Reviews
Postmodernism Revisited
The Dangers of Delusion

A new book by Bruno Maçães argues that “the real world has many disadvantages.” Perhaps—but not as many as the unreal one.

(Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)
The Last Dance
Odysseus on the Basketball Court

ESPN’s stylish new Michael Jordan series is more than a basketball documentary—and it leaves its cinematic competition in the dust.

Pro-Iranian Revolution Demonstration, Beirut 1979 (Wikimedia Commons)
Turning Points
The Wandering Cleric and the Year Everything Changed

Two ambitious new books—one on the Saudi-Iranian rivalry since 1979, another on the cleric who mentored Osama bin Laden—trace the upheavals that have shaped the modern Middle East.

Surviving Solitude
Why Is Quarantine Reading So Difficult?

A new book by Zena Hitz argues that the pursuit of truth is necessarily a social affair.

Matt H. Wade, Wikimedia Commons
A Judicious Review
The Admirable Restraint of the Supreme Court

Is the highest court in the land prone to judicial activism, or antidemocratic overreach? Not so, says Keith Whittington, in a useful new history that confounds partisan narratives on both sides.

Trendy Traditionalism
The Occultists Who Almost Ran Your Country

From Moscow and Budapest to Brasília and Washington, a network of far-right cranks is attempting to remake the global order. They haven’t gotten very far.

Leonid Pasternak, “The Passion of Creation” (Wikimedia Commons)
The Literary Life
A Sickness Unto Death

A new memoir by George Scialabba, an unsung giant of criticism, is a gripping portrait of life under the spell of depression—and also a model of true intellectual inquiry.

(Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
USA vs. PRC
Our China Problem

Is China a rising threat to be confronted boldly, or a manageable problem to be handled patiently? Four new studies offer ammunition for both sides of the debate.

(Wikimedia Commons)
Oral History
The Forgotten Women of the Gulag

A new book by Monika Zgustova brings the harrowing, heartbreaking history of the Soviet Gulag’s female prisoners to life.

7th Street Theatre via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
At the Movies
All About Eve and the Rules of the Hollywood Game

The 1950 classic All About Eve vividly showcases both what Hollywood pretends to be and what it actually is—a contrast that couldn’t be timelier.

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