March 26, 2026 Issue

Anne Enright

‘The Devil Himself’

Sifting through a single day of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails reveals a surprising amount about the man and his many enablers.

Jacob Weisberg

Tick, Tick…Boom!

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s history of the 1929 stock market crash reminds us that financial bubbles are inevitable—and that another one may be about to pop.

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation

by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Ingrid D. Rowland

Artistic License

When an angel in a recently restored Roman chapel was seen to resemble Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, it touched off a very Italian scandal.

Meghan O’Gieblyn

The Island That Held Them

In David Greig’s novel The Book of I, a monk, a Viking, and a “mead wife” navigate a world torn between paganism and Christianity.

The Book of I

by David Greig

Robert G. Kaiser

Post Mortem

When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 and promised to find inventive ways to make journalism profitable in the digital age, he seemed like a godsend. He wasn’t.

Ruth Bernard Yeazell

The Leiden Collection—one of the largest private collections of Dutch art in the world—was conceived as a “lending library for Old Masters,” animated by the humanist spirit found in Rembrandt’s paintings.

Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time: Masterpieces from the Leiden Collection

an exhibition at the H’ART Museum, Amsterdam, April 9–August 24, 2025, and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, October 25, 2025—March 29, 2026

The Leiden Collection Online Catalogue, Fourth Edition

edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Elizabeth Nogrady

Patricia Lockwood

The Beach Where All Babies Are Born

a poem

Marilynne Robinson

Who Speaks for Us?

The representatives of our two-party system have made it into a weapon that works against the people.

Catherine Nicholson

A Most Particular Life

The diary of the sixteenth-century physician Felix Platter is without precedent in early modern literature.

Beloved Son Felix: Coming of Age in the Renaissance

by Felix Platter, translated from the German by Seán Jennett and with a foreword by Stephen Greenblatt

Nathan Thrall

‘Dirty Work’

The Israeli writer S. Yizhar’s 1949 novella Khirbet Khizeh portrays the violent reality of the Nakba. For decades it was part of the canon of Hebrew literature. That has changed.

David Cole

Diversity by Other Means

Progressives may have lost the battle for racial affirmative action, but ironically, Supreme Court decisions should allow colleges to give advantage to groups defined by their income, geography, or heritage.

The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Higher Education

by Justin Driver

Aaron Matz

All of Us Yahoos

A new history of satire wants to limit the genre to its political ramifications, but satirists are often interested in the whole person and their capacity for vice.

State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature

by Dan Sperrin

Orville Schell

China’s Leader Manqué

Chiang Kai-shek had enormous flaws as a leader, but something was nonetheless lost to China when he and his Republican government were forced into exile on Taiwan.

Victorious in Defeat: The Life and Times of Chiang Kai-shek, China, 1887–1975

by Alexander V. Pantsov, translated from the Russian by Steven I. Levine

The Republic of China: 1912 to 1949

by Xavier Paulès, translated from the French by Lindsay Lightfoot

Erin Maglaque

God’s Impertinent Prophets

A new history brings to light the dissenting women who wrote, preached, and testified during England’s tumultuous seventeenth century, claiming the standing to speak as excluded outsiders who had un unfiltered knowledge of God.

Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century

by Naomi Baker

Mark Lilla

Clown Show

In every era a certain kind of unprincipled demagogue driven by an insatiable need for attention and a sense of what will capture the public’s imagination rises to the fore. In the early years of France’s Third Republic, it was the ludicrous Marquis de Morès.

The First Fascist: The Sensational Life and Dark Legacy of the Marquis de Morès

by Sergio Luzzatto