THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

YESTERDAY

Whither the Nerd-Bully?

Bill Gates was the monopolistic father figure who Silicon Valley’s young founders rebelled against—and, in so rebelling, became.

Mommie Dearest

In Liza Minnelli’s riveting memoir, the ghost of Judy Garland is felt on every page.

‘Facing the Past’

Ben Lerner’s dazzling new novel, Transcription, plays variations on the conflicts and bonds that are felt among three generations.

Counting Heads

Jean-Paul Marat’s assassination transformed the reviled mouthpiece of revolutionary bloodthirstiness into the revered martyr of the people’s cause.

Don’t Call It Entertainment

In Everthing Is Now, J. Hoberman chronicles a radical avant-garde's attempts to jostle New York City out of its postwar complacency and moral retrenchment.

The Sage of Washington

Walter Lippmann was the most influential political commentator of his generation, but behind his preternatural confidence was a far more complicated and unsettled character.

Indiana’s Indiana Jones

FBI agents who raided an Indiana farm in 2014 were astonished to find some 42,000 artifacts and bones looted by an amateur archaeologist.

Living

It was hard for us, the way you diedevery day, slowly and then all at once, just as such things are said to happen. Spring came, so soon it almost seemedyou

Against Nostalgia

In their poems and essays, Kathleen Jamie and Peter Davidson transcend Scottish sentimentalism and find new points of entry into their shared past.

What Happened in Vegas

An impulsive trip to America’s “idiot Disneyland” thrust John Gregory Dunne among characters who, like him, sought distraction from their private miseries.

A Dream of a Socialist Commonwealth

Molly Crabapple’s history of the Bund recovers an egalitarian, secular, cosmopolitan vision of Jewish identity and political life that was lost in the horrors of the twentieth century.

Pop & Pleasure & Freedom

In his decades of writing about pop music, Jon Savage came to understand its liberatory power.

Scarred in Hong Kong

Recent fiction by Hong Kong writers explores life in a society traumatized by ever-tightening Chinese national security laws that suppress political discussion and artistic freedom.

MAY 5. 2026

Iran’s New Winter

The US-Israeli war against Iran, far from encouraging a popular uprising, has strengthened the regime’s grip and set back the cause of Iranian freedom indefinitely.