Books & the Arts

The Intractable Puzzle of Growth The Intractable Puzzle of Growth

For more than a century, the key measure of a healthy economy has been its capacity to grow and yet if production and consumption continues to expand at their current rate we migh…

Books & the Arts / Benjamin Kunkel

Danzy Senna’s Acerbic Satires of Art and Money Danzy Senna’s Acerbic Satires of Art and Money

Having gnawed away at literary and political conventions from within their hallowed forms, Senna has now set her eyes on Hollywood.

Books & the Arts / Lovia Gyarkye

Questlove’s Personal History of Hip-Hop Questlove’s Personal History of Hip-Hop

An elegiac retelling of rap’s origins, Hip-Hop Is History also ends with a sense of hope.

Books & the Arts / Bijan Stephen

From the Magazine

Ross Perot prior to an address to the Economic Club of Detroit.

Did the Early 1990s Break American Politics? Did the Early 1990s Break American Politics?

In When The Clock Broke, John Ganz offers a whirlwind tour of the cranks, conservatives, and con artists who helped remake the American right at the turn of the 21st century.

Books & the Arts / David Klion

The Genius of Garth Greenwell

The Genius of Garth Greenwell The Genius of Garth Greenwell

Set abroad or at home, in unfamiliar worlds an ocean away or in an intensive care unit in Iowa, Greenwell’s novels are songs of the self and of the United States as a whole.

Books & the Arts / Hannah Gold

Natasha Trethewey’s Life in Poetry and Prose

Natasha Trethewey’s Life in Poetry and Prose Natasha Trethewey’s Life in Poetry and Prose

A work of biography, an essay on literature and memory and the South, a prose poem full of lyrical dexterity, Trethewey’s latest book is like all of her others: a master study of …

Books & the Arts / Edna Bonhomme

Literary Criticism

The Magic of Reading Bernard Malamud

The Magic of Reading Bernard Malamud The Magic of Reading Bernard Malamud

His work, unlike that of Bellow or Roth, focused on the lives of often impoverished Jews in Brooklyn and the Bronx and bestowed on them a literary magic.

Books & the Arts / Vivian Gornick

The Myths of Anne Carson

The Myths of Anne Carson The Myths of Anne Carson

Throughout her long and prolific career, Carson has specialized in unexpected juxtapositions between modern life and ancient times, contemporary art and the literature of the…

Books & the Arts / Emily Wilson

The Enigma of Frantz Fanon

The Enigma of Frantz Fanon The Enigma of Frantz Fanon

A revolutionary and an intellectual, a nationalist and a cosmopolitan, a doctor and a revolutionary, Fanon was always multiple.

Books & the Arts / Ken Chen

History & Politics

What Happened to the Democratic Majority?

What Happened to the Democratic Majority? What Happened to the Democratic Majority?

Today the march of class dealignment feels like an inexorable fact of American political life. But is it?

Books & the Arts / Matthew Karp

Sara Ahmed and the Joys of Killjoy Feminism

Sara Ahmed and the Joys of Killjoy Feminism Sara Ahmed and the Joys of Killjoy Feminism

To be a feminist killjoy means celebrating a different kind of joy, the joy that comes from doing critical damage to what damages so much of the world.

Books & the Arts / Judith Butler

How Did Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Go So Off Course?

How Did Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Go So Off Course? How Did Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Go So Off Course?

The president set out to chart a more pacific and humane foreign policy after the Trump years but at some point he and his team of advisers lost the plot.

Books & the Arts / David Klion

Art & Architecture

Bouchra Khalili’s “The Mapping Journey Project,” 2008–11.

The Coming of World Art at the Venice Biennale The Coming of World Art at the Venice Biennale

At one of the oldest biennials on the planet, a glimpse of a more global idea of art history is on view. 

Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky

One of the bridges over the Gowanus Canal.

The Transformation of Gowanus The Transformation of Gowanus

Can a Superfund site be remade into an experiment for equitable housing and eco-friendly development?

Books & the Arts / Karrie Jacobs

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s “Zion, Her Mother Shea, and Her Grandfather Mr. Smiley Riding on Their Tennessee Walking Horses, Mares, P.T. (P.T.’s Miss One of a Kind), Dolly (Secretly), and Blue (Blue’s Royal Threat), Newton, Mississippi.”

LaToya Ruby Frazier Rewrites the Rules of Documentary Photography LaToya Ruby Frazier Rewrites the Rules of Documentary Photography

A new career survey at the MoMA is a perfect illustration of the photographer’s mission: to reframe how viewers see the working-class and low-income people whom she counts as kin….

Books & the Arts / Jillian Steinhauer

Film & Television

President of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige, 2019.

The Rise and Fall of the Marvel Cinematic Universe The Rise and Fall of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

How a movie studio and its head honcho redefined moviemaking for the worst.

Books & the Arts / Kyle Paoletta

Anya Taylor-Joy in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.”

Why Did “Furiosa” Flop? Why Did “Furiosa” Flop?

A web of interconnected reasons might explain why George Miller’s long-awaited new entry to his Mad Max series failed in the box office.

Books & the Arts / Vikram Murthi

The Rise of the Influencer Chefs

The Rise of the Influencer Chefs The Rise of the Influencer Chefs

How a new generation of food TV on Tiktok and Instagram is remaking how we relate to cooking and eating.

Books & the Arts / Aaron Timms

Latest in Books & the Arts

Anna Nordlander, “Sami Woman and her Child” (1870s).

A Swedish Poet Comes Face to Face With the Epic A Swedish Poet Comes Face to Face With the Epic

Sámi writer Linnea Axelsson’s AEdnan uses the ancient form to critique Sweden’s historical mistreatment of its indigenous people.

Oct 10, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Rebecca Ariel Porte

Alba de Céspedes’s Marriage Plot Polemic

Alba de Céspedes’s Marriage Plot Polemic Alba de Céspedes’s Marriage Plot Polemic

In the Cuban-Italian novelist’s Her Side of the Story, she confronts the falsity of romantic love.

Oct 9, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Rachel Vorona Cote

A photograph of Sylvia Plath on her grave at St Thomas A. Beckett churchyard, Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, 2011.

The Silencing of Sylvia Plath The Silencing of Sylvia Plath

In Emily Van Duyne’s Loving Sylvia Plath she asks if we can fully understand the poet’s work without understanding her abusive marriage to Ted Hughes.

Oct 8, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Lynne Feeley

Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina and Laurence Fishburne as Fundi Romaine in “Megalopolis”.

The Empty Promise of “Megalopolis” The Empty Promise of “Megalopolis”

Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited magnum opus is a flop.

Oct 7, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Kearse

Stefan Bakałowicz's “Roman poet Catullus reading to his friends” (1885).

The Age-Old Struggle of Translating Catullus The Age-Old Struggle of Translating Catullus

A crisp new rendering of the Roman poet’s poems underlines how difficult it is to fully relate all his complexities and contradictions.

Oct 3, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Nicolas Liney

Esperanza Spalding and Milton Nascimento’s Endless Reinventions

Esperanza Spalding and Milton Nascimento’s Endless Reinventions Esperanza Spalding and Milton Nascimento’s Endless Reinventions

In a collaborative work, the two artists find a fusion of old and new that charts a path forward for jazz and pop’s future.

Oct 2, 2024 / Books & the Arts / David Hajdu

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