Shades of Solace

In Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s new paintings, mourners find clarity through communion—a departure for an artist known for her masterful portraits of solitude.

June 25, 2026 issue

Beirut and Beyond

The idea of home—in a city, in one’s body, in a corpus of visual art—runs through an exhibition of inventive work by the Lebanese artist Huguette Caland.

June 25, 2026 issue

Human Stamps

The young artist Emily Kraus is preoccupied with the question of whether a machine can serve the same purpose for an artist as her own unconscious.

June 11, 2026 issue

To Break the Siege

By sailing to Gaza, activists in the flotilla movement have long tried to pressure their own governments to honor international law. 

May 31, 2026

Subverting the Nude

Joan Semmel’s work is not just about reclaiming the female body from the male gaze but also about flesh, about carnality.

May 28, 2026

The Education of Pope Leo XIV

As a young missionary in Peru, the pope witnessed a war on liberation theology—and was indelibly stamped by the movement’s commitment to the poor.

May 24, 2026

Trump v. Trump

What happens when a president sues himself?

May 20, 2026

Bolloré’s Way

For years a right-wing billionaire has been steadily expanding his empire of media holdings, with dire consequences for the future of French publishing. 

May 19, 2026

Opera in Ragged Times

Scott Joplin’s luminous musical parable on the evils of ignorance is uncannily attuned to the present moment.

May 16, 2026

Empires of Flow Control

The modern idea of the freedom of the seas is collapsing in the Strait of Hormuz.

May 14, 2026

The Work of Feeling

Toni Morrison’s Love is a novel of epiphanies about selfhood, human relations, and the mundane operations of power. 

May 12, 2026

After El-Fasher

In North Darfur’s displacement camps, people look for what might help them go on living, or escape once again.

May 3, 2026

Lili Anolik on Eve Babitz, Her Legacy, and Unsent Letters

Episode 15 of Private Life

May 27, 2026

From the Archive: ‘Radiant, Angry Caravaggio’

Episode 14 of Private Life

May 20, 2026

Ingrid D. Rowland on Art History, Raphael, and Disegno

Episode 13 of Private Life

May 13, 2026

Iran’s New Winter

The US-Israeli war against Iran, far from encouraging a popular uprising, has strengthened the regime’s grip and set back the cause of Iranian freedom indefinitely.

May 28, 2026 issue

From the Rooftops of Tehran

We in Iran own our grief, mourning all by ourselves.

April 23, 2026 issue

Longing for My Tehran

On the Israeli news, I watch as the country whose citizenship I hold devastates the one where I was born.

March 14, 2026

The Gaza Doctrine

Over the course of two years, Israeli forces systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip’s health system. Their attacks in Iran and Lebanon follow a disturbingly similar pattern.

March 22, 2026

Elegy for Rafah

For the tens of thousands of Gazans who need to leave the Strip but want the chance to come back home, life revolves around the Rafah crossing.

March 20, 2026

Pieces of Gaza

An exhibition in Paris of archaeological treasures from Gaza served as a reminder of how much of the Strip’s history has been destroyed.

February 12, 2026

Gaza: The Threat of Partition

By putting the possibility of reconstruction out of reach for many Palestinians in Gaza, the current UN-endorsed “peace plan” may make it impossible for them to remain. 

November 23, 2025

What ‘Day After’ for Gaza?

The most influential plans for rebuilding Gaza start from the premise that Palestinians have no right to determine their future.

October 25, 2025

The Innocents Abroad

“One of my guiding principles as a white American writing about the US is that it’s important to include yourself in your analysis, to acknowledge your own complicity or at least involvement in the country’s history or power.”

June 6, 2026

The Future of Abortion Rights

“As long as I’ve been covering abortion access, it has been defined by wealth and geography.”

May 23, 2026

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

“It is a humiliating position—for millions of people—to be stuck between Netanyahu and Trump on one side and the Islamic Republic on the other.”

May 16, 2026

‘I Couldn’t Have Done It Without You’

“I consciously write bespoke biographies, cutting my cloth to fit my subject. It’s a form of homage.”

May 9, 2026

All About Henry

“Everyone reports to Kissinger, and only Kissinger reports to the President.”

September 19, 1974 issue

Cheney: The Fatal Touch

“Here was a man with considerable practice in the reversal of his own errors. He was never a star. No one ever called him a natural.”

October 5, 2006 issue

The Closed Mind of Mitch

‘The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell’ by Alec MacGillis

November 10, 2016 issue

William Barr: Enabler in Chief

The attorney general exemplifies the growing influence of right-wing Catholicism under Trump.

November 5, 2020 issue

To Err Is Poetic

The poetry canon is dotted with mistakes large and small; why do some critics seem attached to reading these errors as intentional?

February 11, 2021 issue

Proofreading the President

Mocking the president’s twisting circumlocutions on Twitter is cold consolation—ask anyone who bought a “Bushisms” calendar the January before the United States invaded Iraq.

October 8, 2019

The Scandal of ‘Ulysses’

“Ulysses: The Corrected Text is not a purified text, but a different version from what Joyce conceived, authorized, and saw into print.”

June 30, 1988 issue

On Translating Pushkin Pounding the Clavichord

An infelicitous translation of Eugene Onegin from a pitiless and irresponsible paraphrast bristles with crippled clichés and mongrel idioms, an inadequate knowledge of English and wobbly Russian.

April 30, 1964 issue

Indecorous Decorations

Medieval ideas about sex and love, both rowdy and reverent, are recorded on objects meant for everyday use.

March 28, 2026

Vexed by Sex

A new history of how Christianity has met the problem of desire argues for more flexibility in proclamations on gender and sexuality.

April 24, 2025 issue

Christian Hair

The historical claim that Christianity replaced Judaism as a superior faith resulted in laws and language that persecuted Jews—and laid a foundation for white supremacy, too, a new book argues.

April 10, 2025 issue

Jesus, Mary, and Mary

If the Church and world persist for another two thousand years, the subject of Mary’s virginity will still be maddeningly controversial.

November 21, 2019 issue

‘People Are Not a Crisis’

Eric Adams has insisted that his administration is doing its best to house New York’s asylum seekers, but the city’s shortage of shelter space is the result of political choices.

July 23, 2023

Exiles

I recognize in these young people—driven from their homes by war, famine, poverty—an unshakable energy called Hope.

July 11, 2023

The Land of Dust and Plastic

In Almería, the Moroccan and West African migrant workers who sustain the region’s booming agriculture industry find themselves either neglected or persecuted by the state. 

June 24, 2023

Journey to the North

Javier Zamora’s retelling of the almost lethal three-thousand-mile journey he made from El Salvador to the US as a child gives the experience of migration extraordinary immediacy.

June 8, 2023 issue

A King’s Madness

“In the early summer of 1788, George III was gently but steadily going off his head.”

March 25, 1965 issue

Postscript to Nixon

“All through the summer, right up to his resignation and for weeks after it, if Nixon remained a puzzle or an unknown quantity to his compatriots, it was not for lack of evidence against him but rather because of the wealth of it.”

October 17, 1974 issue

Year One: The Mad King

Less than a year into his presidency, we hear the same question again and again: What has to happen for Republicans to break with their Mad King?

November 10, 2017

Is Trump Certifiable?

The misuse of power is not a free-standing psychiatric category, though power seems to exacerbate a whole range of existing “craziness,” whether it is that of movie moguls or politicians.

January 8, 2018