Book Review

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Radiant Robot

His new novel tells an unsettling story of love between a machine and the girl she belongs to.

• Judith Shulevitz
• April 2021 Issue

What Happened to Jordan Peterson?

Adored guru and reviled provocateur, he dropped out of sight. Now the irresistible ordeal of modern cultural celebrity has brought him back.

• Helen Lewis
• April 2021 Issue

Extremely Online and Wildly Out of Control

Patricia Lockwood’s debut novel explores the mind, and heart, of an internet-addled protagonist.

• Jordan Kisner
• March 2021 Issue

Amazon Has Transformed the Geography of Wealth and Power

Understanding America in the giant company’s shadow

• Vauhini Vara
• March 2021 Issue

Tom Stoppard’s Double Life

For Britain’s leading postwar playwright, virtuosity and uncertainty go hand in hand.

• Gaby Wood
• March 2021 Issue

The Real Legacy of the Suffrage Movement

The cause produced undaunted trailblazers, Black and white, who continued to pursue social reform.

• Deborah Cohen
• January/February 2021 Issue

Uncovering the Cultural Revolution’s Awful Truths

Rebel historians chronicle a past that the Chinese Communist Party grows ever more intent on erasing.

• Barbara Demick
• January/February 2021 Issue

How Civilization Broke Our Brains

What can hunter-gatherer societies teach us about work, time, and happiness?

• Derek Thompson
• January/February 2021 Issue

Martin Amis Goes Out With a Bang

In Inside Story, his final novel, the comic master delights, infuriates, and secures his legacy.

• James Parker
• January/February 2021 Issue

Whitewashing the Great Depression

How the preeminent photographic record of the period excluded people of color from the nation’s self-image

• Sarah Boxer
• December 2020 Issue

The Many Lives of Adrienne Rich

Praised by W. H. Auden as neat and modest, she vowed to be passionate and radical instead.

• Stephanie Burt
• December 2020 Issue

Teaching Should Be Political

How to talk about race in the classroom

• Clint Smith
• December 2020 Issue

Beyond the Myth of Malcolm X

Understanding the humanity, and the communities, that shaped the brilliant, troubled, selfish, generous, sincere radical

• Kerri Greenidge
• November 2020 Issue

How to Get Rich By Losing Lots of Money

Adam Neumann is out of his WeWork job, but entrepreneurs will surely imitate him.

• Vauhini Vara
• November 2020 Issue

Reading Thomas Jefferson’s Bible

The president preferred Jesus’s teachings to his supernatural acts—and edited his copy of the New Testament accordingly.

• James Parker
• November 2020 Issue

Why We’re Afraid of Bats

On how we know—and how we learn—what to fear

• Rebecca Giggs
• November 2020 Issue

In Search of the First Female Sports Superstar

The remarkable career of the Victorian athletic phenom Charlotte Dod—and the legacy that wasn’t

• Helen Lewis
• October 2020 Issue

Marilynne Robinson’s Prodigal Son

Her new novel, Jack, explores the loneliest character in her Gilead series and the legacy of race.

• Jordan Kisner
• October 2020 Issue

A New Theory of Western Civilization

Could a marriage policy first pursued by the Catholic Church a millennium and a half ago explain what made the industrialized world so powerful—and so peculiar?

• Judith Shulevitz
• October 2020 Issue

Claudia Rankine’s Quest for Racial Dialogue

Is her focus on the personal out of step with the racial politics of our moment?

• Ismail Muhammad
• October 2020 Issue