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“Consent,” by Jill Ciment, and “Change,” by Édouard Louis, Reviewed
On time, as anticipated, they have returned, tunnelling into view, leaving their sooty signature. Pale in the sudden light, they…
“Long Island Compromise,” Reviewed | The New Yorker
The rich are always crying poverty when it comes time to pay a ransom: “Net worth and liquidity are not…
How to Start a War Over Taiwan
Catastrophic wars can start in peripheral places: Sarajevo, for the First World War; Gleiwitz, on the German-Polish border, for the…
The Radical Faith of Harriet Tubman
Just how far down did Moses go? The spiritual does not say, but one of the prophet’s namesakes—the woman who…
Anthony Fauci’s Side of the Story
Some fifty pages into his autobiography, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service” (Viking), Anthony Fauci, the former head…
How the Philosopher Charles Taylor Would Heal the Ills of Modernity
Lyric poets and mathematicians, by general agreement, do their best work young, while composers and conductors are evergreen, doing their…
Should We Kill Some Wild Creatures to Protect Others?
The northern spotted owl is about a foot and a half high, with very dark eyes, a greenish beak, and…
When the C.I.A. Messes Up
Washington, eager for results but low on options, tried similar tactics elsewhere—with similar outcomes. “All told, hundreds of the CIA’s…
Pandemic Novels, Reviewed | The New Yorker
In the early, self-improvement phase of the pandemic, people would sometimes comment on the opportunities that lockdown presented for art…
What Does Freud Still Have to Teach Us?
There are more than thirty full-length biographies of Sigmund Freud in circulation today. Why keep writing them? Generally, there are…