The New York Review of Books
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‘The premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.’
“Arthur Miller…builds individual scenes and dramatic arcs with architectural precision. From the opening moments of Salesman, [Willy Loman] begins his downward spiral, and the audience is caught in its gravitational pull.” —Alisa Solomon
‘Take that Phony Dream and Burn It’ | Alisa Solomon
Just a few weeks before Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949, President Harry Truman elaborated his “Fair Deal”
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“While the conservatives [on the Supreme Court] may not be doing Trump’s bidding, they are pursuing their own ideological aims, often heedless of precedent.” —@davidcole-gtown.bsky.social
Close Calls | David Cole
In the Supreme Court’s recently concluded term, it showed that it is willing to constrain Trump but less willing to accept limits on its own authority.
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“I write my absolute worst work when I sit down and think: now it’s time to write a poem about this important life event!” —an interview with Joe Dunthorne
All of Life | Joe Dunthorne, Aleander Santos
In the Review’s June 25 issue, Joe Dunthorne writes about a recent oral history of the New York School poets and poses himself a challenge: “How to
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“The only side of Odysseus—and indeed of the Odyssey—that you get in Nolan’s film is the negative one.” —@danielmendelsohn.bsky.social
Artful Weaving | Daniel Mendelsohn
The most authentic thing about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is its densely braided narrative, but its tormented hero sounds like the heroes of Christopher Nolan movies.
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On a panel titled “Do We Need Exhibitions Just for Women?” in 2015, Jillian Steinhauer gave “an emphatic yes.” Asking herself the same question today, she writes, “I’m still inclined to answer in the affirmative, but with markedly less gusto.”
La Querelle des Femmes | Jillian Steinhauer
In 2015, I was on a panel at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design titled “Do We Need Exhibitions Just for Women?” As I remember, most of the participants
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Israel’ AI-powered surveillance dragnet “gives the military new rationales for longstanding practices of mass policing and detention, which officials tout as precisely targeted even when their effects are indiscriminate and brutal.” —Sophia Goodfriend
Target Practice | Sophia Goodfriend
In April 2024 international news sources circulated a video of a talk delivered by a senior Israeli military official during a tech conference at Tel Aviv
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Merve Emre and Orna Guralnik discuss the art of the psychoanalytic interview
Listening for the Unconscious | Merve Emre, Orna Guralnik
“Couples therapy”—the words alone are enough to send many people running. But Orna Guralnik, the clinical psychologist and star of Showtime’s documentary
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Individuals on the UN’s al-Qaeda sanctions list “are in effect barred from participating in society,” writes Caitlin L. Chandler. What happens if you find yourself listed based on false intelligence?
Life on the List | Caitlin L. Chandler
Late one night in May 2016, Naif al-Qaysi was riding shotgun in an old Landcruiser as it barreled down an empty highway through the desert connecting
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“[The Democrats] would do better to welcome socialists into the party and to adopt some of their ideas, which are no more radical than Social Security was during the New Deal.” —Michael Greenberg
Whose Party? | Michael Greenberg
As Democratic Socialists rack up primary victories, the moderate wing of the Democratic Party looks increasingly out of touch.
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Geoffrey O’Brien on how The Search for Bridey Murphy created a midcentury obsession with hypnotism and spiritualism
A Gust from Another World | Geoffrey O’Brien
The Search for Bridey Murphy caused a sensation in 1950s America, and while its tale of reincarnation was soon discredited, it revealed a deep cultural fascination with the supernatural.
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In the coming decades, writes Helen Epstein, toxic fallout in Gaza could lead to “an epidemic of cancer, lung disease, and brain damage” that might “rival in lethality the war’s bombs and bullets.”
Gaza’s Deadly Soil | Helen Epstein
Long before October 2023, Gaza’s people suffered international sanctions, a humiliating occupation, and periodic Israeli bombardments. Few could leave the
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“More than in any of the four previous Broadway revivals [of Death of a Salesman] I have seen, the play lands now with fearsome power.” —Alisa Solomon on the new revival, starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf
‘Take that Phony Dream and Burn It’ | Alisa Solomon
Just a few weeks before Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949, President Harry Truman elaborated his “Fair Deal”
nybooks.com
Julian Bell on the sacred art of Francisco de Zurbarán
Explosions in the Mind | Julian Bell
Fusing religious subjects with unerring technique, the Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán discovered a zone in oil paint that might well be called “sacred."
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Mark Danner on the doddering imperialist-in-chief
Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship | Mark Danner
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s inside account of the Trump administration portrays a president with a vast appetite for power but who repeatedly backs down when the costs of his actions become to...
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Trump “he has no enduring scale, beyond his own vanity, to judge what’s important or what’s right. And if some in his tiny circle of decision makers do, they lack the courage to tell him.” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship | Mark Danner
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s inside account of the Trump administration portrays a president with a vast appetite for power but who repeatedly backs down when the costs of his actions become to...
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great piece - by @quinnslobodian.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
Damming the Big Ocean | Quinn Slobodian
Edward Fishman's Chokepoints explains how the US came to rely on its economic arsenal, but stops short of a complete assessment of the unreliable tactic and its often devastating consequences.
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“The Woman Question” offered “a rich vision of female creativity and solidarity,” writes Jillian Steinhauer. “Perhaps most striking, it refused to make the case for women’s place in art history, instead simply asserting it as fact.”
La Querelle des Femmes | Jillian Steinhauer
In 2015, I was on a panel at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design titled “Do We Need Exhibitions Just for Women?” As I remember, most of the participants
nybooks.com
Sonam Wangchuk’s fast in Delhi, writes Jonathan Mingle, “was only the most recent in a series of efforts...to make the nation’s leaders and his fellow citizens attend to the precarity of India’s two most precious resources: its climate and its youth.”
Moving Mountains | Jonathan Mingle
On the morning of Monday, July 20, as the monsoon session of India’s parliament opened, tens of thousands of protesters surged down the radial streets
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In classical Persian mythology, the div is an evil supernatural being…. Whether it comes out of the sea to the south or across the land from the north, the div is always an outsider, and its arrival always spells trouble.” —Amir Ahmadi Arian
The War of the South | Amir Ahmadi Arian
Each of Iran’s recent wars has been quick to acquire a name. On the day Israel stopped bombing Iran in June 2025, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to
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“The more the DNC’s members expend their energies on internal contests for prestige and recognition,” writes Daniel Schlozman, “the more the committee isolates itself from the larger drama of where the Democrats ought to go.”
The DNC Against Itself | Daniel Schlozman
“Democracy is a very old institution,” explains the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the 2024 election, belatedly released in May. “And yet what
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“What [Pao Houa Her’s] photographs evoke is not the homeland itself but the yearning for it.” —Jean Dykstra
Secondhand Memory | Jean Dykstra
In 1954, with the ending of French colonial rule in Southeast Asia, the Geneva Accords established Laos as an independent state, led by the Royal Lao
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It is clear that Israel is using AI to wage war, Sophia Goodfriend writes. “Far less remarked upon is the fact that Israel’s expanding algorithmic arsenal has also changed the day-to-day administration of the occupation across the Palestinian territories.”
Target Practice | Sophia Goodfriend
In April 2024 international news sources circulated a video of a talk delivered by a senior Israeli military official during a tech conference at Tel Aviv
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In her poetry, Rosemary Tonks “often dreams of transferring to the ‘dingy souls’ of her readers the invigorating energies released by her commitment to living.” —Mark Ford
The Late Bohemian | Mark Ford
Rosemary Tonks emulated French Symbolist poets before converting to Christianity and renouncing all her own works.
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Jonathan Mingle on the Ladakhi activist Sonam Wangchuk and his long campaign for India’s climate and youth
Moving Mountains | Jonathan Mingle
On the morning of Monday, July 20, as the monsoon session of India’s parliament opened, tens of thousands of protesters surged down the radial streets
nybooks.com
“Jungles or forests from around the world” are often “imagined [as] unaltered by human intervention. But Pao Houa Her’s [photographs] present the jungle as a place where children were born, couples married, and people became ill and died.” —Jean Dykstra
Secondhand Memory | Jean Dykstra
In 1954, with the ending of French colonial rule in Southeast Asia, the Geneva Accords established Laos as an independent state, led by the Royal Lao
nybooks.com
George Forster’s “voyage to the South Atlantic was full of wonders: phosphorescence that set the sea ablaze, dolphins chasing flying fish, sapphire icebergs turning gold and purple as the sun set.” —Jenny Uglow
Wonder & Disillusion | Jenny Uglow
The naturalist George Forster was fascinated by plants and animals, but he was also driven by a passionate belief in the rights of all people regardless of race, gender, or social status.
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Even though “the ICC is, in some respects, a legacy of the United States’ own earlier efforts on behalf of human rights,” there is also “a long history of American opposition to international human rights law.” —Aryeh Neier
‘So-Called International Law’ | Aryeh Neier
On July 13 Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a campaign to destroy the International Criminal Court. Calling the ICC “a global tribunal staffed by
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In the coming decades, writes Helen Epstein, toxic fallout in Gaza could lead to “an epidemic of cancer, lung disease, and brain damage” that might “rival in lethality the war’s bombs and bullets.”
Gaza’s Deadly Soil | Helen Epstein
Long before October 2023, Gaza’s people suffered international sanctions, a humiliating occupation, and periodic Israeli bombardments. Few could leave the
nybooks.com
