December 22, 2022 issue

Stephen Greenblatt

‘Competitive Consumption’

An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art displays the extravagant Tudor taste for jewels, artworks, tapestries, and other finery.

The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, October 10, 2022–January 8, 2023; the Cleveland Museum of Art, February 26–May 14, 2023; and the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, June 24–September 24, 2023

Stacy Schiff

Writing the Furies

The essayist Judith Thurman has made a career of profiling complicated, often unstoppable women.

A Left-Handed Woman

by Judith Thurman

Tobi Haslett

A Dream of a Great Burning

John Edgar Wideman was once too late to produce a revolutionary literature; now he may be too early.

Look for Me and I’ll Be Gone

by John Edgar Wideman

Fanon

by John Edgar Wideman

A Glance Away

by John Edgar Wideman

Hurry Home

by John Edgar Wideman

The Lynchers

by John Edgar Wideman

The Homewood Books: Damballah, Hiding Place, Sent for You Yesterday

by John Edgar Wideman

Brothers and Keepers

by John Edgar Wideman

Philadelphia Fire

by John Edgar Wideman

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Rebecca Giggs

The Sea, the Sea

Rachel Carson’s ocean books reveal an author profoundly engaged with the problem of how to convey ecological knowledge—and how to decenter human life.

The Sea Trilogy: Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, The Edge of the Sea

by Rachel Carson, edited by Sandra Steingraber

Tomasz Rózycki,
Mira Rosenthal

Clay

a poem

Michael Tomasky

Looming Questions for the Democrats

Their responsibility these next two years will be to continue, without apology, on the economic path they’ve been pursuing.

Anahid Nersessian

The Hunter

Björk has always been a techno-utopian, and the environmentalist strain in her music has only grown more pronounced over time.

Fossora

an album by Björk

Michael Gorra

Language, Destroyer of Worlds

In what may be his final two novels, Cormac McCarthy has assembled a family chronicle out of fragments, one that has, for the first time in his oeuvre, characters with an interior life and a meaningful past.

The Passenger

by Cormac McCarthy

Stella Maris

by Cormac McCarthy

Martin Filler

Whips and Vines

Recent books and exhibitions reveal that behind its undulating lines and swirling excesses, Art Nouveau was far more complex and nuanced than we once believed.

Aubrey Beardsley, 150 Years Young

an exhibition at the Grolier Club, New York City, September 8–November 12, 2022

Art Nouveau Architecture

by Anne Anderson

Henry van de Velde: Selected Essays, 1889–1914

edited by Katherine M. Kuenzli, translated from the French and German by Elizabeth Tucker

Hector Guimard: How Paris Got Its Curves

an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York City, November 18, 2022–May 21, 2023; and the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago, June 22, 2023–January 7, 2024

Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism

catalog of the exhibition edited by David A. Hanks, with contributions by Barry Bergdoll, Sarah D. Coffin, Isabelle Gournay, Philippe Thiébaut, Georges Vigne, Alisa Chiles, and Yao-Fen You

Art Nouveau: Art, Architecture and Design in Transformation

by Charlotte Ashby

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Ama Codjoe

Mother-of-Pearl

a poem

Merve Emre

Making It Big

In Roald Dahl’s stories, cruelty begets cruelty, children grow large, adults grow small, and everyone is trapped in a fun house of dirty, depthless mirrors.

Roald Dahl: Teller of the Unexpected

by Matthew Dennison

Natalia Ginzburg,
Alba de Céspedes,
Ann Goldstein

On Women: An Exchange

“That article of mine spoke of women in general, and said things we all know: that women are not much worse than men and can also accomplish something worthwhile if they try.”

Sean Wilentz

The Emancipators’ Vision

Was abolition intended as a perpetuation of slavery by other means?

Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation

by Kris Manjapra

Gabriel Winslow-Yost

No Surprises

The comedian Nathan Fielder’s new HBO show is an expensive, painstakingly constructed machine for managing uncertainty.

The Rehearsal

an HBO series written and directed by Nathan Fielder and cowritten by Carrie Kemper and Eric Notarnicola

Marilynne Robinson

A Theology of the Present Moment

Can bringing Scripture and science back into dialogue help answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing?

Nathaniel Rich

Houses of Holes

Hiroko Oyamada’s novels inhabit the borderlands between fantasy and reality, an uncanny landscape played for horror and comedy.

Weasels in the Attic

by Hiroko Oyamada, translated from the Japanese by David Boyd

The Hole

by Hiroko Oyamada, translated from the Japanese by David Boyd

The Factory

by Hiroko Oyamada, translated from the Japanese by David Boyd

Christopher R. Browning

Adenauer’s Bargain

A new book argues that a delayed reckoning with the Holocaust was necessary for democratization in postwar West Germany.

Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955

by Harald Jähner, translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside

Ange Mlinko

The Transplanted Ironist

Iman Mersal’s feminism manifests not as a creed but as a tone, a disposition toward life and love.

The Threshold

by Iman Mersal, translated from the Arabic by Robyn Creswell

Corey Robin

The Trouble with Money

John Maynard Keynes thought that in forgetting that money is a means and not an end, we abandon the reality of the present for the fiction of the future.

The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes

by Zachary D. Carter

Keynes Against Capitalism: His Economic Case for Liberal Socialism

by James Crotty

Howard W. French

Naipaul’s Unreal Africa

A Bend in the River was acclaimed for its brave truth-telling, but it fails to imagine Africa as anything other than unchanging, untamed, and primitive.

Tomasz Rózycki,
Mira Rosenthal

An Unexpected Turn of Events

a poem

William Dalrymple

Missionaries, Merlins, and Merchants

Recent scholarship illuminates how medieval Southeast Asia transformed Indian cultural and religious ideas brought to the region by monks and traders.

Coastal Shrines and Transnational Maritime Networks Across India and Southeast Asia

by Himanshu Prabha Ray

Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia: Networks of Masters, Texts, Icons

edited by Andrea Acri

The Creative South: Buddhist and Hindu Art in Mediaeval Maritime Asia, Volume 1

edited by Andrea Acri and Peter Sharrock

Simon Callow

Ol’ Blue Eyes

Paul Newman’s posthumous memoir is a many-sided self-interrogation by a man who was a mystery to himself.

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man

by Paul Newman, based on interviews and oral histories conducted by Stewart Stern, compiled and edited by David Rosenthal, with a foreword by Melissa Newman and an afterword by Clea Newman Soderlund

The Last Movie Stars

an HBO documentary series directed by Ethan Hawke