Books, Arts, and Culture

Elizabeth I launched her defense against the Spanish Armada in 1588 with an unforgettable image: “I have the body of a weak, and feeble woman; but...

For weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney remained closeted away in various undisclosed locations while Bush administration officials announced...

You must know the parable about the frog that sits in a pot of water being gradually heated, allowing itself to be boiled alive: because the...

Reviewers of Sarah Manguso’s writing love to tally her words and pages—as is often the case for very short books (the “slim volume”) and very long...

I visited Cairo in late November 2021, after a two-year absence. I knew to expect changes, and I found them. The area around Tahrir Square, emptied...

If you’ve ever been curious about how America’s so-called deep state really works, these three memoirs are a good place to start. Their authors were, until...

I never tire of its nine hundred pages, of reading it, teaching it, talking about it. “London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting...

In The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953), Dr. Seuss’s only original screenplay, young Bart, living alone with his harassed mom, is compelled to endure piano...

1. It is unfair to begin an essay on Elizabeth Hardwick with an instance of her cruelty; she was one of the fairest literary critics of...

On May 10, 1981, François Mitterrand was elected president of France. It was the first time in the twenty-three-year history of the Fifth Republic that a...