Ian Frazier | The New York Review of Books

Bang the Drumstick Slowly

About 26 billion chickens occupy Earth, but apart from the lucky ones in backyards, most are condemned to the hellscape that is industrial farming.

Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them

by Tove Danovich

Yard Birds: The Lives and Times of America’s Urban Chickens

by Philip Levy

Hatched: Dispatches from the Backyard Chicken Movement

by Gina G. Warren

February 12, 2026 issue

The Return of Trump—IV

On burnout, hell, billionaires, health care, the specter of the limousine liberal, and the anti-trans agenda.

November 11, 2024

Can We Talk!

Can Babel work? An exhilarating new book about preserving the languages of the most linguistically diverse city in history believes it can.

Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York

by Ross Perlin

September 19, 2024 issue

Taking the Joke Further

“What makes for a good piece of written humor is another of the mysteries of art.”

August 24, 2024

Heeeere’s Tim!

Governor and Mrs. Walz break the Democrats’ pattern of seeming to prefer the coasts.

August 13, 2024

The Plunder and the Pity

Alicia Puglionesi explores the damage white supremacy did to Native Americans and their land.

Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science

by Alicia Puglionesi

In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire

by Alicia Puglionesi

February 8, 2024 issue

Grim Reapers

Mega-agriculture is destroying the Corn Belt and the Central Valley, which the country’s food system depends on. Can midsize farms survive to save it?

Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It

by Tom Philpott

The Farmer’s Lawyer: The North Dakota Nine and the Fight to Save the Family Farm

by Sarah Vogel

February 9, 2023 issue

Letter

Virginia Casper

A Call to Divest

April 20, 2023 issue

‘Part of Why We Survived’

A new history of the long tradition of Native comedy, inside and outside mainstream entertainment

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans in Comedy

by Kliph Nesteroff

The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy

by Kliph Nesteroff

January 13, 2022 issue

The Plushbottoms of Teton County

Life in the richest and most unequal county in America.

Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West

by Justin Farrell

December 17, 2020 issue

Rural America Could Stand Remembering

November 19, 2020 issue

Never Before Seen in the West

Inland

by Téa Obreht

March 12, 2020 issue

Staying Native

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

by David Treuer

August 15, 2019 issue

Rough Riders

The Last Cowboys: A Pioneer Family in the New West

by John Branch

October 25, 2018 issue

Texas Chronicles

Thalia: A Texas Trilogy

by Larry McMurtry

December 21, 2017 issue

A Vast and Terrifying Saga

Barkskins

by Annie Proulx

February 23, 2017 issue

The Magic of the Oldest Pueblo

How the World Moves: The Odyssey of an American Indian Family

by Peter Nabokov

The Origin Myth of Acoma Pueblo

by Edward Proctor Hunt, with an introduction by Peter Nabokov, translated from the Keresan by Henry Wayne Wolf Robe Hunt and Wilbert Edward Blue Sky Eagle Hunt

October 27, 2016 issue

Who Can Find the True West?

The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey

by Rinker Buck

October 8, 2015 issue

A Strangely Funny Russian Genius

The absurdist, religious Daniil Kharms

“I Am a Phenomenon Quite Out of the Ordinary”: The Notebooks, Diaries, and Letters of Daniil Kharms

selected, translated from the Russian, and edited by Anthony Anemone and Peter Scotto

Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms

edited and translated from the Russian by Matvei Yankelevich

The Old Woman