November 20, 2025 Issue

Fintan O’Toole

The Lingering Delusion

Kamala Harris’s memoir 107 Days succeeds at least in distilling the evasions and weaknesses of the modern Democratic Party.

107 Days

by Kamala Harris

Joanna Biggs

Staying Power

In Ruth, Kate Riley portrays the interior life of her title character with a richness that is at odds with Ruth’s austere Anabaptist community.

Ruth

by Kate Riley

Jonathan Lethem

Frantic Realism

Paul Thomas Anderson fits a generation’s worth of cineplex joys into One Battle After Another, but the revolution refuses to get off the couch.

One Battle After Another

a film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Anne Diebel

Freezing eggs has been marketed as a panacea for ambitious professional women supposedly hungry for more time to focus on their careers, when in reality it’s often a last resort for women negotiating a mating crisis.

Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs

by Marcia C. Inhorn

The Big Freeze: A Reporter’s Personal Journey into the World of Egg Freezing and the Quest to Control Our Fertility

by Natalie Lampert

Colin B. Bailey

Watteau’s Theater

In Pierrot, Jean-Antoine Watteau depicted the all-embracing humanity of commedia dell’arte.

Revoir Watteau, un comédien sans réplique: Pierrot, dit le Gilles [A New Look at Watteau, an Actor with No Lines: Pierrot, Known as Gilles]

an exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, October 16, 2024–February 3, 2025

Linda Kinstler

Falling Off the Map

World War I set the stage a century ago for new ways of thinking about where states come from and what happens when they disappear.

The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty

by Natasha Wheatley

How States Die: Membership and Survival in the International System

by Douglas Lemke

Langdon Hammer

Alert to Reality

The first biography of James Schuyler suggests that his tendency to withdraw was both a harbinger of his disabling mood disorder and the wellspring of his shimmering poetry.

A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler

by Nathan Kernan

Samuel Stein

Reshaping the City

What does zoning reform have the power to change?

Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World

by Sara C. Bronin

James Oakes

Speculation in Human Property

The survival of slave trading during the Civil War suggests that enslaved people remained valuable commodities in a time of economic upheaval.

An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South

by Robert K.D. Colby

Rae Armantrout

No Promises

a poem

Miranda Seymour

Mary Shelley’s ‘Hideous Progeny’

Through Mary Shelley’s letters, journal, and work-in-progress, we can trace the development of Frankenstein from a simple ghost story to her most famous novel.

Mary Shelley in Bath

with an introduction by Fiona Sampson

Frankenstein

a film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro

Adam Shatz