October 5, 2023 issue

Jennifer Wilson

Mother Russia

In Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s latest novel, Kidnapped, Soviet bureaucracy is made all the messier by maternal desperation.

Kidnapped: A Story in Crimes

by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz

George B. Stauffer

Where Are the Women Composers?

An engaging multiple biography draws the reader deep into the lives of four British women who attempted to forge careers in the male-dominated field of music composition.

Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World

by Leah Broad

Tim Judah

Ukraine’s New Normal

Away from the front, life appears to be the same, but the country has undergone profound changes.

Devin Johnston

More than almost any other public figure, Jacques Pépin has followed the trajectory of twentieth-century cuisine, from the Hôtel Plaza Athénée to Howard Johnson’s, and from his Burgundy backyard to national television.

Art of the Chicken: A Master Chef’s Paintings, Stories, and Recipes of the Humble Bird

by Jacques Pépin

E. Tammy Kim

Storyboards and Solidarity

The current Hollywood strikes have a precedent in Disney’s golden age, when the company was a hothouse of innovation and punishing expectation.

The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age

by Jake S. Friedman

Christopher Benfey

Constable’s Quiet Tumult

John Constable’s lifelong struggle was to convey his deep feelings for his native countryside to a reluctant public, which preferred escapist historical tableaux and portraits of grandees.

John Constable: A Portrait

by James Hamilton

Constable’s White Horse

by William Kentridge and Aimee Ng

Late Constable

by Anne Lyles, Matthew Hargraves, and others

Larry Rohter

Searching for the True Brazil

The writer Mário de Andrade advocated a lusty embrace of the indigenous elements of Brazilian culture.

Macunaíma: The Hero with No Character

by Mário de Andrade, translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson

The Apprentice Tourist: Travels Along the Amazon to Peru, Along the Madeira to Bolivia, and Around Marajó Before Saying Enough Already

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

Amar, Verbo Intransitivo/ To Love, Intransitive Verb

by Mário de Andrade, translated from the Portuguese by Ana Lessa-Schmidt

Claire DeVoogd

Dream (as the Boat)

a poem

Bill McKibben

Toward a Land of Buses and Bikes

There is more housing for each car in the United States than there is for each person.

Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

by Ben Goldfarb

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

by Henry Grabar

Lynn Hunt

The Orphan Among Revolutions

Christopher Clark’s history of the 1848 revolutions highlights the destinies of individuals and the legacy of the tumults.

Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848–1849

by Christopher Clark

Noah Feldman

The Court’s Conservative Constitutional Revolution

The bloc of conservative justices on the Supreme Court have dismantled many of the legal precedents on their hit list. What’s in store for the new term?

A.E. Stallings

‘Obedient to Their Words’

As a writer who is so obviously a real person, Simonides perhaps more than any other ancient poet attracts anecdotes and stories that reflect on his character as much as his work.

Simonides: Epigrams and Elegies

edited and translated from the Greek by David Sider

Daniel J. Kevles

Unreasonable Terms

In Owning the Sun, Alexander Zaitchik shows how American drug companies have exploited government contracts to pursue profit over public interest.

Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to Covid-19 Vaccines

by Alexander Zaitchik

Letters

Sanford Levinson,
Laurence H. Tribe

Questioning Judicial Authority

Zadie Smith,
Michael Gorra

Table Talk

Issue Details

Cover art
Nancy Friedland: Still Half Perfect, 2023 (Nancy Friedland/La Loma Projects, Los Angeles)

Series art
Rachel Levit Ruiz: Calculations, 2023