Volume 67, Number 20 (2020-12-17)

Julian Bell

The Body in Swooping Close-Up

The National Gallery’s Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition foregrounds the will and charisma of the painter’s female figures.

Artemisia

an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, October 3, 2020–January 24, 2021 (temporarily closed November 5–December 2)

Alan Hollinghurst

The Meaning of Home

On Bryan Washington’s intimate portraits of queer life in ever-mutating multiethnic Houston.

Lot

by Bryan Washington

Memorial

by Bryan Washington

Ian Frazier

The Plushbottoms of Teton County

Life in the richest and most unequal county in America.

Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West

by Justin Farrell

Lucy Jakub

The Oldest Forest

The promise and pitfalls of commercializing kelp.

Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us

by Ruth Kassinger

Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change

by Bren Smith

The Curious World of Seaweed

by Josie Iselin

Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Water’s Edge

by Susan Hand Shetterly

Hilton Als

An Awful and Beautiful Light

Joan Didion and the granite of the specific.

E. Tammy Kim

Korea’s Tireless Patriot and Revolutionary

Korea’s radical history, told through the eyes of the colonial-era activist and organizer Kim San.

Song of Arirang: The Story of a Korean Revolutionary in China

by Kim San and Nym Wales (Helen Foster Snow), edited by George O. Totten III and Dongyoun Hwang, and with an introduction by Arif Dirlik

Michael Tomasky

What Did the Democrats Win?

The minority repeatedly thwarting the will of the majority is intolerable and untenable.

Louise Glück

Winter Journey

a poem

Elaine Blair

Designing Women

Making space for women to behave badly in ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ and ‘The Favourite.’

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

a film written and directed by Céline Sciamma

The Favourite

a film written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Andrew Katzenstein

A Well-Ventilated Conscience

The digressive, playful, and irreverent Machado de Assis.

Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

by Machado de Assis, translated from the Portuguese and with an introduction and notes by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

The Right to Belong

Two books explore the history of statelessness and the problems with defining people by their citizenship.

Statelessness: A Modern History

by Mira L. Siegelberg

Citizenship

by Dimitry Kochenov

Ange Mlinko

‘The Splendour and the Sting’

The passionate voices and formal experiments of two poets who should no longer be neglected.

Charlotte Mew: Selected Poetry and Prose

edited and with an introduction by Julia Copus

So I Looked Down to Camelot

by Rosamund Stanhope

Nicholas Kenyon

What Matters in Music?

The musicologist Richard Taruskin has lost none of his zest for controversy.

Cursed Questions: On Music and Its Social Practices

by Richard Taruskin

Cintra Wilson

The Pleasure Crafts

A new history of pornography before it became commercial.

The People’s Porn: A History of Handmade Pornography in America

by Lisa Z. Sigel

Bill McKibben

It’s Not Science Fiction

In Kim Stanley Robinson’s anti-dystopian novel, climate change is the crisis that finally forces mankind to deal with global inequality.

The Ministry for the Future

by Kim Stanley Robinson

Amelia Lester

An Island at the Crossroads

Akemi Johnson’s new book explores the complexity of women’s lives in and around US military bases in Okinawa.

Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the US Military Bases in Okinawa

by Akemi Johnson

Noah Feldman

The Battle Over Scalia’s Legacy

The late justice advocated judicial restraint, textualism, and originalism, but conservative jurists will have to choose among them.

The Essential Scalia: On the Constitution, the Courts, and the Rule of Law

by Antonin Scalia, edited by Jeffrey S. Sutton and Edward Whelan, and with a foreword by Justice Elena Kagan

Verlyn Klinkenborg

A Noah’s Ark of Books

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

Ape

by Jon Sorenson

Camel

by Robert Irwin

Chicken

by Annie Potts

Dog

by Susan McHugh

Human

by Amanda Rees and Charlotte Sleigh

Jellyfish

by Peter Williams

Kingfisher

by Ildiko Szabo

Sardine

by Trevor Day

Squid

by Martin Wallen

Zebra

by Christopher Plumb and Samuel Shaw

See all reviewed works

See less

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Europe’s Most Terrible Years

For Germans, World War II began with deceit and cruelty and ended in physical and moral desolation.

Poland 1939: The Outbreak of World War II

by Roger Moorhouse

“Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself”: The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945

by Florian Huber, translated from the German by Imogen Taylor

Becca Rothfeld

Ann Quin’s Stalled Talkers

Through her unstable trinities, the experimental English novelist found a new language for consciousness.

Three

by Ann Quin, with an introduction by Joshua Cohen

Henri Cole

Mouse in the Grocery

a poem

David Salle

Object Lessons

Has there ever been an artist more sure of himself than Donald Judd?

Judd

an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, March 1, 2020–January 9, 2021

Donald Judd Writings

edited by Flavin Judd and Caitlin Murray

Donald Judd Interviews

edited by Flavin Judd and Caitlin Murray

Letters

William Bolcom

Remembering Boulez

In Paris the composer’s word was law even if you didn’t subscribe to it.