World
The Iranian Revolution Almost Didn’t Happen
Strange to think, but there was a time when the United States’ most steadfast ally in the Middle East was Iran. In 1953, the C.I.A. had…
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a critic at large
Style
Was the Renaissance Real?
Roeck goes on to address the great question of why Europe became the center of prosperity and innovation on the planet. Colonialism and…
World
A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem
There’s real reason for caution here, starting with the idea that interactions with A.I. can be treated as genuine relationships. Oliver…
World
The Argentinean Comic Strip That Galvanized a Generation
A uniformed police officer stands sideways, his head turned to face us. His eyes are unnaturally close together, rendered by the artist as…
World
Do We Need Another Green Revolution?
“Carbon farming and vertical farming are wildly overhyped,” Grunwald concludes. “Plant-based meat has floundered in the market, while…
Style
Why Donald Trump Is Obsessed with a President from the Gilded Age
Late in his life, McKinley reconsidered protectionism. He was reëlected in 1900, and by his second Administration he felt that the United…
World
How Margaret Fuller Set Minds on Fire
In the four and a half decades since its founding, the Library of America has issued not only the pillars of our national literature but…
World
R.F.K., Jr., Anthony Fauci, and the Revolt Against Expertise
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was nine when his uncle was murdered and fourteen when his father was. Even in his youth, he recalled, he doubted…
World
The Battling Memoirs of The New Yorker
In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. Before doing so, however, he sat around with the boys in the bar and thrashed out…
World
The Gilded Age Never Ended
Today’s plutocrat, on the other hand, sees the cultural élite as part of the burdensome past. One prophetic peculiarity of Donald Trump’s…
World
The Profile Hemingway Could Never Live Down
Throughout the profile, Hemingway, drinking hard, employs a kind of skin-tightening lingo that he called “Indian Talk.” It wouldn’t have…
Style
What We Learn About Our World by Imagining Its End
It’s a mite soon to start grieving, but scientists now project that life on Earth will probably end in about a billion years. A Monday in…
Style
What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction?
There are awards for the year’s best films but not for its best TikTok videos. That’s too bad, since 2024 yielded several tiny…
Style
Why Zora Neale Hurston Was Obsessed with the Jews
Zora Neale Hurston was a philosemite. She believed that the Jews had been victims of stereotyping that started with Moses and that was…
World
The Hidden Story of J. P. Morgan’s Librarian
Greene’s nearly decade-long collaboration with Morgan was arguably the most important relationship of her life outside her family, and I…
Style
What’s the Difference Between a Rampaging Mob and a Righteous Protest?
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular…