June 9, 2022 issue

Christine Henneberg,
David Cole,
Anne Enright,
Sherrilyn Ifill,
et al.

The End of Roe

A symposium of writers on a future without the right to reproductive freedom.

Nathaniel Rich

The Monsters in Cabinet 13

Un-su Kim’s novels take on the capricious drudgery of modern professional life and the crazed whimsy and sociopathic violence it can inspire.

The Cabinet

by Un-su Kim, translated from the Korean by Sean Lin Halbert

The Plotters

by Un-su Kim, translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell

Michelle Nijhuis

Must We Grow?

New books argue that life in a slower economy isn’t necessarily painful, and is likely to be healthier and more secure in many ways.

The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves

by J.B. MacKinnon

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less

by Leidy Klotz

Magda Teter

Rehearsal for Genocide

Three recent books conclude that the anti-Jewish pogroms following World War I help to explain what would take place a generation later.

Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets

by Elissa Bemporad

International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War

by Jaclyn Granick

In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918–1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust

by Jeffrey Veidlinger

Cathleen Schine

Subjects of Considerable Gossip

Greta Garbo craved protection, and one such guardian was Salka Viertel, a nearly forgotten screenwriter who nurtured a community of fellow émigrés in postwar Hollywood.

Garbo

by Robert Gottlieb

The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood

by Donna Rifkind

The Kindness of Strangers

by Salka Viertel, with an introduction by Lawrence Weschler and an afterword by Donna Rifkind

Tim Parks

A Game of Low Stakes

In Sam Riviere’s satire of the publishing world, literary competitiveness poisons intimate relations.

Dead Souls

by Sam Riviere

Ethan Zuckerman

Could Internet Culture Be Different?

Kevin Driscoll’s study of early Internet communities contains a vision for a less hostile and homogenous future of social networking.

The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media

by Kevin Driscoll

Adam Kirsch

The correspondence of Theodor Adorno and Gershom Scholem reveals that despite their intellectual differences, their shared mission to preserve Walter Benjamin’s work led to a genuine fondness between them.

Correspondence, 1939–1969

by Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, edited and with an introduction by Asaf Angermann, translated from the German by Paula Schwebel and Sebastian Truskolaski

Robert Pinsky

Cataract

a poem

Sarah Chihaya

‘The Ultimate Asian Woman’

Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel Disorientation is a rollicking satire of graduate-school life, Asian-American overachievers, and the peculiar injustices of the university.

Disorientation

by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Mark Ford

A Style of Revolt

A poet of great wit and style, Thom Gunn was also a lyrical portraitist, which is especially evident in his recently collected letters.

The Letters of Thom Gunn

selected and edited by Michael Nott, August Kleinzahler, and Clive Wilmer

Yuri Slezkine

‘He Loved Handing Out Decorations’

The admiring biographer of Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union’s most memorably inconspicuous leader, finds him an affable heartthrob who longed for peace “with every fibre of his body.”

Brezhnev: The Making of a Statesman

by Susanne Schattenberg, translated from the German by John Heath

Ginia Bellafante

Mothers Under Pressure

The culture of contemporary child-rearing brings anxiety and guilt without relief. Does Emily Oster’s call for more relaxed parenting offer the solution?

The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years

by Emily Oster

Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America

by Sarah Menkedick

Lindsay Turner