Verlyn Klinkenborg

The Return of Trump—V

On tantrums, dominion, the Southern Strategy, fearmongering ads, New York’s haves and have-nots, and Candidate Fain. 

True as True Can Be

“The answer to habitat and species destruction, to climate change and pollution, is always the same: stop doing the things that cause them.”

What the Ocean Holds

Most of our planet’s biosphere exists in the dark of the deep ocean. Will we protect it? Or will we cash it in without concern for the harm we’re causing?

The Cost of Our Debris

The stated purpose of Jay Owens’s new book is to “think with dust,” specifically “human-made” dust and what it reveals—the forensic fingerprint, so to speak, that our species has left upon this planet.

Trees in Themselves

The oldest trees prompt us to think about how embedded we are in time and could help us recalibrate our perspective on the geologic past.

Endless Summer

Brian Wilson’s songs still have the power to astonish on their own terms, from their own time.

The Forest’s-Eye View

Two new books investigate the ways in which deforestation affects climate change, and climate change affects forests.

Requiem for a Heavyweight

In Fathoms, Rebecca Giggs tries to comprehend the fact that whales now literally embody their increasingly polluted world.

A Noah’s Ark of Books

Reaktion’s colorful ‘Animal’ series tries to capture the richness of biological life on Earth.

Wendell Berry’s High Horse

An English Clergyman’s Advice for Quarantine

Reverend Sydney Smith’s thoughts, in a letter to his wife, need almost no alteration for modern times and are still excellent advice, perhaps especially for a world in quarantine.

Pandemic Journal, April 6–12

Brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Verlyn Klinkenborg in East Chatham, Hugh Eakin in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Dalia Hatuqa in Amman, and more.

Pandemic Journal, March 23–29

Brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Michael Greenberg in Brooklyn, Raquel Salas Rivera in San Juan, Aida Alami in Paris, Rahmane Idrissa in Niamey, and more.

The Uncrowded Country of the Bomb

Nearly all of the circular scars in Gowin’s photographs were caused by explosions that the Department of Energy calls “weapons related.” In other words, they’re the test-bed of this country’s invisible nuclear arsenal.

What Were Dinosaurs For?

It has become impossible to think about extinction in the old ways, to regard the end-Cretaceous demise of some 80 percent of life on earth as a remote, alien fact.

John Ruskin, a Wreath of Emotion

Ruskin is the spoiled child of the nineteenth century—stringently, evangelically spoiled, but spoiled nevertheless.

The Voice of the Landscape

Green and Pleasant Land

Four new books about farming

A Horse Is a Horse, of Course

What’s Happening to the Bees and Butterflies?

Nature is simply not as full as it once was.