New Books

Driverless cars are not primarily about saving lives. They are about eliminating contingency and replacing it with machine-generated certainty. That's terrifying... more ?

All shall be saved. Hell is a vestige of Christendom, not of Christianity itself. David Bentley Hart explains... more ?

For Patricia Churchland, conscience is rooted in evolutionary biology; moral choices are explained away by neuroscience. Raymond Tallis isn’t buying it... more ?

After years of correspondence, Thomas Wentworth Higginson finally met Emily Dickinson, who promptly unleashed — in a torrent — a literary manifesto... more ?

Being Kierkegaardian precludes any dutiful fealty to Kierkegaard himself. Unfortunately, a new book misses this point... more ?

Longfellow’s ode to Fanny Appleton was not welcome: “It is desultory, objectless, a thing of shreds and patches,” she said. They married four years later... more ?

Military overreach, excessive spending and taxation, the rise of Christianity: many explanations for the fall of Rome. Was a pandemic to blame?... more ?

The race for domination in publishing Trump tell-alls is between Simon & Schuster and Henry Holt. For now, Simon & Schuster is winning... more ?

For Deirdre Bair, being Beckett’s biographer entailed exhausting hours spent on bar stools, keeping out of the reach of drunken Irish poets and professors... more ?

Frida Kahlo's years in Paris were a high point of her life. She spent much of her time conveying disdain for French culture... more ?

In 1911 Einstein moved to Prague, becoming part of an intellectual milieu that would influence Central Europe for decades to come... more ?

“I’ve argued that humans have evolved to be fundamentally sociable creatures.” Apparently that passes for a bold claim these days... more ?

How can a 976-page biography of Warhol fail to contain a single fresh idea? Gary Indiana on an “incredibly prolonged, masturbatory trance of graphomania”... more ?

Gulch, hankering, woolypates, foofoo, squaw: Behold the promiscuous range of Walt Whitman’s vocabulary... more ?

“It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil,” wrote Keynes. But his own story points to ideas' limited power... more ?

“Origins and Entropy,” “Particles and Consciousness,” “Duration and Impermanence": How pop science became metaphysical self-help... more ?

When Mary Bunting created an institute for high-achieving women, she knew she had to provide them with the material support that would allow them to succeed... more ?

For James Wood, critics must always answer one fundamental question: “What’s at stake in this passage?”... more ?

Reading lists won’t save us. Viral syllabi purport to answer our thorniest problems, but no matter how expertly curated, the reading itself is what matters... more ?

Dickens’s fiction drew on the most painful secrets of his life. His gift: turning insecurity into a creative asset... more ?

Simone and André Weil devoted themselves to the search for truth. He solved mathematical problems. She died before she could solve the problem of life.... more ?

The key to understanding the modern human mind is found in the ancient hunter myths. Or so says Roberto Calasso... more ?

The meaning of doubt. "Unbelief needs the believer’s reflecting gaze to better understand itself"... more ?

Lydia Davis is a writer for whom the subject is always, on some level, writing itself... more ?

John Rawls’s work can take on the quality of a sacred text. Was his appeal related to the declining status of Christianity?... more ?

Martin Hägglund’s philosophical blockbuster, This Life, has been widely lauded. Yet for such a liberating text, it’s stunningly parochial... more ?

For some “intellectually displaced” women in the 1960s, a haven beckoned — the Radcliffe Institute, feminism’s first think tank... more ?

The world is turbulent and tragic, while philosophers are cool and rational. Their field would gain so much if they could be moved... more ?

From Knausgaard to Lerner to Heti, we’re plagued by goodness — as if readers were scandalized by immoral characters in fiction... more ?

Coffee, “the most grateful lubricant of the human machine,” has made — and destroyed — entire societies... more ?

The poetry of Paul Valéry seems the work of a man behind his times. But beneath the old-fashioned veneer is the shock of the modern... more ?

The art critic Hal Foster separated “good” from “bad” postmodernism. How real is that distinction?... more ?

With his puncturing of ideology and his wild, hallucinatory tales, Robert Stone reshaped what the American crime thriller could be... more ?

Shame is about dishonor, vulnerability, and disgrace. It's also a tool of politics and power... more ?

The Anglo-Boer War is remembered, when it's remembered at all, for those who improbably played a part: Churchill, Gandhi, Kipling, Conan Doyle... more ?

Clive James was perhaps Philip Larkin's best reader. But his Larkin is a projection — the poet that James wanted to be... more ?

There are lots of supposed polymaths. They’re brilliant in one field, but mediocre in others. True polymaths are rare... more ?

In 1979, Richard Rorty suggested that philosophy was over; graduate students might as well give up. One of his own, Robert Brandom, has now proven that thought absurd... more ?

When Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson met, they debated the nature of fiction and griped about — what else? — money... more ?

Essays & Opinions

The Point, n+1, Jacobin — today’s little magazines all suffer from the same flaw: a congenital addiction to seriousness... more ?

Henry Fielding, Adam Smith, and other 18th-century intellectuals found no food finer than the potato. It was Enlightenment superfood — the kale of its time... more ?

“The cat of the wood,” “the stag of the cabbages” — if there is magic in this world, no small part of it lies with that majestic creature, the hare... more ?

Was the chilly stroll by Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger in Davos in 1929 the moment that analytic and Continental philosophy truly split?... more ?

