Volume 67, Number 19 (2020-12-03)

A case before the Supreme Court tests whether its conservative justices will violate their long-standing constitutional principles in order to expand religious liberty.

Claire Messud

The Dream of Pure Expression

A new translation of Paul Valéry’s poems also includes rousing extracts from his extraordinary notebooks.

The Idea of Perfection: The Poetry and Prose of Paul Valéry

a bilingual edition translated from the French by Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody

Colin Thubron

Cartographers of Stone and Air

On Tim Robinson’s intensely focused survey of a small patch of the Irish landscape and Lyall Watson’s sweeping inquiry into the mysteries and mysticism of wind.

Listening to the Wind: The Connemara Trilogy: Part One

by Tim Robinson, with an introduction by Daniel Slager

Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind

by Lyall Watson, with an introduction by Nick Hunt

Hermione Lee

An Undisappearing Act

Diane Johnson’s restitutionary biography brings George Meredith’s first wife out of his shadow.

The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith: And Other Lesser Lives

by Diane Johnson, with an introduction by Vivian Gornick

Tim Flannery

In the Soup

Tracing the research into the earliest beginnings of life on earth.

The Genesis Quest: The Geniuses and Eccentrics on a Journey to Uncover the Origin of Life on Earth

by Michael Marshall

Jenny Uglow

Making London Their Own

A new book traces the multitudinous contributions of migrants to the capital, as well as their persistent exploitation.

Migrant City: A New History of London

by Panikos Panayi

David Treuer

The Power Brokers

A recent history centers the Lakota and the vast territory they controlled in the story of the formation of the United States.

Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power

by Pekka Hämäläinen

Marianne Boruch

The Sirens

a poem

Irina Dumitrescu

Dudes Without Heirs

Maria Headley translates ‘Beowulf,’ a story in which women make the world, and men make their legends by destroying it.

Beowulf

translated from the Old English by Maria Dahvana Headley

Greil Marcus

The Devil Had Nothing to Do With It

“Robert Johnson was one of the most inventive geniuses of all time,” wrote Bob Dylan. “We still haven’t caught up with him.”

Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson

by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow

Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson

by Annye C. Anderson with Preston Lauterbach, and with a foreword by Elijah Wald

Love in Vain: Robert Johnson, 1911–1938

by Mezzo and J.M. Dupont, translated from the French by Ivanka Hahnenberger

Ariel Dorfman

Songs of Loss and Reinvention

Learning from the knowledge migrants and exiles have accumulated across the centuries.

The Penguin Book of Migration Literature: Departures, Arrivals, Generations, Returns

edited and with an introduction by Dohra Ahmad and a foreword by Edwidge Danticat

Jed S. Rakoff

Getting Away With Murder

It’s time to start prosecuting executives for crimes they commit on behalf of their companies.

Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Crisis of Underenforcement

by John C. Coffee Jr.

Sara Lipton

Life, Death, and the Levys

A new book traces the twentieth-century scattering of a Sephardic family through five continents.

Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century

by Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Alma Guillermoprieto

Bolivia’s Tarnished Savior

Revisiting Evo Morales’s achievements and flaws as his party returns to power.

Letters

Eugene Brogyanyi,
Diarmaid MacCulloch

They Were Hungarians

Paul Needham