Books & the Arts

The Impossible Story of Communism The Impossible Story of Communism

How do you tell the history of a global movement in all its hope and contradiction?

Books & the Arts / David A. Bell

The Long History of the “Elsewhere Museum” The Long History of the “Elsewhere Museum”

Can the ethnographic museum be reinvented?

Books & the Arts / Farah Abdessamad

The Apprenticeship of Donald Trump The Apprenticeship of Donald Trump

A new film examines Trump’s formative years under the tutelage of Roy Cohn.

Books & the Arts / David Klion

From the Magazine

Emily Oster and the Optimization of Parenting

Emily Oster and the Optimization of Parenting Emily Oster and the Optimization of Parenting

What gets lost when we approach pregnancy and raising children through data?

Books & the Arts / Anna Louie Sussman

A depiction of the Broadway Linear Park from 32nd Street in Manhattan.

Can New York’s Most Famous Street be Turned into a Park? Can New York’s Most Famous Street be Turned into a Park?

The effort to transform Broadway into a pedestrian space.

Books & the Arts / Karrie Jacobs

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

Literary Criticism

Danzy Senna’s Acerbic Satires of Art and Money

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

Sally Rooney’s Open Question

Sally Rooney’s Open Question Sally Rooney’s Open Question

In Intermezzo, we get characters acting out their political commitments instead of just talking about them. But is their vision of domestic cooperation enough?

Books & the Arts / Jess Bergman

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

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

Then–US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testifying before the Senate Budget Committee in 2009.

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

A crowd outside Minneapolis’s Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank during an economic crisis in May 1893.

The Radical Past and Future of Debt Resistance The Radical Past and Future of Debt Resistance

The deep roots of debt relief activism in the United States.

Books & the Arts / Astra Taylor

Art & Architecture

From “Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction,” Aaron Douglas (1934).

The Cosmopolitan Modernism of the Harlem Renaissance The Cosmopolitan Modernism of the Harlem Renaissance

A new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art explores the world-spanning art of the Harlem Renaissance.

Books & the Arts / Rachel Hunter Himes

Rain and Mountains

Rain and Mountains Rain and Mountains

Pages from a novelist’s notebook.

Books & the Arts / Orhan Pamuk

Central Park Tower, One57, and 111 West 57th Street, 2022.

What’s the Deal With Manhattan’s Pencil-Thin High Rises? What’s the Deal With Manhattan’s Pencil-Thin High Rises?

A walk along 57th Street.

Books & the Arts / Karrie Jacobs

Film & Television

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.

Books & the Arts / Stephen Kearse

Ken Leung in “Industry.”

“Industry”’s Gleeful Critique of Capital “Industry”’s Gleeful Critique of Capital

HBO’s investment banking drama makes a soap opera out of the “useless” but lurid nature of finance.

Books & the Arts / Vikram Murthi

“Anora,” an American Fantasia

“Anora,” an American Fantasia “Anora,” an American Fantasia

In Sean Baker’s tragicomic film of a sex worker’s brush with wealth, he evokes auteurs of yore, who focused on the social realities of the country’s outcasts.

Books & the Arts / Beatrice Loayza

Latest in Books & the Arts

How the Western Literary Canon Made the World Worse

How the Western Literary Canon Made the World Worse How the Western Literary Canon Made the World Worse

A talk with Dionne Brand about her recent book, Salvage, which looks at how the classic texts of Anglo-American fiction helped abet the crimes of capitalism, colonialism, and more…

Dec 5, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Elias Rodriques

Along the Roads That Built Modern Brazil

Along the Roads That Built Modern Brazil Along the Roads That Built Modern Brazil

José Henrique Bortoluci’s What Is Mine tells the story of his country’s laborers, like his father, who built its infrastructure, and in turn its fractious politics.

Dec 4, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Jimin Kang

Dubai Mall in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

In the Zone of the Rich In the Zone of the Rich

In The Hidden Globe, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian examines what globalization has come to look like for the wealthy.

Nov 26, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Vanessa Ogle

An African American family seated in a convertible, 1972.

The Perils of a Post-Racial Utopia The Perils of a Post-Racial Utopia

In Nicola Yoon’s One of Our Kind, a dystopian novel of a Black upper-class suburb’s secrets, she examines the dangers of choosing exceptionalism over equality.

Nov 21, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Kearse

Skeletons used in a museum in Amsterdam. They are posed in various positions for working; sawing wood, doing housework, carrying planks, office work, etc.

Why Americans Are Obsessed With Poor Posture Why Americans Are Obsessed With Poor Posture

A recent history of the 20th-century movement to fix slouching questions the moral and political dimensions of addressing bad backs over wider public health concerns.

Nov 20, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Zoe Adams

A detail of a painting by Thomas Nast.

Slavery in an Age of Emancipation Slavery in an Age of Emancipation

Robin Blackburn’s sweeping history of slavery and freedom in the 19th century.

Nov 19, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Manisha Sinha

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