THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (January 23, 2025): The latest issue features…

Urgent Messages from Eternity

An exhibition of Franz Kafka’s postcards, letters, and manuscript pages rekindles our sense of him as a writer deeply connected to his own time and place.

Franz Kafka – an exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, May 30–October 27, 2024, and the Morgan Library and Museum, New York City, November 22, 2024–April 13, 2025

Guatemala: Democracy Imperiled

Bernardo Arévalo’s inauguration last year as president of Guatemala symbolized the revival of democracy in a notoriously corrupt country. A concerted effort by obstructionist elites now threatens to oust him on specious grounds—and bring repression back.

Farmer George

Bruce Ragsdale’s Washington at the Plow examines the connections between the first president’s commitment to agricultural innovation and his evolving attitudes toward his enslaved laborers at Mount Vernon.

Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery by Bruce A. Ragsdale