December 5, 2024

Fintan O’Toole

The Second Coming

Disinhibition will be the order of the day in Donald Trump’s America.

Erin Maglaque

Soundscapes of the Silenced

In late Renaissance Florence one in five women lived behind institutional walls whose rule was sensory mortification. Historians are struggling to recover their inexpressible secrets.

A Veil of Silence: Women and Sound in Renaissance Italy

by Julia Rombough

Jorie Graham

Torn Apart

Errol Morris’s new documentary looks unflinchingly at the horrors of Donald Trump’s policy of separating families at the border.

Separated

a documentary film directed by Errol Morris

Adam Kirsch

In Search of Fullness

In his new book, the philosopher Charles Taylor looks at modern poetry as a unique record of spiritual experience in a secular age.

Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment

by Charles Taylor

Tim Judah

Ukraine Divided

Almost three years after the beginning of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is not defeated, but Russia is not victorious, either.

Magda Teter

Jewish Middlemen, Archival Myopia

The story of two Jewish trading families during the last decades of the Regency of Algiers is skewed by being told through the perspectives of only European and American actors.

The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond

by Julie Kalman

Jonathan Freedland

A Feigned Reluctance

Rory Stewart, in his recent memoir, observes with detachment what is ludicrous in politics—even when he’s near the center of it.

How Not to Be a Politician

by Rory Stewart

Tim Flannery

The Sense of an Endling

In the early nineteenth century, the idea of species extinction was an alien concept. That changed after an expedition to Iceland in search of the last of the great auks.

The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction

by Gísli Pálsson

Dean Browne

Enigmatic Roger Casement

Roger Casement became internationally celebrated for exposing the horrors of colonialism, yet he remains an elusive figure.

Broken Archangel: The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement

by Roland Philipps

Zadie Smith

In early Thirties Germany, as the Nazi threat grew, the state’s propaganda machine began to penetrate the dream life of its citizenry. What of our dreams today, under the influence of the algorithms? And what will come with the return of Donald Trump?

The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation

by Charlotte Beradt, translated from the German by Damion Searls, with a foreword by Dunya Mikhail

Jed S. Rakoff

FDR’s Compliant Justices

The Supreme Court’s deference to FDR during World War II resulted in unjustifiable ethical breaches, but its new code of conduct has not resolved the question of when a justice should be disqualified from a case.

The Court at War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made

by Cliff Sloan

Anne Enright

Alice Munro’s Retreat

In the years after she chose to stay with her husband despite learning that he had abused her daughter Andrea, Alice Munro’s stories came to reveal more than she might have known.