The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books “The premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.”

“One of the central paradoxes of twenty-first-century capitalist urban planning [is that] planners and policymakers are ...
11/14/2025

“One of the central paradoxes of twenty-first-century capitalist urban planning [is that] planners and policymakers are expected to make cities simultaneously more profitable and more affordable.” —an interview with Samuel Stein

The historic turnout with which Zohran Mamdani won the mayoralty is, almost, old news by now. But three of the decisions New Yorkers faced when they

Zephyr Teachout on why the promise of multilevel marketing schemes is nothing more than hot air
11/14/2025

Zephyr Teachout on why the promise of multilevel marketing schemes is nothing more than hot air

How did multilevel marketing schemes come to be legal, let alone so widespread? The answer has to do with how we think of workers and how we think of consumers.

Natasha Wimmer on Benito Pérez Galdós, the Spanish of nineteenth-century Spanish realist novels
11/14/2025

Natasha Wimmer on Benito Pérez Galdós, the Spanish of nineteenth-century Spanish realist novels

Benito Pérez Galdós's mid-career novel Miaow sketches the absurd tribulations of a laid-off civil servant.

In Anni Albers’s prints, “we can see her gradually leaving behind the weaving modes of thread and grid while embracing m...
11/14/2025

In Anni Albers’s prints, “we can see her gradually leaving behind the weaving modes of thread and grid while embracing more open-ended patterns. The pieces suggest lost languages, crystal structures, computer printouts, and more.” —Christopher Benfey

Years later, when she could look back on her career as one of the towering twentieth-century textile artists, Anni Albers remembered attending the Berlin

Tim Berners-Lee’s original “design for the [world wide] web was an antidesign, refusing to impose particular structures,...
11/13/2025

Tim Berners-Lee’s original “design for the [world wide] web was an antidesign, refusing to impose particular structures, leaving space for unanticipated uses and possibilities.” —James Gleick

The Internet was not meant to suck.

Susan Neiman on the symbolic struggles that came to be called “woke”
11/13/2025

Susan Neiman on the symbolic struggles that came to be called “woke”

Symbolic struggles cannot be a force of resistance to the Trump administration.

Michael Gorra on keeping up with the Cheevers
11/13/2025

Michael Gorra on keeping up with the Cheevers

Susan Cheever’s recollections of her childhood illuminate the obsessions and failures that lay behind her father’s fiction.

Gordon F. Sander on the lingering threat of a US invasion of Greenland
11/13/2025

Gordon F. Sander on the lingering threat of a US invasion of Greenland

President Trump’s threats to seize Greenland have caused consternation and fear among Danes and Greenlanders alike.

Our December 4 issue is now online, with James Gleick on the Internet before it sucked, Ursula Lindsey on Vigdis Hjorth’...
11/13/2025

Our December 4 issue is now online, with James Gleick on the Internet before it sucked, Ursula Lindsey on Vigdis Hjorth’s sneaky novels of interpersonal dysfunction, Sophie Pinkham on Uzbek art, Gordon F. Sander on Trump’s strange designs on Greenland, Michael Gorra on Cheever fille, Dan Kaufman on the resurgence of Francisco Francophilia, Robert Sullivan on the Native American fight for sovereignty, Adam Kirsch on Giorgio Agamben’s poetic philosophy, Zephyr Teachout on America’s scam economy, poems by Karl Kirchwey and Sylvie Kandé, and much more.

Table of Contents

“Beckett pared language down and reconfigured it into a strange new register to produce effects of absurdity and alienat...
11/13/2025

“Beckett pared language down and reconfigured it into a strange new register to produce effects of absurdity and alienation: too intensely sincere to be ironic or parodic, but too bizarre and blasé to be tragic.” —FT

In Samuel Beckett's work, everything is on the surface. Nothing is hidden, encoded, or allegorized. No truth lies inside or behind; there is no secret to

Christopher Benfey on the music of Anni Albers’s prints
11/12/2025

Christopher Benfey on the music of Anni Albers’s prints

Years later, when she could look back on her career as one of the towering twentieth-century textile artists, Anni Albers remembered attending the Berlin

“We have gotten so used to the fragmentary…that we’ve forgotten what it’s good at. It is good at what…Kate Riley use[s] ...
11/12/2025

“We have gotten so used to the fragmentary…that we’ve forgotten what it’s good at. It is good at what…Kate Riley use[s] it for, which is to coax out a novel, especially a first novel, piece by piece.” —Joanna Biggs on Ruth

In Ruth, Kate Riley portrays the interior life of her title character with a richness that is at odds with Ruth's austere Anabaptist community.

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