It’s hard to empirically determine whether they drive voters to the polls. But they might have less measurable effects.
The Magazine for Mercenaries Enters Polite Society
Susan Katz Keating, the editor and publisher of Soldier of Fortune, discusses how she’s changing the publication and assesses the threat of political violence.
How Machines Learned to Discover Drugs
The A.I. revolution is coming to a pharmacy near you.
At the Democratic National Convention, the sense of relief was as overwhelming as the general euphoria—but the campaign against Donald Trump has only just begun. By Jonathan Blitzer
The New Yorker (August 19, 2024): The latest issue featuresBarry Blitt’s “Roller Coaster” – The highs and lows of the campaigns for America’s highest office.
London Review of Books (LRB) – August 7 , 2024: The latest issue features ‘Henry James Hot-Air Balloon’ – “The Prefaces” by Henry James; Trivialized to Death – “Reading Genesis” by Marilynne Robinson; Different for Girls By Jean McNicol…
The first time the man heard God, he uprooted his entire life, though he was very old. Then God appeared to him in person, an event which would embarrass later thinkers. God made the man an impossible promise in the shape of a son. His wife was ninety, and she laughed. When the child arrived, it was hardly unreasonable to think it a miracle. They named the child after the laughter.
In 1904 Henry James’s agent negotiated with the American publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons to produce a collected edition of his works. The New York Edition of the Novels and Tales of Henry James duly appeared in 1907-9. It presented revised texts of both James’s shorter and longer fiction, with freshly written prefaces to each volume. It didn’t include everything: ‘I want to quietly disown a few things by not thus supremely adopting them,’ as James put it. The ‘disowned’ works included some early gems such as The Europeans. The labour of ‘supremely adopting’ the stuff he still thought worthy was grinding. He worked on the new prefaces, which he described as ‘freely colloquial and even, perhaps, as I may say, confidential’ (though James’s notion of the ‘freely colloquial’ is perhaps not everyone’s) during the years 1905 to 1909. In some respects, the venture was not a success. ‘Vulgarly speaking,’ James said of the New York Edition, ‘it doesn’t sell.’
A week before the start of the Paris Olympics, Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of the Japanese women’s gymnastics team, was forced to withdraw from the competition by her national association. She had been reported to the Japan Gymnastics Association for smoking and drinking (on separate occasions, once for each offence). The president of the JGA, Tadashi Fujita, announced that Miyata had been sent home, and bowed deeply.
President Biden has proposed radical changes to the Court. Reviewing them is a reminder of why reform is so hard, despite dissatisfaction and a wealth of ideas.
Julie Benko, who hit it big after going on in place of Beanie Feldstein in “Funny Girl,” has a lot of advice for the Vice-President, now that she’s done with waiting in the wings.
By Zach Helfand
What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want?
The third-party Presidential candidate has a troubled past, a shambolic campaign, and some surprisingly good poll numbers.
Fifty years after Shirley Chisholm ran for the Presidency, we find ourselves yet again questioning the durability of outmoded presumptions about race and gender. By Jelani Cobb
The Republican National Convention and the Iconography of Triumph
In Milwaukee, with a candidate who had just cheated death, the resentment rhetoric of Trump’s 2016 campaign gave way to an atmosphere of festive certainty. By Anthony Lane
Gillian Anderson’s Sex Education
She became famous playing buttoned-up Agent Scully. But in midlife her characters often have a strong erotic charge—and now she’s edited “Want,” a book of sexual fantasies. By Rebecca Mead
Where Do Republicans and Democrats Stand After the R.N.C.?
Biden imperilled his candidacy at the debate because of his inability to speak coherently. At the convention, Trump was doing something similar, and couldn’t stop. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
Will Hezbollah and Israel Go to War?
Months of fighting at the border threaten to ignite an all-out conflict that could devastate the region.
Should We Abolish Prisons?
Our carceral system is characterized by frequent brutality and ingrained indifference. Finding a better way requires that we freely imagine alternatives. By Adam Gopnik
From the time of the Revolutionary War to the fires of the nineteen-seventies, the history of the borough has always been shaped by its in-between-ness.
By Ian Frazier
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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