THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (May 8, 2025): The latest issue features…

‘There’s Nothing for Me Here’

What caused Venezuela’s collapse, and who is responsible? A recent memoir tells the story as so many families have lived it.

Motherland: The Disintegration of a Family in a Collapsed Venezuela by Paula Ramón, with translations by Julia Sanches and Jennifer Shyue

Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela by William Neuman

The Spy in the Jeu de Paume

The detailed information gathered by the French curator Rose Valland about the Nazis’ looting of artworks made it possible for the Allies to recover tens of thousands of them after World War II.

The Art Front: The Defense of French Collections, 1939–1945 by Rose Valland, translated from the French by Ophélie Jouan, with a foreword by Robert M. Edsel

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Doing Their Own Research

An electoral coalition of the conspiracy cultures of both the Christian right and the countercultural left helped bring Donald Trump back to power, and now pseudoscience and paranoia are in the ascendant.

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker

Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists and the New Order in Wellness by Stewart Home