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Colin Thubron

Escape from Fortress Crete

Patrick Leigh Fermor kidnapped a German general in the mountains of Greece during World War II. Was it worth it?

March 11, 2021 issue

Gregory Hays

Tune Out & Lean In

The recent revival of Stoic philosophy has stayed surprisingly true to its ancient roots while gaining popularity among executives and tech-bros.

March 11, 2021 issue

Nicole Rudick

The Art of Bea Nettles

A recent show and monograph bring into focus fifty years of her genre-defying photographic work, which adds up to an extraordinary visual autobiography.

February 27, 2021

Brandon M. Terry

What Dignity Demands

A new book persuasively places Malcolm X and Martin Luther King at the center of each other’s most dramatic transformations.

March 11, 2021 issue

Fintan O’Toole

To Hell with Unity

Biden’s ability to govern depends on abandoning any hope of reconciliation with the GOP.

March 25, 2021 issue

Jenny Uglow

The Reader of Rocks

William Smith’s innovative use of the fossil record helped him create the first detailed geological map of England, Wales, and Scotland.

March 11, 2021 issue

Aida Alami

The Arab Spring at Ten

A decade ago, countries across North Africa and the Middle East erupted in protests against their autocratic rulers. Five witnesses to those events tell what happened next.

February 25, 2021

T.H. Breen

How Did the Colonies Unite?

The drive for American independence coalesced in only a few years of rapidly accelerating political change.

March 11, 2021 issue

Ruth Bernard Yeazell

A Vermeer for the IRA

Rose Dugdale, famous for a 1974 art heist, would probably rather be remembered as a heroine of Irish republicanism.

March 11, 2021 issue

Peter C. Baker

The Bloodhound

A distinct thread of anger runs through all of Nicholson Baker’s work: anger at what people with power get up to in the shadows, anger at how they lie about it, anger at how we forget.

March 11, 2021 issue

Drawing of a diver with bellows for breathing and a lantern with a sponge and lit candle

A diver with bellows for breathing and a lantern with a sponge and lit candle; artist unknown, late fifteenth century

“When people use the phrase ‘Renaissance man,’ they generally mean someone of many talents and occupations. But to the original models of this way of life, it wasn’t just a matter of cultivating diverse interests.”

— Jessica Riskin: When Engineers Were Humanists

March 11, 2021

Current Issue

The Latest

Aida Alami

The Arab Spring at Ten

A decade ago, countries across North Africa and the Middle East erupted in protests against their autocratic rulers. Five witnesses to those events tell what happened next.

February 25, 2021

Anjan Sundaram

No Direction Home

My father chose to pursue a better life for our family through migration, without ever settling and putting down roots. Now, that is my inheritance.

February 23, 2021

Molly Jong-Fast

What the FBI Had on Grandpa

J. Edgar Hoover thought Howard Fast was an un-American menace. To my family, he was just a menace, period. But his file tells a different story.

February 21, 2021

Jacob Kang-Brown and Jack Norton

America’s Hidden Gulag

The nationwide federal detention of immigrants in county jails perpetuates a profit-driven system of mass incarceration.

February 19, 2021

Brief Encounters

Anjan Sundaram, interviewed by Matt Seaton

From Wars Abroad, to Peace at Home

“As I’ve grown older, I’m more aware of the psychological risks we must take,” says the conflict-zone reporter. “Writing about my father represented such a psychological risk.”

February 27, 2021

Anne Enright, interviewed by Willa Glickman

Of Angels, Saints, and Faith in Fiction

“I am interested in metaphor, that is where I get my fix of transcendence,” says the novelist.

February 20, 2021

Coco Fusco, interviewed by Maya Chung

Decolonizing the Museum

“We thought when we began that the performance would be understood as a parody,” says the interdisciplinary artist and writer.

February 6, 2021

Peter Beinart, interviewed by Matt Seaton

A Career in Counter-programming

“Every situation is different, but the forms of injustice rhyme,” says the leading Jewish-American journalist.

January 30, 2021

Our Warming World

Gerhard Richter: Iceberg in Mist, 1982; from ‘Gerhard Richter: Painting After All,’ an exhibition at the Met Breuer. For more on the exhibition, see Susan Tallman’s essay on pages 4–8 of this issue.

Jonathan Mingle

A World Without Ice

The project before us is paradoxical: thinking on long time scales while acting with furious urgency.

May 14, 2020 issue

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, 23rd Street, downtown C train platform, May 9th, 2018

Emily Raboteau

Climate Signs

As much as we may worry about the climate crisis in our kids’ future, it’s already here.

February 1, 2019

A firefighter taking a break from battling the King Fire, Fresh Pond, California, September 2014

William Finnegan

California Burning

Fires are bigger, hotter, faster, more expensive and difficult to fight, and more destructive than ever before. We have entered the era of the megafire.

August 16, 2018 issue

More on Climate Change

Recent Poetry

Katie Peterson

Fog

a poem

March 11, 2021 issue

Paul Franz

Rathlin Island

a poem

February 25, 2021 issue

Laura Kolbe