June 26, 2025 Issue

David A. Bell

My Freedom, My Choice

A new book illuminates how freedom became associated with choice and questions whether that has been a good thing—for women in particular.

The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life

by Sophia Rosenfeld

Rozina Ali

‘They’re Here to Detain Me’

Mahmoud Khalil has not been charged with a crime—but the government is attempting to deport him and other students and scholars for their points of view.

Kathryn Hughes

Feminists in Wimples

A new book about the lives of four medieval women offers an engaging if flawed perspective on the past.

Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women

by Hetta Howes

Michael Greenberg

The Vanishing Mr. Beame

With absorbing footage of gutted apartment buildings and ravaged storefronts, Drop Dead City anatomizes the drama of New York’s descent into near bankruptcy.

Drop Dead City

a documentary film by Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Translation’s Drift

Two books look closely at both the limitations and the possibilities of the art of literary translation.

The Philosophy of Translation

by Damion Searls

Speaking in Tongues

by J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos

Marilynne Robinson

Notes from an Occupation

America is an occupied country, ruled by partisans hostile to democracy.

Karl Kirchwey

Coyotes

a poem

Gavin Francis

What Do You Expect?

The surprising power of placebos demonstrates how the mind influences both the experience of ill health and the evolution of illness.

Placebos

by Kathryn T. Hall

The Power of Placebos: How the Science of Placebos and Nocebos Can Improve Health Care

by Jeremy Howick

Carolina A. Miranda

Close to the Punches

Vincent Valdez has made an unlikely career portraying human figures, especially underdogs and antiheroes.

Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream...

an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, November 15, 2024–March 23, 2025, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, May 24, 2025–April 5, 2026

Michael Kazin

Bridging the Gap

Nick Witham’s Popularizing the Past portrays five American historians who published popular books that sacrificed neither intellectual depth nor political bite.

Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America

by Nick Witham

Maurice Samuels

Proust’s Jewish Question

The debate over Proust’s relation to his Jewish identity ultimately turns not just on his personal attachments but on how he represents Jewish characters in his novel.

Proust, a Jewish Way

by Antoine Compagnon, translated from the French by Jody Gladding

Marcel Proust: L’Adieu au monde juif [Marcel Proust: A Farewell to the Jewish World]

by Pierre Birnbaum

Kenneth Pomeranz

The Puzzle of the Qing

Why did China’s Qing rulers keep land taxes at levels too low to meet the state’s needs for so long?

The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions

by Taisu Zhang

Public Interest and State Legitimation: Early Modern England, Japan, and China

by Wenkai He

Esther Lin

Joan of Arc in Rouen

a poem

Ursula Lindsey

Mohamed Choukri’s Unromantic Tangier

The Moroccan writer’s works are a bracing corrective to the myth of his city as a glamorous, bohemian playground.

For Bread Alone

by Mohamed Choukri, translated from the Arabic and with an introduction by Paul Bowles

In Tangier

by Mohamed Choukri, translated from the Arabic by Paul Bowles, Gretchen Head, and John Garrett, with forewords by William Burroughs and Gavin Lambert

Tales of Tangier

by Mohamed Choukri, translated from the Arabic by Jonas Elbousty, with a foreword by Roger Allen

Faces

by Mohamed Choukri, translated from the Arabic by Jonas Elbousty, with a foreword by Roger Allen

Letters

Christopher R. Browning

They Were Ordinary Men

Robert Chandler,
Michael Hofmann

A Plea for Platonov

Issue Details

Cover art
Ruth van Beek: Untitled (New Arrangement), 2014
Series art
Matthew Sandager: Fidgets, 2025