August 15, 2024 Summer Issue

Leanne Shapton

Crossing to Safety

Diana Nyad has an astonishing ability to do unfathomably difficult, even terrifying athletic feats, and, like many athletes, she did them in the aftermath of abuse.

Nyad

a film directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Find a Way: The Inspiring Story of One Woman’s Pursuit of a Lifelong Dream

by Diana Nyad

Fintan O’Toole

Savior Complexes

The final weeks of Joe Biden’s campaign were most dismaying for the ways he mirrored Trump.

Susan Tallman

The Sneaky Sublime

The Chicago artist Christina Ramberg recontextualized things built for another purpose, transforming the unremarkable into funny, stately, and transgressive forms.

Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective

an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, April 20–August 11, 2024; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, October 12, 2024–January 5, 2025; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, February 8–June 1, 2025

Ursula Lindsey

‘Hamlet’ in the West Bank

In Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost, an intrepid group of Palestinians stages Shakespeare’s tale of usurpation, suspicion, and revenge.

Enter Ghost

by Isabella Hammad

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Labour’s landslide victory in the British elections was achieved with only a third of the popular vote. Will the new government be able to steer Britain out of crisis after fourteen years of failed Tory policies?

Victoria Chang

Abraham

a poem

Brenda Wineapple

In Search of the Real Hannah Crafts

The Bondwoman’s Narrative is thought to be the first novel by a Black woman to describe slavery from the inside, but only recently have scholars discovered her true identity.

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative

by Gregg Hecimovich, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Ben Rhodes

American Descent

Donald Trump and right-wing strongmen like him around the world are using grievance-based nationalism to gain power. When does this sort of populism tip into fascism?

The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy

by Federico Finchelstein

America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators

by Jacob Heilbrunn

Adam Thirlwell

A Sternly Witty Sensualist

Karl Lagerfeld used reference and precise technique to elevate decoration to the level of a principle.

Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, May 5–July 16, 2023

Sean Wilentz

The ‘Dred Scott’ of Our Time

In ruling in favor of Donald Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution for his official acts, the Supreme Court has invested the presidency with quasi-monarchial powers, paving the way for MAGA authoritarianism.

David Cole

The Supreme Court’s Power Grab

In a series of disturbing decisions this term, the Supreme Court drastically weakened the power of the executive agencies that govern financial markets, agriculture, health care, energy, the airwaves, the environment, the workplace, and so much else.

Colin Grant

Yearning for Redemption

Kingsley Ben-Adir’s performance as Bob Marley in One Love is seductive, but in treating the singer as a savior, the film loses sight of his complexity.

Bob Marley: One Love

a film directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green

Vona Groarke

Imagine the Atlantic as an Actor

a poem

Gordon F. Sander

Ready for War in Sweden

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has so alarmed the Swedes that they have turned their backs on two centuries of neutrality and joined NATO, causing a profound shift in the country’s identity.

Christopher Benfey

Siding with Ahab

Can we appreciate Herman Melville’s work without attributing to it schemes for the uplift of modern man?

Dayswork

by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel

Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times

by Aaron Sachs

Melville, Beauty, and American Literary Studies: An Aesthetics in All Things

by Cody Marrs

Maladies of the Will: The American Novel and the Modernity Problem

by Jennifer L. Fleissner

Moby-Dick or, The Whale

by Herman Melville, edited by Jeffrey Insko

Susan Faludi

All the News That’s Fit to Feel

Amy Chozick’s accounts of her time covering Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign for The New York Times seem to exalt the work of the new girl reporters, who bring their “whole selves” to the story. But is such an emphasis on the chroniclers themselves not a return to the lifestyle precincts of the old “women’s pages”?

The Girls on the Bus

a television series created by Amy Chozick and Julie Plec

Chasing Hillary: On the Trail of the First Woman President Who Wasn’t

by Amy Chozick