Gavin Francis

Human Diagnostics

“Life in lockdown is not natural for the majority of Homo sapiens. In the ballooning of mental health problems this year, we’ve seen just how deleterious those kinds of restrictions are.”

October 2, 2021

Scrolling

Even tech optimists admit that human capacities are limited in comparison with the digital edifice we have built, with potentially grave implications for our health.

Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings About Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter

by Luke Fernandez and Susan J. Matt

Fragments of an Infinite Memory: My Life with the Internet

by Maël Renouard, translated from the French by Peter Behrman de Sinéty

The Stars in Our Pockets: Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age

by Howard Axelrod

September 23, 2021 issue

The Real Problems with 1970s Psychology

March 11, 2021 issue

Changing Psychiatry’s Mind

Two books investigate the science and pseudoscience of diagnosing mental illness.

Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness

by Anne Harrington

This Book Will Change Your Mind About Mental Health: A Journey into the Heartland of Psychiatry

by Nathan Filer

January 14, 2021 issue

Letter

H.C. Erik Midelfort

The Real Problems with 1970s Psychology

March 11, 2021 issue

A man wearing a face mask walks by a mural depicting Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba, May 13, 2020

Pandemic Journal

The latest edition of our brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Coco Fusco in Brooklyn, Lucas Adams in Brooklyn, Sara Nović in Philadelphia, Gavin Francis in Edinburgh, and more.

May 15, 2020

The Value of a Cell

June 27, 2019 issue

Resistance to Immunity

Opposition to vaccines has been around for as long as vaccines themselves. What can be done to convince the public that infectious disease is not a private concern?

Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines

by Jennifer A. Reich

Between Hope and Fear: A History of Vaccines and Human Immunity

by Michael Kinch

The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease

by Meredith Wadman

May 23, 2019 issue

Letter

Meredith Wadman

The Value of a Cell

June 27, 2019 issue

Rembrandt: Self-Portrait in a Cap: Laughing, 1630

LOL

Studies of Laughter in Interaction

edited by Phillip Glenn and Elizabeth Holt

October 11, 2018 issue

Drawing of injured Purkinje neurons of the cerebellum, 1914

Flower Garden of the Brain

It wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that brain structures began to be uncovered, by a Spanish microscopist called Santiago Ramón y Cajal.

August 18, 2017

Learn to Sign!

January 8, 2015 issue

Deaf-mute children learning to hear through their vibratory senses at a school in Zurich, 1955

The Mysterious World of the Deaf

Lydia Denworth’s ‘I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey Through the Science of Sound and Language’

I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey Through the Science of Sound and Language

by Lydia Denworth

November 20, 2014 issue

Letter

Dan I. Slobin

Learn to Sign!

January 8, 2015 issue