What has the coronavirus revealed? For many, the answer is: “Whatever I thought was wrong with the world before, well, this proves it”... more ?

Can American racism be seen in the same terms as the murderous ideology of the Nazis and be similarly discredited? No, such a comparison only confuses... more ?

“The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us.” So wrote James Baldwin in 1965, in words that echo today... more ?

In his 90s, Habermas is increasingly consumed by questions of faith and religion. His latest book spans more than 3,000 years and 1,700 pages... more ?

Loud, constant parakeet chatter, the squawking of crows – there is no such thing as bad birdsong, a welcome respite from self-absorption... more ?

How to decide which statues can remain standing and which should be toppled because they honor racists? Julian Baggini offers a rational... more ?

“The intractable problem for thinking beyond the nation-state is that its imputed obsolescence can neither be easily forced nor messianically awaited”... more ?

Is an exhausted liberalism being supplanted by a successor ideology that's apparent everywhere? Ross Douthat makes the case... more ?

Descartes argued that developing grand philosophical visions requires meditative solitude. Is such work incompatible with being a parent?... more ?

“The real point about Communists,” wrote Vivian Gornick decades ago, is that they “were like everybody else, only more so.” Her point is finally sinking in... more ?

Minimalism was in, KonMari was all the rage, and then a pandemic hit. Now clutter is useful as never before... more ?

Charles Portis, author of True Grit, died in February at 86. He was a master of American vernacular... more ?

To see the Third Reich captured in 100 vile objects is to realize how good the Nazis were at photography and industrial design... more ?

Want a job in academia? No problem — as long as you specialize in Shakespeare, Romanticism, Victorianism, modernism, and everything else... more ?

Wesley Morris: "The most urgent filmmaking anybody’s doing in this country right now is by black people with camera phones”... more ?

To Richard Russo, time spent arguing over cultural appropriation might be better spent extolling the triumphs of the literary imagination... more ?

We have developed an ill-advised self-seriousness about the novel — so much so, says Dave Eggers, that we have overlooked one of the wittiest books ever written... more ?

Literary culture is tactile, embedded in our social environment. When cities go quiet, and intellectual life happens remotely, much is lost... more ?

Do aphorisms convey wisdom or merely impersonate it? For Plato, they were enigmatic evasions — the scattered utterances of clever men... more ?

After the pandemic. Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, and others try forecasting a dark future... more ?

A culinary mystery: Vinaigrette has been hailed as a triumph of French culture — but is its origin actually Italian?... Thought experiments are as old as philosophy itself, but are they a useful way to reason about ethics?... more ?

As an experience and an idea, solitude is no simple matter. It is both a necessary refuge and a public health menace... more ?

Success requires flirting with the public, said George Bernard Shaw. He was more accomplished as a flirt than as a playwright... more ?

László Földényi leads an assault on rationalism. In his prosecutorial zeal, is he missing the bigger picture?... more ?

The value of science as a credential seems stronger than ever. Is this ubiquity a symptom of its decline?... more ?

John Cage stroking bits of wire, Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven’s Ninth: The strangely addictive joy of classical YouTube... more ?

The rise of individualism is linked to that of infectious diseases. Leo Robson traces the inevitable effect on literature... more ?

For Locke and Rousseau, home schooling was ideal. For many parents now, not so much. What’s the basis of a moral education?... more ?

The impulse to compare contemporary political events to the past lives on. But such analogies hinder more than they help... more ?

Greil Marcus isn’t afraid, as one reader put it, to let “everything remind him of everything else.” It's both a gift and a liability... more ?

“Art breathes from containments and suffocates from freedom,” said Leonardo da Vinci. Contemporary art is suffocating... more ?

During London’s Great Plague, Samuel Pepys was resigned to his fate yet found much to rejoice in. Pandemics are complicated... more ?

Heiner Müller was a poet, playwright, and Stasi informant. The messiness of his life speaks to the complexity of postwar Germany... more ?

Critics once assessed the value of books. Now they use reviews as opportunities to showcase their erudition... more ?

According to Peter Turchin and others in cliodynamics, historical material can be used to predict the future. Historians are skeptical... more ?

Fiction is no good in a crisis, and it dislikes confronting world events head-on. So you'll have to wait for that coronavirus novel... more ?

“Thou art a boil / A plague-sore, or embossed carbuncle.” Shakespeare didn’t write much about the bubonic plague, but it did provide good insult material... more ?

The word "nostalgia" did not originally mean what it means now. It was coined with a longing for a time when there was no word for what it described... more ?

Our reading problem. Yes, we shouldn't idealize the past. But that doesn't mean we have no crisis in the present... more ?

The new, quarantined normal means getting closer with your family — too close, in many cases. Agnes Callard explains... more ?

“The secret of black intellectuals is that we have other interests.” Darryl Pinckney, Margo Jefferson, and others discuss race and intellectual life... more ?

To George Will, conservatism is “more than an attitude and less than an agenda.” It's a way of thinking, not a slate of principles and policies... more ?

John Carey has always been a strange critic: an anti-elitist don, avuncular but deadly, amiable yet formidable... more ?

Amid the current crisis, memorizing a poem can be a potent talisman — a charm or a balm to help us through this dry, brittle season... more ?

In seeking a New Canaan, the Puritans were deeply influenced by the Jewish notion of chosenness. Roger Williams — who rejected this idea — was even exiled... more ?