Ideas

History Economics Science & Technology Law Philosophy & Religion

Cartographers of Stone and Air

On Tim Robinson’s intensely focused survey of a small patch of the Irish landscape and Lyall Watson’s sweeping inquiry into the mysteries and mysticism of wind.

December 3, 2020 issue

Pankaj Mishra

Grand Illusions of the West

It’s time to abandon the intellectual narcissism of cold war Western liberalism.

November 19, 2020 issue

An edition of Hans Holbein’s The Dance of Death bound in human skin, 1898

Mike Jay

The Hide That Binds

A medical librarian’s history of books covered in human skin.

November 5, 2020 issue

Anthony Grafton

Pico della Mirandola’s Mystical Thinking

A new book cuts through generations of misguided commentary on the most famous speech of the Renaissance.

November 5, 2020 issue

Hari Kunzru

The Wages of Whiteness

Whiteness is a concept that can be made to serve many interests and positions, not all of them compatible.

September 24, 2020 issue

Jessica Riskin

Just Use Your Thinking Pump!

What is the scientific method, and when, where, and how did it become, as the kids say, a thing?

July 2, 2020 issue

Marilynne Robinson

What Kind of Country Do We Want?

Here is the first question that must be asked: What have we done with America?

June 11, 2020 issue

Kwame Anthony Appiah

The Defender of Differences

On Franz Boas and his critics

May 28, 2020 issue

The Dark Web

Tom Scocca

How the Awful Stuff Won

Andrew Marantz’s and Megan Phelps-Roper’s books explore the dark and far-reaching consequences of our dependence on the Internet.

November 5, 2020 issue

A tweet by Donald Trump featuring an image of himself as Pepe the Frog, a symbol used by the far right, October 13, 2015

Hari Kunzru

For the Lulz

4chan, Gamergate, and how thwarted, angry young men have reshaped political discourse

March 26, 2020 issue

Claudia Dreifus

‘Social Media Reward Bad Behavior’

The former head of Reddit on how platforms like Facebook have amplified disinformation—and don’t want to stop—because attention equals profit.

October 26, 2020

The Latest

E. Tammy Kim

Korea’s Tireless Patriot and Revolutionary

Korea’s radical history, told through the eyes of the colonial-era activist and organizer Kim San.

December 17, 2020 issue

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

The Right to Belong

Two books explore the history of statelessness and the problems with defining people by their citizenship.

December 17, 2020 issue

Cintra Wilson

The Pleasure Crafts

A new history of pornography before it became commercial.

December 17, 2020 issue

Amelia Lester

An Island at the Crossroads

Akemi Johnson’s new book explores the complexity of women’s lives in and around US military bases in Okinawa.

December 17, 2020 issue

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Europe’s Most Terrible Years

December 17, 2020 issue

Ian Frazier

The Plushbottoms of Teton County

Life in the richest and most unequal county in America.

December 17, 2020 issue

Lucy Jakub

The Oldest Forest

The promise and pitfalls of commercializing kelp.

December 17, 2020 issue

Noah Feldman

The Battle Over Scalia’s Legacy

The late justice advocated judicial restraint, textualism, and originalism, but conservative jurists will have to choose among them.

December 17, 2020 issue

Dubravka Ugresic

An Archaeology of Resistance

An army of unqualified historians is toiling today, erasing antifascist history and legitimizing revisionist versions.

November 16, 2020

Madeleine Schwartz

Criminalizing a Constitutional Right

For many Americans, Roe v. Wade might as well have been overturned already.

December 3, 2020 issue

The latest releases from New York Review Books

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Blackballed

Darryl Pinckney

Divorcing

Susan Taubes

Writing Politics

edited by David Bromwich

J R

William Gaddis

Richard Howard Loves Henry James

Richard Howard

The Last Libertines

Benedetta Craveri

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