N.K. Jemisin Wrote a Sci-Fi Ode to New York City—Then It Became Reality

We talked to the award-winning writer about The City We Became, her latest groundbreaking, world-quaking book, and why it feels so prescient.

Jessica Suriano

What Truths Can You Divine From Instagram Paintings?

How the act of scrutinizing art online has changed the role of the critic. 

Barry Schwabsky

The Philosophical Leftovers of Gilles Deleuze

What is there left to learn from the work the French thinker left behind?

Andrew Marzoni

The Biography That Reimagined a Life—and the Genre

Diane Johnson’s The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives uses speculation and fabulation to correct the biases of history.

Marie Solis

The Sad Sex Lives of Overeducated Millennial Malcontents

Andrew Martin’s characters in Cool For America aren’t having much fun. Instead, they are restless and self-defeating.

Jennifer Schaffer

Wartime President

Calvin Trillin

Letters From the August 10/17, 2020, Issue

Demilitarize the police… The case for public banks… Wrestlemania… A perverse legacy… Spinning their wheels…

Our Readers

Little Pharma on Rooms

Laura Kolbe

For My Wife, Who Is Writing a Collection of Stories Called ‘Homescar’

Nomi Stone

The Tangle of Desire and Class in ‘Normal People’

The television adaptation of the Sally Rooney novel depicts how people can fall in love in a world structured by power.

Erin Schwartz