Volume 69, Issue 9 (2022-05-26)

Geoffrey O’Brien

Schemes Gone Awry

Richard Wilbur’s translations of Molière, now in the Library of America, have a fluency that goes beyond meter and rhyme to encompass textures of speech and movements of thought.

Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations

Fintan O’Toole

Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes

The US’s history of moral evasiveness around wartime atrocities undermines the very institution that might eventually bring Putin and his subordinates to justice: the International Criminal Court.

Laura Miller

Under Their Skin

Extraterrestrial living “objects” in Olga Ravn’s The Employees bring an early end to a mysterious mission in outer space.

The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

by Olga Ravn, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

Camille Ralphs

After George Herbert

a poem

Julian Bell

An Impulse Felt Round the World

A recent show and catalog on Surrealism proposes that the thoughts expressed in André Breton’s 1924 manifesto were latent in disparate urban centers, only awaiting his coining of a movement identity.

Surrealism Beyond Borders

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, October 11, 2021–January 30, 2022; and Tate Modern, London, February 24–August 29, 2022

Ruth Franklin

Beyond the Betrayal

Why are we so eager to assign a single person blame for revealing the hiding place of Anne Frank and her family?

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

by Rosemary Sullivan

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

Shadows Across the Decades

Francisco Goldman’s latest novel is a book about and by a writer journeying across space but also back in time, at least in his mind, to the places that made him.

Monkey Boy

by Francisco Goldman

Susie Linfield

How Do Whispers Become Movements?

A new history of conversation focuses not on the revolutionary moment but on the antecedents of transformative political change.

The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas

by Gal Beckerman

Brenda Wineapple

A Fable of Agency

Kristen Green’s The Devil’s Half Acre recounts the story of a fugitive slave jail, and the enslaved woman, Mary Lumpkin, who came to own it.

The Devil’s Half Acre: The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South’s Most Notorious Slave Jail

by Kristen Green

E. Tammy Kim

A Permanent Battle

A new history draws on recently declassified archives to illustrate how the Korean War was an intimate civil conflict, not just a proxy battle between superpowers.

The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History

by Monica Kim

Gavin Francis

The Babel Within

Two memoirs consider what’s gained and lost when a new language is acquired and a mother tongue is all but forgotten.

Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self

by Julie Sedivy

Alfabet/Alphabet: A Memoir of a First Language

by Sadiqa de Meijer

Tim Judah

The Russian Terror

As Russian forces have retreated from some parts of Ukraine, more and more evidence has emerged of summary executions, looting, and destruction.

Cass R. Sunstein

Who Should Regulate?

The question of whether federal agencies or the courts should have the right to interpret legislation may seem technical, but it significantly affects the power of the government.

The Chevron Doctrine: Its Rise and Fall, and the Future of the Administrative State

by Thomas W. Merrill

Dan Chiasson