March 13, 2025 issue

Ingrid D. Rowland

Caravaggio Lost and Found

As two paintings by Caravaggio return to public view, it is possible to hope that his best-known lost work will reappear after almost half a century.

Caravaggio: The Ecce Homo Unveiled

an exhibition at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, May 28, 2024–February 23, 2025

Caravaggio: The Portrait Unveiled

an exhibition at the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, November 23, 2024–February 23, 2025

Caravaggio, la Natività di Palermo: Nascita e scomparsa di un capolavoro [Caravaggio, the Palermo Nativity: Birth and Disappearance of a Masterpiece]

by Michele Cuppone

Fintan O’Toole

From Comedy to Brutality

With his designs on Greenland and Gaza, Trump has signaled that his first term’s outlandish gestures are the second term’s savage demands.

Colin Grant

Hiding in the Front Room

The BBC series Mr Loverman, about a closeted West Indian grandfather and his family, explores the submerged emotional lives of the Windrush generation in Britain.

Mr Loverman

a television series directed by Hong Khaou

Martin Filler

Eden on Fire

The terrible fires in January were another reminder that urban planning in Los Angeles has long failed to protect the city from the natural disasters that repeatedly threaten the region.

Marianne Boruch

Centrist Dads Unreformed

The vast social world of Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel is designed to pose a challenge to good liberal values.

Caledonian Road

by Andrew O’Hagan

Joy Neumeyer

Russia: Letters from the Opposition

Correspondence by imprisoned Russian civilians accused of resisting the war in Ukraine reveals the severity of their punishments.

David Cole

The Wrong War on the War on Drugs

The war on drugs has failed, but so has the constitutional counteroffensive in the courts. What should reformers do instead?

The Constitution of the War on Drugs

by David Pozen

Celia Paul

Painting Myself

I want the self-portraits I make to convey a sort of security, to transform the reflected “she” in the mirror into the real “I.”

Suzy Hansen

The Price of American ‘Safety’

A number of new books recount the horror America created and then left in Afghanistan. Can anyone grasp the realities of occupation and the “war on terror” if they haven’t been on their receiving end?

Twenty Years: Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation

by Sune Engel Rasmussen

How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan

by Amin Saikal

Mark Ford

Poetry After Flossenbürg

A new biography of Anthony Hecht shows that his life was as various and unexpected as his poems, which evolved from modernist pastiche to extended experiments with the dramatic monologue.

Anthony Hecht: Collected Poems

edited by Philip Hoy

Late Romance: Anthony Hecht—A Poet’s Life

by David Yezzi

Diane Ravitch

Selling Out Our Public Schools

For decades, the term “school choice”—and the programs it signifies, which divert public money to private schools—was widely and rightly dismissed as racist. Now it’s the law in thirty-three states.

The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers

by Josh Cowen

Nicholas Lemann

Henrietta Szold & the Return to Zion

Henrietta Szold devoted her life to the conviction that diaspora Jews should have a strong emotional connection to the Holy Land and to building a Jewish society in Palestine. But how useful is her “cultural” Zionism for Jewish Americans today?

To Repair a Broken World: The Life of Henrietta Szold, Founder of Hadassah

by Dvora Hacohen

Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream

by Francine Klagsbrun

The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America

by Daniel Schulman