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The Corruption Playbook

Donald Trump’s plan to destroy civil service protections if reelected is more than an employees’ rights issue. What’s at stake is democracy itself.

Human Resources

In her new novel, Adelle Waldman gambles that it’s possible to draw out the interiority of her characters mainly by sketching their working conditions.

Help Wanted

by Adelle Waldman


Ufologists, Unite!

Belief in UFOs sits uneasily between science and theology.

American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology

by D.W. Pasulka

Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences

by D.W. Pasulka


Gloom in Ukraine

Two years after the Russian invasion, Ukrainian morale has plummeted.

As Long as You Both Shall Live

Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall reveals that every parent’s marriage plot is her child’s Bildung.

Anatomy of a Fall

a film directed by Justine Triet


The Jeopardy Is the Juice

Colson Whitehead’s latest novel, Crook Manifesto, depicts its characters’ perilous navigation of race, class, and crime in 1970s Harlem.

Crook Manifesto

by Colson Whitehead


Furious Stasis

Verdi’s sprawling opera La Forza del Destino draws its power from asymmetry, arbitrary juxtapositions, and extreme situations.

La Forza del Destino

an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, directed by Mariusz Treliński, at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, February 26–March 29, 2024


Poem & Prayer

Despite the gravity of subjects in Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, which include addiction and an obsession with the metaphysical, what makes the novel feel light is its bravado, buoyancy, and innovative form.

Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar


The Long View

Martin MacInnes’s novel In Ascension reveals the technical sophistication of the newest genre fiction.

In Ascension

by Martin MacInnes


The Truths of Our American Empire

Jonathan Blitzer’s new book deftly explains the impact of decades of US foreign policy on Central America, but fails to move beyond the troubled terrain of our immigration policy “crisis.”

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer


Stifled Rage

Louisa May Alcott worked obsessively to become a successful writer, which meant that despite her gift for tart observation she often retreated into homilies and platitudes.

A Strange Life: Selected Essays of Louisa May Alcott

edited and with an introduction by Liz Rosenberg, and a preface by Jane Smiley


The Digital Planet

Digital technologies may worsen environmental problems, but they can also assist in the protection and restoration of ecosystems —and strengthen our relationships with them.

Gaia’s Web: How Digital Environmentalism Can Combat Climate Change, Restore Biodiversity, Cultivate Empathy, and Regenerate the Earth

by Karen Bakker

Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements Are Leading the Fight for Our Planet

by Ashley Dawson


A Hell of a Performance

Norman Mailer wrote with an unstable mixture of self-indulgence and self-awareness, bravado and diffidence, glibness and bracing honesty, macho posturing and an almost sheepish gentleness.

The Naked and the Dead and Selected Letters, 1945–1946

by Norman Mailer, edited by J. Michael Lennon


Seeing the Power in Blindness

A writer narrating his increasing loss of vision asks fundamental questions about sight and cognition.

The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight

by Andrew Leland


The Volcano Lovers

For travelers in the Romantic period, Mount Vesuvius was an object of scientific curiosity, a political allegory, and a touchstone of the sublime.

Volcanic: Vesuvius in the Age of Revolutions

by John Brewer


Staying Alive

Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall, narrated by a woman stranded at an Austrian hunting lodge by an unknown cataclysm, is a gripping drama of survival that plays with the conventions of the “last man” genre.

The Wall

by Marlen Haushofer, translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside, and with an afterword by Claire-Louise Bennett


The Unwilling Celebrity

Maurice Samuels’s Alfred Dreyfus is a biography of the very private man at the center of one of the greatest public controversies of modern times.

Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair

by Maurice Samuels

Issue Details

Cover art
Henning Wagenbreth: Spring Cleaning, 2024
Series art
Grant Shaffer: Liquid Strangers, 2024

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