Volume 67, Number 13 (2020-08-20)

Clair Wills

Stepping Out

The joy of dancing as a follower is to listen for the barely said—to interpret signs almost before they have been given, to read messages in the moment they are being sent.

Bill McKibben

130 Degrees

This is going to be a century of crises, many of them more dangerous than what we’re living through now.

Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency

by Mark Lynas

Ingrid D. Rowland

The Virtuoso

No less than Michelangelo but much more subtly, Raphael brought on revolutions in art and architecture, and in thought itself.

Raffaello 1520–1483

an exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, June 2–August 30, 2020

Jonathan Stevenson

Revenge Served Tepid

John Bolton’s ‘The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir’

The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

Logan Fry

Shadow Selves

‘The Man in the Red Coat’ by Julian Barnes

The Man in the Red Coat

by Julian Barnes

Jessica T. Mathews

The New Nuclear Threat

A second nuclear arms race has begun—one that could be more dangerous than the first.

The Age of Hiroshima

edited by Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry

The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War

by Fred Kaplan

The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump

by William J. Perry and Tom Z. Collina

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel

by Jeffrey Lewis

Fara Dabhoiwala

Speech and Slavery in the West Indies

Slavery was foundational to Britain’s prosperity and rise to global power.

The Freedom of Speech: Talk and Slavery in the Anglo-Caribbean World

by Miles Ogborn

Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War

by Vincent Brown

Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire

by Tom Zoellner

David Cole

The Court’s Declarations of Independence

In the end, the Supreme Court’s 2019–2020 term was much less conservative than anyone had expected.

Sophie Pinkham

Living by Lies

Joshua Yaffa’s ‘Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia’

Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia

by Joshua Yaffa

Rumaan Alam

The Element of Surprise

Lorrie Moore’s ‘Collected Stories’

Collected Stories

by Lorrie Moore, with an introduction by Lauren Groff

Joseph O’Neill

Save the Party, Save the World

Somewhat unexpectedly, ensuring the success of the Democratic Party has become the most important political project in the world.

Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country

by E.J. Dionne Jr.

Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change

by Eitan Hersh

Kate Bolick

The choices we impose on our living spaces are at once personal and inescapably social, a jumble of instinct and cultural expectation so complex that for most of us they play out beneath the radar of conscious thought.

Lives of Houses

edited by Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee

Jonathan Freedland

Disinformed to Death

Perhaps the moment is ripe for three new books on disinformation.

Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare

by Thomas Rid

The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics

by Ben Buchanan

Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives

by Philip N. Howard

Rae Armantrout

Buy In

a poem

Michelle Kuo

What Replaces Prisons?

What would a world with a vastly reduced reliance on prisons and police look like?

Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair

by Danielle Sered

Adam Thirlwell

A Horse’s Remorse

The most accurate portrait of contemporary malaise might be a cartoon that stars an asshole sublebrity horse.

BoJack Horseman

an animated Netflix series created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg and art-directed by Lisa Hanawalt

David Luban

America the Unaccountable

The Trump administration has declared war on the International Criminal Court—the world’s only permanent court whose mandate is to pursue cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Michelle Nijhuis

Buzz Buzz Buzz

Humans have spent decades trying to teach other animals our languages, but we’ve made little effort to learn theirs.

When Animals Speak: Toward an Interspecies Democracy

by Eva Meijer

Animal Languages

by Eva Meijer, translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson

Animal Internet: Nature and the Digital Revolution

by Alexander Pschera, translated from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer and with a foreword by Martin Wikelski

Nightingales in Berlin: Searching for the Perfect Sound

by David Rothenberg

James Walton

‘A Good Year Once’

Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize–winning ‘Shuggie Bain’ is not just an accomplished debut. It also feels like a moving act of filial reverence.

Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

Darryl Pinckney

‘We Must Act Out Our Freedom’

If a person cannot imagine a future, then we would say that that person is depressed. But if a country cannot envision a future, how do we describe its condition?