Tag Archives: New York Review of Books

Books: New York Review Of Books – Dec 8, 2022

December 8, 2022 issue cover

The New York Review of Books – December 8, 2022:

The Circuitous Sublime

Like most hauntings, Fleur Jaeggy’s books are often quite baroque, but they cast a strange spell that causes everyone to remember them as nothing but austere.

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy, translated from the Italian by Tim Parks

The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy, translated from the Italian by Gini Alhadeff

I Am the Brother of XX by Fleur Jaeggy, translated from the Italian by Gini Alhadeff


Road Maps for the Soul

The Philosophy of Modern Song can be read as a tour journal, refracted through one lonely song after another.

The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan


A Peopled Wilderness

We must find new ways to act toward animals in a world dominated everywhere by human power and activity.

‘A Great Democratic Revolution’

Alexis de Tocqueville left France to study the American prison system and returned with the material that would become “Democracy in America.”

The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville by Olivier Zunz


Preview: New York Review Of Books – Nov 3, 2022

November 3, 2022 issue cover

Gored in the Afternoon

Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux, translated from the French by Alison L. Strayer

Annie Ernaux, the 2022 Nobel Literature laureate, has published a diary of a sublime love affair—both a quest for self-awareness and a desire to escape the self—in which she traces a familiar arc of loss.

Reform or Abolish?

American prisons are often unjust, inhumane, and ineffective at protecting public safety. Mariame Kaba and Ruth Wilson Gilmore believe they should be eliminated entirely.

We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba, edited by Tamara K. Nopper and with a foreword by Naomi Murakawa

Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, edited by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano

Then What Happened?

Yasmine Seale’s new translation of The Thousand and One Nights has a texture—tight, smooth, skillfully patterned—that make previous versions seem either garish or slightly dull by comparison.

The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1,001 Nights translated from the Arabic by Yasmine Seale, edited and with an introduction and notes by Paulo Lemos Horta

The Limits of Press Power

To what extent did newspapers influence public opinion in the US and Britain before and during World War II?

The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler by Kathryn S. Olmsted

The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy During World War II by Alexander G. Lovelace

‘We Know What That’s Like’

The filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s recent arrest in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison marks the latest phase in a campaign that the Iranian judiciary has been waging against him for over a decade.

No Bears a film written and directed by Jafar Panahi

A Prisoner of His Own Restraint

Felix Frankfurter was renowned as a liberal lawyer and advocate. Why did he turn out to be such a conservative Supreme Court justice?

Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment by Brad Snyder

The Illusion of the First Person

A historical survey of the personal essay shows it to be the purest expression of the lie that individual subjectivity exists prior to the social formations that gave rise to it.