February 12, 2026 Issue

Alma Guillermoprieto

A More Pliant Chavista

President Trump’s decision to support Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s new leader makes clear that oil, not democracy, is his main concern.

Fernando Pessoa,
Margaret Jull Costa,
Patricio Ferrari

Whose Hemisphere?

The US capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro reinforces the Trump administration’s capacity to invent any pretext to justify the use of armed force.

Hermione Lee

Epic Ambitions

A new life of Gertrude Stein treats her as a philosopher of language to trust, not explain—and gathers force from archival discoveries and intriguing plots of her reception and reputation.

Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife

by Francesca Wade

Ben Lerner

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

Jérôme Tubiana

Darfur’s Endless War

As paramilitaries tear through their already devastated province, self-defense fighters in North Darfur have taken up arms to defend their homes.

Jenny Uglow

All That Glitters

The science of gemstones has always been intertwined with their value as luxury items.

Cartier

an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, April 12–November 16, 2025

Cartier

edited by Helen Molesworth and Rachel Garrahan

Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution

by Michael Bycroft

Cyrus Naji

Bangladesh’s Stalled Student Revolution

The young radicals who ousted the country’s authoritarian prime minister have so far failed to implement the democratic reforms they promised. Will elections in February correct their course?

Nathan Shields

Liberalism’s Pianist

Can Igor Levit restore classical music’s claim to cultural and political authority, or is it irrevocably lost?

House Concert

by Igor Levit and Florian Zinnecker, translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside

Beethoven in the Bunker

by Fred Brouwers, translated from the Dutch by Eileen J. Stevens

Kathleen Ossip

The Undefined Gothic

At the turn of the twentieth century, a Gothic fever swept Europe as artists searched for meaning in a lost age.

Gothic Modern

an exhibition at the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, October 4, 2024–January 26, 2025; the National Museum, Oslo, February 28–June 15, 2025; and the Albertina Museum, Vienna, September 19, 2025–January 11, 2026

Aryeh Neier,
Gara LaMarche

Trump’s Attack on Philanthropy

Universities, law firms, and news media have already been targeted by the administration. As the Justice Department pushes to investigate the Open Society Foundations, it seems that philanthropies that support critical voices may be next.

Regina Marler

Teacher’s Pet

Jane DeLynn’s autobiographical novel In Thrall recounts a same-sex affair between a teenager and her closeted English teacher in the early 1960s, a time when exposure could be more traumatic than exploitation.

In Thrall

by Jane DeLynn, with an introduction by Colm Tóibín

Vanessa Ogle

Rolling with the Economic Tides

Ian Kumekawa’s Empty Vessel follows the lifespan of one barge, from bunkhouse to floating prison to barracks and back, as it traces the shadowy outer limits of the maritime economy.

Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge

by Ian Kumekawa

Adam Kirsch

Things Fall Apart

Gabriele Tergit’s Effingers chronicles how one prosperous German Jewish family struggled to answer the question: When is it time to leave?

Effingers

by Gabriele Tergit, translated from the German by Sophie Duvernoy

Laurence H. Tribe

Is the Constitution ‘Dead, Dead, Dead’?

The difficulty of amending the Constitution does not mean that it is a flawed and outdated relic of a distant past.

We the People: A History of the US Constitution

by Jill Lepore

Issue Details

Cover art
Nathalie Du Pasquier: natural and manmade, 2001. From Leonard Koren, Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement (Stone Bridge Press, 2003).
Series art
Harry Bliss: Improvisations in Ink, 2025