February 23, 2023 issue

Christopher Benfey

Buildings Come to Life

In Edward Hopper’s paintings of New York, human figures often seem outgrowths of their architectural surroundings.

Edward Hopper’s New York

an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, October 19, 2022–March 5, 2023

Vanessa Barbara

Brazil at the Crossroads

Lula’s election comes as a relief to many Brazilians, but in this historically violent and unequal country, a void in the democratic field endures.

Frances Wilson

Very Free and Indirect

The intensity of experience that Katherine Mansfield sought in her short life is matched by the formal obliqueness she discovered in her stories.

All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything

by Claire Harman

Matthew Aucoin

Performance as Immolation

The conductor Carlos Kleiber’s aesthetic was founded on the interplay between voluptuous refinement and an impulse to violence.

Corresponding with Carlos: A Biography of Carlos Kleiber

by Charles Barber

Carlos Kleiber: Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon

12 CDs and 1 Blu-ray disc (2018)

Alan Felsenthal

A new history focusing on the English Rothschilds tells how the women were centrally involved in business, politics, social welfare, and culture—all while caught between the advantages of wealth and the burdens of anti-Semitism and sexism.

The Women of Rothschild: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Famous Dynasty

by Natalie Livingstone

Farnoosh Fathi

from ‘Twenty Collars’

a poem

Andrew Butterfield

A ‘Magic Mirror’ of Venice

The first-ever exhibition outside Italy of the works of Vittore Carpaccio is a bracing introduction to the artist who best captured the imaginative grandeur and the ceremonial refinement of early-sixteenth-century Venice.

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice

an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., November 20, 2022–February 12, 2023; and the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, March 18–June 18, 2023

Larry Rohter

‘Bad for Business’

In Harsh Times, Mario Vargas Llosa grieves for the path Guatemala might have taken had the United States and the United Fruit Company not intervened in 1954 to overthrow the reformist president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán.

Harsh Times

by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West

Michael Hofmann

Found Poem

a poem

Tim Flannery

Monotreme Dreams

Australia’s egg-laying monotremes and pouch-carrying marsupials may seem to be outliers, but they’re as well suited to their environment as any other mammal.

Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals

by Jack Ashby

Koala: A Natural History and an Uncertain Future

by Danielle Clode

Ursula Lindsey

Rape and Resistance in Egypt

A new book recounts the heroics of activists who organized to protect women from sexual violence during the Egyptian revolution and to assert their right to participate in the country’s political life.

Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution

by Yasmin El-Rifae

Marina Warner

Nothing More Wondrous

A recent comparative study of medieval Christian and Islamic culture suggests that marvels offer common ground; wonder is a shared delight, a shared motive.

Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World

by Michelle Karnes

T.H. Breen

Commanders and Courtiers

The Howe family achieved an influential position of power in late-eighteenth-century Britain, propelled by the shrewd social intelligence of the Howe women.

The Howe Dynasty: The Untold Story of a Military Family and the Women Behind Britain’s Wars for America

by Julie Flavell

Timothy Garton Ash

Ukraine in Our Future

Ukraine faces extraordinary challenges, but it also presents a challenge for Europe—and a great opportunity.

Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History

by Serhii Plokhy

Der Krieg gegen die Ukraine: Hintergründe, Ereignisse, Folgen [The War Against Ukraine: Background, Events, Consequences]

by Gwendolyn Sasse

The Zelensky Effect

by Olga Onuch and Henry E. Hale

The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present

by Serhii Plokhy

Letters

Steven Sullivan,
Zadie Smith

My Generation

Issue Details

Cover art
Jessica Allen: Group of Small Boxes Seen from Above, Study 1, 2021
(Scroll Gallery, New York/Blue Shop Gallery, London/Simon Cook Photography)

Series art
Joy Walker: Untitled (Grids), 2022