Volume 68, Number 12 (2021-07-22)

Caroline Fraser

Murder Is My Business

In the true crime genre’s latest iteration, writers, reporters, bloggers, documentary filmmakers, and podcast hosts have taken a soiled brand and turned it into a collective exercise in retributive justice, recording and correcting the history of sexual violence.

True Crime Detective Magazines 1924–1969

by Eric Godtland, edited by Dian Hanson

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

by Michelle McNamara, with an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by Patton Oswalt

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark

an HBO documentary series directed by Liz Garbus, Elizabeth Wolff, Myles Kane, and Josh Koury

My Favorite Murder

a podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

The Ripper

a BBC/Netflix documentary series directed by Jesse Vile and Elena Wood

Tales of the Grim Sleeper

a documentary film written and directed by Nick Broomfield, Barney Broomfield, and Marc Hoeferlin

Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession

edited by Sarah Weinman, with an introduction by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy

by Ann Rule

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Jed Perl

Interpreting Nature

A transcendent exhibition of Cézanne’s drawings at MoMA reveals an artist who is drunk on sensation but always sober enough to pin it down.

Cézanne Drawing

an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, June 6–September 25, 2021

Alma Guillermoprieto

Confrontation in Colombia

Protesters have demanded not just the rejection of a tax bill but a whole new society.

Michael Greenberg

Janet Malcolm (1934–2021)

Janet Malcolm’s journalism focused on the contradictory motives, confused allegiances, and hidden drives of human life.

Ben Lerner

The Lights

a poem

Mark O’Connell

Uncanny Planet

A new collection of essays by Nathaniel Rich argues that there is no going back to whatever might be meant by “nature.”

Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade

by Nathaniel Rich

Clair Wills

The Possessed

In Carl Frode Tiller’s trilogy of novels, the varied accounts of the narrator’s youth build to a judgment on the ethics of writing itself.

Encircling

by Carl Frode Tiller, translated from the Norwegian by Barbara J. Haveland

Encircling 2: Origins

by Carl Frode Tiller, translated from the Norwegian by Barbara J. Haveland

Encircling 3: Aftermath

by Carl Frode Tiller, translated from the Norwegian by Barbara J. Haveland

Fintan O’Toole

Freedom for Sale

In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of American artists began to think of advertising and commercial imagery as the new avant-garde.

The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War

by Louis Menand

Peter C. Baker

Death Drives

Pedestrian fatalities are rising dramatically in the US, and Angie Schmitt’s Right of Way gives a rare look at why and what might be done about it.

Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America

by Angie Schmitt

Josephine Quinn

Ravenna Between East and West

It has been a barbarian city, a holy city, a woman’s city, and a city ruled by Romans, Huns, Goths, Greeks, and bishops.

Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe

by Judith Herrin

Fred Kaplan

Why Did We Invade Iraq?

The most complete account we are likely to get of the deceptions and duplicities that led to war leaves some crucial mysteries unsolved.

To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq

by Robert Draper

Christine Smallwood

The Power of Questions

Jacqueline Rose’s latest book, On Violence and On Violence Against Women, takes up a subject she has not covered before: gendered abuse and harassment.

On Violence and On Violence Against Women

by Jacqueline Rose

Adam Hochschild

All-American Vigilantes

When the US entered World War I, right-wing organizations seized the opportunity to round up leftists, labor organizers, and suspected draft dodgers.

Sanford Schwartz

Daydream Kingdoms

Susan Te Kahurangi King’s art presents a visual, psychological, and expressive upside-down world.

Parallel Phenomena: Works on Paper by Carroll Dunham, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Gladys Nilsson, and Peter Saul

Colin Thubron

Pleasure Domes and Postal Routes

Marie Favereau’s new book about the Golden Horde, the great Mongol power of the Eurasian steppe, explores its economy, ideology, and material culture, along with its wider influence.

The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World

by Marie Favereau

The Mongol Century: Visual Cultures of Yuan China, 1271–1368

by Shane McCausland

Sarah Arvio