June 22, 2023 issue

Fara Dabhoiwala

Life Is Short. Indexes Are Necessary.

In his new history of the index, Dennis Duncan traces its evolution through the constantly changing character of reading itself.

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age

by Dennis Duncan

Ingrid D. Rowland

The Divine Guido

A new exhibition at the Prado dispels the idea that Guido Reni was an academic painter, revealing instead a tireless innovator.

Guido Reni

an exhibition at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, March 28–July 9, 2023

Rachel Donadio

Escaping Biography

Nathalie Sarraute sought to free the novel from old narrative conventions and refused to admit the relevance of her own experience—as a woman, as a Jew—to her writing.

Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between

by Ann Jefferson

Shane McCrae

June 12, 2020

a poem

Sophie Pinkham

Fireball Over Siberia

A mysterious 1908 meteorite explosion became the object of widespread fascination and fear decades after it occurred.

Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and Its Environmental Legacy

by Andy Bruno

Steve Coll

Who Are the Taliban Now?

Hassan Abbas’s book surveys the second Islamic Emirate’s ideology and leading personalities and probes its internal tensions.

The Return of the Taliban: Afghanistan After the Americans Left

by Hassan Abbas

Catherine Nicholson

Right Busy with Sticks and Spales

The historian Nicholas Orme lets us glimpse what the sixteenth century was like for children.

Tudor Children

by Nicholas Orme

Jessica Riskin

A Poisonous Legacy

Two new books reveal the story of Stanford University’s early years to be rife with corruption, autocracy, incompetence, white supremacy, and murder.

Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University

by Richard White

American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford

by Roland De Wolk

Ruth Franklin

The Millions We Failed to Save

The recent documentary The US and the Holocaust is a scathing, even bombastic indictment of US immigration policy over the past 160 years.

The US and the Holocaust

a PBS documentary series directed and produced by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein

In the Garden of the Righteous: The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust

by Richard Hurowitz

Gary Saul Morson

Death and the Hedgehog

With his conversion to his own highly distinct form of Christianity, Tolstoy made a religion of universal love, forsaking violence, laws, private property, and high culture.

Tolstoy as Philosopher: Essential Short Writings (1835–1910): An Anthology

edited and translated from the Russian by Inessa Medzhibovskaya

On Life: A Critical Edition

by Leo Tolstoy, edited by Inessa Medzhibovskaya, and translated from the Russian by Michael Denner and Inessa Medzhibovskaya

David A. Bell