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“Jungles or forests from around the world” are often “imagined [as] unaltered by human intervention. But Pao Houa Her’s [photographs] present the jungle as a place where children were born, couples married, and people became ill and died.” —Jean Dykstra
Secondhand Memory | Jean DykstraIn 1954, with the ending of French colonial rule in Southeast Asia, the Geneva Accords established Laos as an independent state, led by the Royal Laowww.nybooks.comGeorge Forster’s “voyage to the South Atlantic was full of wonders: phosphorescence that set the sea ablaze, dolphins chasing flying fish, sapphire icebergs turning gold and purple as the sun set.” —Jenny Uglow
Wonder & Disillusion | Jenny UglowThe naturalist George Forster was fascinated by plants and animals, but he was also driven by a passionate belief in the rights of all people regardless of race, gender, or social status.www.nybooks.comEven though “the ICC is, in some respects, a legacy of the United States’ own earlier efforts on behalf of human rights,” there is also “a long history of American opposition to international human rights law.” —Aryeh Neier
‘So-Called International Law’ | Aryeh NeierOn July 13 Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a campaign to destroy the International Criminal Court. Calling the ICC “a global tribunal staffed bywww.nybooks.comIn the coming decades, writes Helen Epstein, toxic fallout in Gaza could lead to “an epidemic of cancer, lung disease, and brain damage” that might “rival in lethality the war’s bombs and bullets.”
Gaza’s Deadly Soil | Helen EpsteinLong before October 2023, Gaza’s people suffered international sanctions, a humiliating occupation, and periodic Israeli bombardments. Few could leave thewww.nybooks.comOur 8/20 issue is now online, with @danielmendelsohn.bsky.social on the Odyssey, Michael Greenberg on the DSA, Mark Danner on Trump in decline, @lauramarsh.bsky.social on John Lanchester, @davidcole-gtown.bsky.social on the Supreme Court’s power grab, a poem by Anne Carson & much more.
August 20, 2026 Summer IssueTable of Contentswww.nybooks.com“The justices may not be, as Trump called them after he lost the tariffs case, “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” but this is not Donald Trump’s Court.” —@davidcole-gtown.bsky.social
Close Calls | David ColeIn the Supreme Court’s recently concluded term, it showed that it is willing to constrain Trump but less willing to accept limits on its own authority.www.nybooks.com“Getting off the UN [sanctions] list is arduous,” writes Caitlin L. Chandler. As the solicitor Gavin Sullivan tells her, “You’re trying to defend someone, but you don’t know from what.... It’s like shooting in the dark.”
Life on the List | Caitlin L. ChandlerLate one night in May 2016, Naif al-Qaysi was riding shotgun in an old Landcruiser as it barreled down an empty highway through the desert connectingwww.nybooks.com“The New York School poets were instantly alluring, this witty, catty, playful coterie who seemed to toss out brilliant poems while talking on the phone or riding the Staten Island Ferry. They made it look not just easy but fun.” —Joe Dunthorne
All of Life | Joe Dunthorne, Aleander SantosIn the Review’s June 25 issue, Joe Dunthorne writes about a recent oral history of the New York School poets and poses himself a challenge: “How towww.nybooks.comWhat was “unthinkable” to Joe Manchin was “that a party elected on commitments to increase the minimum wage and send out stimulus checks would use the authority voters had handed it to actually do those things.” —@brycecovert.bsky.social
Compromised Values | Bryce CovertJoe Manchin’s memoir reveals that the West Virginian Senator worshipped “work” at the expense of supporting his party’s efforts to help working people.www.nybooks.com“The DNC is full of scheming and plotting, alliances and rivalries,” writes Daniel Schlozman. “But the turmoil tends to the internecine.”
The DNC Against Itself | Daniel Schlozman“Democracy is a very old institution,” explains the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the 2024 election, belatedly released in May. “And yet whatwww.nybooks.com“I write my absolute worst work when I sit down and think: now it’s time to write a poem about this important life event!” —an interview with Joe Dunthorne
All of Life | Joe Dunthorne, Aleander SantosIn the Review’s June 25 issue, Joe Dunthorne writes about a recent oral history of the New York School poets and poses himself a challenge: “How towww.nybooks.com“The only side of Odysseus—and indeed of the Odyssey—that you get in Nolan’s film is the negative one.” —@danielmendelsohn.bsky.social
Artful Weaving | Daniel MendelsohnThe most authentic thing about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is its densely braided narrative, but its tormented hero sounds like the heroes of Christopher Nolan movies.www.nybooks.comAlisa Solomon on a “fully felt, shocking” new production of Death of a Salesman
‘Take that Phony Dream and Burn It’ | Alisa SolomonJust a few weeks before Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949, President Harry Truman elaborated his “Fair Deal”www.nybooks.comOn a panel titled “Do We Need Exhibitions Just for Women?” in 2015, Jillian Steinhauer gave “an emphatic yes.” Asking herself the same question today, she writes, “I’m still inclined to answer in the affirmative, but with markedly less gusto.”
La Querelle des Femmes | Jillian SteinhauerIn 2015, I was on a panel at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design titled “Do We Need Exhibitions Just for Women?” As I remember, most of the participantswww.nybooks.comAnahid Nersessian on Jorie Graham’s unflinching poetry
Refusing to Look Away | Anahid NersessianIn Killing Spree, the poet Jorie Graham pursues an essentially ethical impulse to find a true language for the evil in the world.www.nybooks.comIsrael’ AI-powered surveillance dragnet “gives the military new rationales for longstanding practices of mass policing and detention, which officials tout as precisely targeted even when their effects are indiscriminate and brutal.” —Sophia Goodfriend
Target Practice | Sophia GoodfriendIn April 2024 international news sources circulated a video of a talk delivered by a senior Israeli military official during a tech conference at Tel Avivwww.nybooks.comIn the coming decades, writes Helen Epstein, toxic fallout in Gaza could lead to “an epidemic of cancer, lung disease, and brain damage” that might “rival in lethality the war’s bombs and bullets.”
Gaza’s Deadly Soil | Helen EpsteinLong before October 2023, Gaza’s people suffered international sanctions, a humiliating occupation, and periodic Israeli bombardments. Few could leave thewww.nybooks.comIn Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, “what sort of unity might emerge from all who have been stunned by the disclosure remains imponderable.” —Geoffrey O’Brien
They Knew Too Much | Geoffrey O’BrienWith Close Encounters of the Third Kind Steven Spielberg promised an encounter and delivered one. Disclosure Day announces a precisely scheduledwww.nybooks.com“The countries hostile to the ICC, in addition to Iran, include the world’s most repressive regimes—Russia, China...Belarus, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba. Is Rubio proposing a global realignment that would put the US in that bloc?” —Aryeh Neier
‘So-Called International Law’ | Aryeh NeierOn July 13 Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a campaign to destroy the International Criminal Court. Calling the ICC “a global tribunal staffed bywww.nybooks.com