Joshua Hammer | The New York Review of Books

A Man-Made Disaster

There has never been a moral and historical reckoning with the horrors inflicted by the Allied firebombing of Japan during World War II.

Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb

by James M. Scott

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

by Malcolm Gladwell

April 9, 2026 issue

Paths of Resistance

Those who challenged the Nazi regime knew they were almost certainly doomed to failure. What roused them from complacency to defiance?

The Traitors Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany—and the Spy Who Betrayed Them

by Jonathan Freedland

The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler’s All-Female Concentration Camp

by Lynne Olson

The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising

by Elizabeth R. Hyman

March 12, 2026 issue

Slaughter for Hire

From Africa to Ukraine, the rise and fall of the Wagner Group and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was marked by theatrical violence, the seizure of resources, and an utter lack of accountability.

Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare

by John Lechner

Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos

by Candace Rondeaux

The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army

by Jack Margolin

October 9, 2025 issue

Making Germany Hate Again

In Look Away, Jacob Kushner draws a disturbing portrait of the white supremacist subculture that took hold across eastern Germany in the 1990s and now is making gains at the ballot box.

Look Away: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants

by Jacob Kushner

December 19, 2024 issue

Iraq’s Twenty Years of Carnage

Two journalists give eyewitness accounts of the immeasurable damage inflicted on Iraq since the US invasion.

A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War

by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

Wounded Tigris: A River Journey Through the Cradle of Civilization

by Leon McCarron

March 21, 2024 issue

Promise and Disillusion in South Africa

Despite a shift in political power, the country is plagued by racial divisions and economic inequalities.

These Are Not Gentle People: Two Dead Men. Forty Suspects. The Trial That Broke a Small South African Town

by Andrew Harding

Prisoners of the Past: South African Democracy and the Legacy of Minority Rule

by Steven Friedman

The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning

by Eve Fairbanks

September 22, 2022 issue

The Herero Genocide

February 10, 2022 issue

The Horrors of the Diamond Boom

The discovery of diamonds in German Southwest Africa in 1908 led to ruthless exploitation of the colony.

Blood and Diamonds: Germany’s Imperial Ambitions in Africa

by Steven Press

Flight of the Diamond Smugglers: A Tale of Pigeons, Obsession, and Greed Along Coastal South Africa

by Matthew Gavin Frank

November 18, 2021 issue

Letter

Fabian Krautwald

The Herero Genocide

February 10, 2022 issue

Marooned!

Julian Sancton recounts the largely forgotten story of the Belgica’s disastrous Antarctic expedition in the late 1890s.

Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night

by Julian Sancton

August 19, 2021 issue

A Ghost in the War Machine

Alexander Wolff’s turbulent family history centers on his grandfather, who fled the Nazis, and his father, who fought for them.

Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home

by Alexander Wolff

April 8, 2021 issue

Letter

Ruth Mandel

More Memorials

May 27, 2021 issue

Because It’s Still There

The World Beneath Their Feet: Mountaineering, Madness, and the Deadly Race to Summit the Himalayas

by Scott Ellsworth

October 8, 2020 issue

Exit Mugabe

Two Weeks in November: The Astonishing Untold Story of the Operation That Toppled Mugabe

by Douglas Rogers

November 7, 2019 issue

Zimbabwe: Enter the Crocodile

April 5, 2018 issue

Egypt’s Failed Revolution

March 19, 2026 issue

Egypt: The New Dictatorship

Sisi has used the threat of terror to justify a clampdown on any kind of dissent.

The Egyptians: A Radical History of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution

by Jack Shenker

Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy

edited by Dalia F. Fahmy and Daanish Faruqi

June 8, 2017 issue

Letter

Jack Shenker

Egypt’s Failed Revolution

March 19, 2026 issue

Remembering Bob Silvers

On the late editor of The New York Review

March 21, 2017

The Mosul Mess

The three main forces advancing toward the city are in conflict about their parts in the coming liberation.

November 10, 2016 issue

Can Germany Cope with the Refugees?

Germany’s Response to the Refugee Situation: Remarkable Leadership or Fait Accompli?

a report by Matthias M. Mayer in Newpolitik, Bertelsmann Foundation, May 2016, available at www.bfna.org

The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis

by Patrick Kingsley

August 18, 2016 issue

The Nepal Catastrophe

Kathmandu

by Thomas Bell

Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal

by Prashant Jha

May 12, 2016 issue

Betrayal in Burma

The Rebel of Rangoon: A Tale of Defiance and Deliverance in Burma

by Delphine Schrank

November 5, 2015 issue