The New York Review of Books

The Parrot in the Machine | James Gleick The artificial intelligence industry depends on plagiarism, mimicry, and exploited labor, not intelligence.

"Chatbots regurgitate and rearrange fragments mined from all the text previously written. As plagiarists, they obscure and randomize their sources but do not transcend them. Writing is something else: a creative act,embodied thinking...” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Suddenly, Jamaica | Henry Louis Gates Jr. Jamaica Kincaid’s commanding, irreverent work immerses her readers in a black world without explaining or defining its blackness. This seems to be a major departure in the history of African American ...

A fantastic HLG essay. See below this illustration. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Elegy for the Shtetl | Daphne Merkin Chaim Grade became a writer in Lithuania but wrote his best novels in the Bronx after the Holocaust, recording in Yiddish the conflict between Jewish tradition and secular thinking that had…

Daphne Merkin on Chaim Grade, the Yiddish Tolstoy

The Gentleman of Verona | Ingrid D. Rowland The majesty, serenity, and opulence of Paolo Veronese's paintings bolstered the myth of Venice's vibrancy at a time of social, political, and religious decline.

Ingrid D. Rowland on the capacious paintings of Paolo Veronese

‘Posterity Is Vulgar’ | Chloë Clifton-Wright Encounters with a forgotten genius.

Chloë Clifton-Wright (c/o Richard Ayoade) on the forgotten playwright, screenwriter, and maligned genius Harauld Hughes

Elegy for the Shtetl | Daphne Merkin Chaim Grade became a writer in Lithuania but wrote his best novels in the Bronx after the Holocaust, recording in Yiddish the conflict between Jewish tradition and secular thinking that had characteri...

Daphne Merkin says there was a: "cascade of pieces about [Chaim Grade's] unfinished and posthumously published final novel", but 𝑆𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 still seems to me to have gotten less attention than it should have, so it's good to see her review @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202... [$] ...

Suddenly, Jamaica | Henry Louis Gates Jr. Jamaica Kincaid’s commanding, irreverent work immerses her readers in a black world without explaining or defining its blackness. This seems to be a major departure in the history of African American…

“Jamaica spelunks into the mud of racism, colonialism, and even global appropriation…with a sublime intimacy, in a voice that calls her reader in without the self-important scaffolding that we find in Wright, Ellison, and Baldwin.” —Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Subscribe to our summer deal: through Labor Day, get both The Paris Review @parisreview.bsky.social and The New York Review of Books for a combined price of $119. That’s $70 off the regular price! subscribe.nybooks.com/ecom/nyb/app...

The Contradictory Revolution | David S. Reynolds Historians have long grappled with “the American Paradox” of American Revolutionary leaders who fought for their own liberty while denying it to enslaved Black people.

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www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Bodies by Joe | Alma Guillermoprieto With his strange machines and an uncanny, intuitive understanding of muscles, Joseph Pilates created a new technique for improving strength and movement.

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

As a longtime reader, I am pleased to hear of Guillermoprieto’s pilates practice, which has become an obsession of mine!

An interesting piece by Rachel Kushner on writing about incarceration, a history of fiction about the topic, the way the carceral state is built into the architecture of our daily lives and more.

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Buried Sunshine | Jori Lewis When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, we lived in a house in the country—on a rural road on the outskirts of Springfield, Illinois, where the water was

"The more I learned about the legacy of coal mining in my Illinois hometown, the more light it seemed to cast on the state’s long histories of violence"
www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

After Resettlement | Caroline Moorehead How has a group of Liberian refugees, resettled in the US nearly twenty-five years ago after fleeing civil war, fared in a country that has changed vastly since admitting them?

This is very moving. How has a group of Liberian refugees, resettled in the US nearly twenty-five years ago after fleeing civil war, fared in a country that has changed vastly since admitting them?

Caroline Moorehead writes for @nybooks.com

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Four cases that reveal some depth of the Supreme Court‘s corruption and its abuse of the emergency docket when there are no emergencies.

It begins with Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation lie to Congress, “It’s my job to call balls and strikes… Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them.”

Umpires No More | David Cole In several major cases in its 2024–2025 term, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority reached its desired results not by overturning precedent but by ignoring it.

Many recent Supreme Court decisions “reveal a conservative majority that is willing to rewrite the rules to reach its desired results.” —David Cole

Bodies by Joe | Alma Guillermoprieto With his strange machines and an uncanny, intuitive understanding of muscles, Joseph Pilates created a new technique for improving strength and movement.

Alma Guillermoprieto on loose facts, tight bods, and Joseph Pilates

Suddenly, Jamaica | Henry Louis Gates Jr. Jamaica Kincaid’s commanding, irreverent work immerses her readers in a black world without explaining or defining its blackness. This seems to be a major departure in the history of African American…

Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the liberatory pleasure of reading Jamaica Kincaid

The Twilight Zone | Sue Halpern Laila Lalami’s prescient new novel follows a woman imprisoned by the government for her dreams.

“Laila Lalami’s prescient new novel follows a woman imprisoned by the government for her dreams.”

@nybooks.com on THE DREAM HOTEL

Umpires No More | David Cole In several major cases in its 2024–2025 term, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority reached its desired results not by overturning precedent but by ignoring it.

Good critique of the role of SCOTUS from David Cole. www.nybooks.com/articles/202... Umpires No More | David Cole | The New York Review of Books

Umpires No More | David Cole In several major cases in its 2024–2025 term, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority reached its desired results not by overturning precedent but by ignoring it.

"Roberts..compared judges to umpires. “It’s my job to call balls & strikes. Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them.” but since Trump nominated..Amy Coney Barrett..they have not just called balls & strikes; they have repeatedly changed the strike zone"
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

A First Time for Everything | Sean M. Carroll Scientific theories about the origin of the universe often involve a vigorous give-and-take between speculation and discovery.

Bucket list item checked off: I have a piece in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books @nybooks.com. I review three new (ish) books about cosmology, by Tony Rothman, Will Kinney, and Thomas Hertog.

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Caroline Moorehead on the end of refugee resettlement in America www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Volume 72, Issue 13 (2025-08-21) Advertisement

Our 8/21 issue is now online, with @davidcole-gtown.bsky.social on the Supreme Court’s scorn for precedent, Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Jamaica Kincaid’, @seanmcarroll.bsky.social on cosmic timing, poems by John Berryman & @joriegraham.bsky.social, and more.

Notes from an Occupation | Marilynne Robinson America is an occupied country, ruled by partisans hostile to democracy.

“So it is time to face the fact that their demolition of government and society as we have known them more strongly resembles a hostile occupation than a normal presidency”.

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

‘Trump Gaza Number One’ | Zadie Smith On February 25, 2025, the president of the United States of America posted a video to his socials, an AI-created vision of a postwar Gaza. To enter this

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Zadie Smith on Fanonian radical humanism—urgent and brilliant.

Our Moloch | Garry Wills The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by...

This is the best essay ever written on American gun violence

www.nybooks.com/online/2012/...

some outstanding criticism here...

The Revolution Will Not Be Star Wars | Gabriel Winslow-Yost In 1982 the great French crime novelist Jean-Patrick Manchette stopped publishing fiction. In almost a dozen novels over the previous decade, he had

“Andor, even as it makes a Star Wars story say far more than it ever has before, at the same time demonstrates the limits of the kind of storytelling that has come to dominate so much of popular culture.” —Gabriel Winslow-Yost

So much for calling balls and strikes. How the Court’s conservatives changed the rules in their most important cases this term when following the rules would lead to a liberal result.