NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

The poet Paul Celan said of his native Czernowitz that it was a place where people and books used to live. Tony Judt was a man for whom books lived, as well as people. His mind, like his apartment on Washington Square, was full of books—and they walked with him, arguing, to the very end.

Critical though he was of French intellectuals, he shared with them a conviction that ideas matter. Being English, he thought facts matter too. As a historian, one of his most distinctive achievements was to integrate the intellectual and political history of twentieth-century Europe—revealing the multiple, sometimes unintended interactions over time of ideas and realities, thoughts and deeds, books and people.

August 20, 2010, 12:30 p.m. | Comments

Waiting for WikiLeaks: Beijing’s Seven Secrets

Perry Link

While people in the US and elsewhere have been reacting to the release by WikiLeaks of classified US documents on the Afghan War, Chinese bloggers have been discussing the event in parallel with another in their own country. On July 21 in Beijing, four days before WikiLeaks published its documents, Chinese President Hu Jintao convened a high-level meeting to discuss ways to prevent leaks from the archives of the Communist Party of China.

August 19, 2010, 8:45 a.m. | Comments

Talking About Brazil with Lilia Schwarcz

Robert Darnton

Miguel Rio Branco/Magnum Photos

On a recent trip to Brazil, I struck up a conversation with Lilia Schwarcz, one of Brazil’s finest historians and anthropologists. The talk turned to the two subjects she has studied most—racism and national identity.

August 17, 2010, 1:15 p.m. | Comments

Last Chance for Pakistan

Ahmed Rashid

Shakil Adil/AP Photo

Though it has received only moderate attention in the western press, the torrential flooding of large swaths of Pakistan since late July may be the most catastrophic natural disaster to strike the country in half a century. But even greater than the human cost of this devastating event are the security challenges it poses. Coming at a time of widespread unrest, growing Taliban extremism, and increasingly shaky civilian government, the floods could lead to the gravest security crisis the country—and the region—has faced. Unless the international community takes immediate action to provide major emergency aid and support, the country risks turning into what until now has remained only a grim, but remote possibility—a failed state with nuclear weapons.

August 16, 2010, 9:25 a.m. | Comments

Robert Gottlieb on Charles Dickens

Podcast

charlierose.com

Robert Gottlieb speaks to Andrew Martin about Charles Dickens’s troubled life, his best and worst novels, and how to read without editing.

August 13, 2010, 11:45 a.m. | Comments

A Quiet Shift in Mexico’s Drug War

Alma Guillermoprieto

Matias Recart/AFP/Getty Images

Without the rest of the world paying much attention, the tortured relations between drug traffickers and the rest of the Mexican population have taken a significant turn. Following a series of hair-raising events over the past few weeks, it appears that the government of Felipe Calderón may be preparing to replace its aggressive military campaign against the drug trade with a rather different policy—opening the door to a previously unthinkable debate about legalizing drugs. Either that, or the administration is losing its bearings at an even faster rate than we had supposed.

August 12, 2010, 2:25 p.m. | Comments

Leonardo’s Disquiet

Zbigniew Herbert

“Writing,” wrote Zbigniew Herbert, “must teach men soberness: to be awake.” One of Poland’s greatest poets, Herbert (1924–1998) was also a prolific essayist, and with the publication of his Collected Prose this week we can take in the full range of his brisk, erudite work.

August 11, 2010, 3:45 p.m. | Comments

How Will Gay Marriage Fare in the Supreme Court?

David Cole

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

On August 4, US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker declared California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional, a denial of equal protection of the laws and of the due process right to marry. Gay rights groups applauded anxiously. If Perry v. Schwarzenegger is upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, it is almost certain to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. And the outcome there very likely turns on a single Justice’s vote—Anthony Kennedy’s. There are probably four votes to strike down Proposition 8—Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—but there are also almost certainly four votes to uphold it—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. As is so often the case on controversial matters before the Supreme Court these days, everything turns on Justice Kennedy. Which way will he rule?

August 11, 2010, 10:10 a.m. | Comments

Our Diminished Oceans

Bill McKibben

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

What may turn out to be the summer’s most important news story (and just possibly the millennium’s) didn’t make the pages of the Times. A study in Nature has concluded that as oceans warmed, phytoplankton—the tiny organisms that form the crucial first level of the entire marine food chain—were disappearing.

August 6, 2010, 10:10 a.m. | Comments

Monstres Sacrés in Love

Robert Gottlieb

Regine Abadia/Sony Pictures Classics

All bio-pix are by definition ridiculous since their subjects have to be manifestly unique people—why else would the movie be made?—while what makes them unique is exactly what’s so impossible to convey. (Creativity is invisible, hence unfilmable.)

August 3, 2010, 1:10 p.m. | Comments

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