Volume 63, Number 15 (2016-10-13)

Freeman Dyson

The Green Universe: A Vision

In the long run, the technology driving activities in space will be biological

How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight

by Julian Guthrie

Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets

by Charles Wohlforth and Amanda R. Hendrix

All These Worlds Are Yours: The Scientific Search for Alien Life

by Jon Willis

Michael Tomasky

Can the Unthinkable Happen?

The press doesn’t know how to deal with a man who says something false nearly every time he speaks.

Sanford Schwartz

He Made It American

He kept reimagining, and making more imposing, his art of form and color

Stuart Davis: In Full Swing

an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, June 10–September 25, 2016; the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., November 20, 2016–March 5, 2017; the de Young, San Francisco, April 1–August 6, 2017; and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, September 16, 2017–January 8, 2018

Nathaniel Rich

The George Plimpton Story

A reader can’t help but be impressed by his accomplishments, despite his efforts to undermine them

Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur’s Ordeal in Professional Baseball

by George Plimpton

Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback

by George Plimpton

The Bogey Man: A Month on the PGA Tour

by George Plimpton

Mad Ducks and Bears: Football Revisited

by George Plimpton

One for the Record: The Inside Story of Hank Aaron’s Chase for the Home Run Record

by George Plimpton

Shadow Box: An Amateur in the Ring

by George Plimpton

Open Net: A Professional Amateur in the World of Big-Time Hockey

by George Plimpton

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Orlando Figes

Alexievich’s New Kind of History

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

by Svetlana Alexievich, translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich

Neal Ascherson

Which le Carré Do You Want?

John le Carré: The Biography

by Adam Sisman

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life

by John le Carré

David Miliband

The Best Ways to Deal with the Refugee Crisis

Ask most refugees what they want most and they will likely say: “To go home”

Stanley Moss

Delmore Schwartz

a poem

Tim Parks

The Pleasures of Reading Stephen King

Mr. Mercedes

by Stephen King

Finders Keepers

by Stephen King

End of Watch

by Stephen King

Rana Foroohar

How the Financing of Colleges May Lead to Disaster!

When the financial industry gets too involved in any activity of the economy or society, it’s time to worry.

Game of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student Debt

by Beth Akers and Matthew M. Chingos

Diploma Mills: How For-Profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream

by A.J. Angulo

Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education

by William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson

Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream

by Sara Goldrick-Rab

Solving the Student Loan Crisis: Dreams, Diplomas and a Lifetime of Debt

by Cryn Johannsen

Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance

by Greta R. Krippner

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

by Cathy O’Neil

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Nicolas Pelham

In Saudi Arabia: Can It Really Change?

Four new books examine the domination of the al-Saud dynasty

The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism

by Toby Matthiesen

Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt

by Pascal Menoret

Saudi Arabia: A Kingdom in Peril

by Paul Aarts and Carolien Roelants

Force and Fanaticism: Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and Beyond

by Simon Ross Valentine

Colin B. Bailey

Hubert Robert & the Joy of Ruins

Hubert Robert, 1733–1808

an exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, March 9–May 30, 2016; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., June 26–October 2, 2016

Maya Jasanoff

The Great Trap for All Americans

The Puritan ideal of a “city on a hill,” long held up as a model of America, rested on the backs of slaves

The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

by Greg Grandin

New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America

by Wendy Warren

April Bernard

The Dream Behind the Wall of Words

From the New World: Poems 1976–2014

by Jorie Graham

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Tony Blair’s Eternal Shame: The Report

In the end Blair isn’t a messiah or a madman or a monster. He’s an utter mediocrity.

The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

by a Committee of Privy Counsellors chaired by Sir John Chilcot

Not the Chilcot Report

by Peter Oborne

Broken Vows: Tony Blair: The Tragedy of Power

by Tom Bower

Laurence C. Smith

Greenhouse Warming: Prepare for the Worst

Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis

by Tim Flannery

Nicholas Lemann

Can We Have a ‘Party of the People’?

Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century

by Daniel Oppenheimer

The Limousine Liberal: How an Incendiary Image United the Right and Fractured America

by Steve Fraser

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

by Thomas Frank

Letters

Todd Gitlin,
Peter Beinart,
Peter Brooks,
Michael Walzer,
et al.

For an Economic Boycott and Political Nonrecognition of the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories

The Editors