Caught in the Coils
How do we respond to barbarians at the gates? On February 25, 2022, as Russian troops invaded her country, the young Ukrainian congresswoman Kira Rudik tweeted,...
Slavery, Empire, Memory
In 1833 Britain allocated the extraordinary sum of £20 million—40 percent of the British treasury’s annual expenditures at the time, and the equivalent today of some...
A Compulsive Perfectionist
Why do you say that Degas has trouble getting a hard-on? Degas lives like a little notary and doesn’t like women, knowing that if he liked...
Should We Reform the Court?
The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States had an image problem from the moment President Biden established it last April, fulfilling a...
His Nemesis Was Stupidity
Last year was the two hundredth anniversary of Charles Baudelaire’s birth. We now have new translations of his poetry and prose, and a reissue of the...
A Country Out of Control
In Welcome to Lagos, a TV miniseries broadcast a dozen years ago, the BBC claimed to turn a compassionate lens on the sprawling Nigerian city of...
Hearing the ‘Ramayana’ Again
In 2007 the Indian government planned to dig a deepwater channel through the thirty-mile stretch of sea that separates the southern tip of the country from...
Set Change
Within the church they opened a train station:waiting room, altar lamps, icons, and booths.The crowded choirs buzz like a cauldron,and female cashiers with mouths like fake...
A Hero Of His Time?
To the Editors: I write in response to Gary Saul Morson’s egregious misrepresentations in his review of my biography of Boris Savinkov [“Falling in Love with...
The Constitution & the Slave Trade
To the Editors: In his review of Woody Holton’s Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution [NYR, January 13], Sean Wilentz presents an...
