SMALL TOWN GIRLS: A Writer’s Memoir, By Jayne Anne Phillips Most fiction writers have given so much of their own experiences to their characters that, after long careers, they are rarely inspired to become late-life autobiographers. Over the years, however, many are likely to have published a variety of nonfiction pieces — personal essays, talks,…
LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW: RNS national reporter Yonat Shimron in conversation with Rachel Goldberg-Polin http://religionnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/042926.yonat_mixdown.mp3 (RNS) — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old American-Israeli, became the public face for the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, largely because of his mother’s fevered efforts to win his release. Rachel Goldberg-Polin, a native…
PROPHECY: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, From Ancient Oracles to AI, by Carissa Véliz Imagine you are a turkey on a farm — a nice, free-range organic farm, so that instead of being cooped up all the time you get plenty of chances to roam. Your kindly caretakers feed you and provide…
PROJECT MAVEN: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare, by Katrina Manson Science-fiction authors have long fantasized about wars where machines aim the weapons and pull the triggers. In “Project Maven,” the Bloomberg News tech and national security reporter Katrina Manson claims the era of “killer robots” is here. The fusion…
For all its concerns with Germany’s future, it is perhaps most fruitfully read as a novel about fathers and sons. Judejahn (the name translates roughly to “Jew hunter”), an extraordinary monster of insecurity and wounded pride, greets his semi-estranged son’s religious turn with incomprehension and mockery. Pfaffrath, a politician formerly under the Nazis who is…
This morning, the eminent critic Dwight Garner published a lament for the institutional book critic—via his own institution, The New York Times. Lord knows this isn’t the first swansong of its kind. We’ve covered the recent destruction of The Washington Post‘s Book World, and the larger phenomenon of diminishing coverage. And also, you’ve been outside….
But here’s a catch with A.I. It’s easy to tell when a reference, or a comparison, or a sentence, doesn’t belong to a writer. Erudition and style aren’t forgeable for long; it still must be earned. As for A.I.’s sleek, space-efficient text, we’ve already grown accustomed to what that sounds like — the flat, consistent…
Theo Baker is graduating from Stanford this spring with something most seniors don’t have: a book deal, a George Polk Award that he received for his investigative reporting as a student journalist, and a front-row account of one of the most romanticized institutions in the world. His forthcoming How to Rule the World: An Education…
GHOST TOWN, by Tom Perrotta Upon finishing Tom Perrotta’s new novel, “Ghost Town,” I found myself agreeably haunted by the corpulent specter of Harold Bloom: the late, great literary critic who called the Harry Potter books “rubbish only good for the dustbin where they will certainly wind up in a generation or so,” and Stephen…
LIKE, FOLLOW, SUBSCRIBE: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online, by Fortesa Latifi In 2024, The New York Times published an investigation into child influencer accounts on Instagram, run by parents, that had become magnets for adult men interested in young girls. Based on an analysis of thousands of accounts chronicling young gymnasts,…
