-old witnessed an enemy aircraft dive-bomb the nearby USS Franklin off the coast of Japan, killing more than seven hundred men—most of them […]]]> Jeremy Lybarger Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/11/a-workingmans-surrealist-hc-westermann/ On Sunday, March 22, the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, maternal brother of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan, put on a brave face. The evening prior, President Donald Trump declared that if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened within forty-eight hours, he would order strikes on Iranian […]]]> Colin Powers Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:27:39 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/10/the-emirates-on-the-tightrope/ In this episode of Private Life, the writer and New York Review contributor Namwali Serpell joins Jarrett Earnest to discuss her new book, On Morrison, a collection of essays about Toni Morrison and her work.  Click the “Subscribe” link in the player above to follow this podcast on your favorite listening platform. Their conversation covers Morrison’s life as a […]]]> Namwali Serpell, Jarrett Earnest Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:21:30 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/09/namwali-serpell-on-toni-morrison-criticism-and-narrative-empathy/ “Difficile est saturam non scribere: if you’re paying attention to present conditions, it’s difficult not to write satire,” writes Aaron Matz, quoting the Roman poet Juvenal, in a review of Dan Sperrin’s State of Ridicule from our March 26, 2026, issue. Unfortunately, literary political satire has been in a long period of decline—and not just because it has been supplanted […]]]> Aaron Matz, Willa Glickman Sat, 04 Apr 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/04/novels-of-future-aaron-matz/ In this episode of Private Life, the writer, translator, and editor Gini Alhadeff reads excerpts from Mark Polizzotti’s recent translation, for NYRB Classics, of André Breton’s 1928 surrealist novel, Nadja. Blending autobiography and fiction, this abidingly strange book recounts, analyzes, and remembers Breton’s brief love affair with the eponymous young woman in 1920s Paris. Click the […]]]> André Breton, Gini Alhadeff Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:39:49 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/04/01/gini-alhadeff-reads-nadja/ On Sunday, March 22, three weeks into the US–Israeli war in Iran, Donald Trump received an unlikely pledge of support. The previous Friday he had taken to Truth Social to lambast his fellow NATO members, calling them “COWARDS” for refusing to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blocked with threats […]]]> Caitlin L. Chandler Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:47:25 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/31/timid-europe-iran-war/ The Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck told her models to stay silent and look away from her while she worked. She would not tolerate conversation or a returned gaze. As a result her paintings show the many ways art can present a person indirectly: in profile, eyes closed, staring off in the distance or looking askance, […]]]> Bridget Alsdorf Sun, 29 Mar 2026 08:03:02 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/29/tell-me-your-worst-helene-schjerfbeck/ Around the year 1400 a young woman in Central Europe was given a saddle made of bone, likely for her wedding day. As she rode from her parents’ home to that of her new husband, she sat upon carved scenes of lovers embracing and men banging drums or clutching their belts. In France, at about […]]]> Lauren Kane Sat, 28 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/28/indecorous-decorations-medieval-sexuality/ Soon after the outbreak of war in Iran, as America was blitzing the country from a distance with a fusillade of bombs and missiles, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth exulted that we were “punching them while they’re down.” In those early days a US submarine sunk an Iranian naval vessel thousands of miles from the […]]]> Bill McKibben Fri, 27 Mar 2026 13:38:41 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/27/syphoning-morale-hegseth-stars-and-stripes/ In this episode of Private Life, Jarrett Earnest is joined by Mark Polizzotti to discuss André Breton’s surrealist novel, Nadja, originally published in 1928 and translated into English by Polizzotti for NYRB Classics in 2025. Click the “Subscribe” link in the player above to follow this podcast on your favorite listening platform. Polizzotti gives insight into the […]]]> Mark Polizzotti, Jarrett Earnest Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:41:47 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/25/mark-polizzotti-on-andre-breton-translation-and-surrealism/ Since Donald Trump’s improbable first win in 2016, pundits have passed countless hours trying to understand how his rise, and the populist movement that powered it, have changed American conservatism. If Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party was, famously, a three-legged stool consisting of social traditionalists, free-market champions, and foreign interventionists, Trump’s MAGA coalition has swelled its […]]]> Osita Nwanevu, Suzanne Schneider Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/25/neocons-revenge-trump-maga-coalition/ Amid the destruction of the US–Israeli war against Iran, much of the world’s attention has fixed on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes. In normal times ships traversing the Strait—which runs between Oman and the United Arab Emirates on one […]]]> Adam Hanieh Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:17:23 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/23/bottling-the-world-economy-hormuz-gulf/ On Friday, March 13, nearly two weeks into the Lebanese front of “Operation Roaring Lion,” Israeli forces bombed Burj Qalaouiyah, a village in the country’s south. The strike destroyed a health care center, killing twelve doctors, paramedics, nurses, and patients; The New York Times reported that “only one severely injured worker survived.” Among the victims, […]]]> Neve Gordon Sun, 22 Mar 2026 10:52:07 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/22/the-gaza-doctrine-iran-lebanon/ What do Italian astronomers, cloistered nuns, levitating saints, and the “sexy dreams” of desert church fathers have in common? In the pages of the Review, they’re all the domain of the critic and scholar Erin Maglaque. Maglaque is a student of archival texts, often written by women, that challenge conventional secular and religious interpretations of […]]]> Erin Maglaque, Chandler Fritz Sat, 21 Mar 2026 10:30:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/21/spirit-in-the-sky-erin-maglaque/ Since the beginning of the year, my phone has been a window through which I watch the Rafah crossing from my bedroom in Paris three thousand kilometers away. Every piece of news about it awakes something in me that neither the cold of this city nor the long distance can quiet. After nine months in […]]]> Doha Kahlout, Katharine Halls Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:11:36 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/20/elegy-for-rafah/ Sue Halpern hosts the attorney and voting rights expert Marc Elias for a wide-ranging conversation on threats to American voting rights, including gerrymandering, ballot seizures, and the SAVE Act. This conversation originally aired on March 12, 2026.]]> Marc Elias, Sue Halpern Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:28:08 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/19/rigging-the-vote-trumps-threats-to-elections/ Episode 6 of Private Life]]> Richard Hell Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:54:06 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/18/richard-hell-reads-from-godlike/ Since Monday, March 2, Israel’s armed forces have launched daily airstrikes on Lebanon. Begun after Hezbollah fired a small volley of rockets into Israel in response to the killing of Ali Khamenei (causing no casualties), the Israeli strikes have so far killed more than nine hundred people and displaced more than a million out of […]]]> Loubna El Amine Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:31:27 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/18/lebanons-negations/ A dispatch from the Art Editor]]> Leanne Shapton Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:00:00 -0400 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/03/18/charade-night-leanne-shapton/