Martin Filler on the golden age of department stores
The New York Review of Books
What Joys Lie in Store | Martin Filler
Can Printemps New York recapture the commercial sorcery of glamorous department stores like Wanamaker’s, Barney’s, and Bloomingdale’s?
“In a lily-white sport…Althea Gibson, a Black woman, was a whirlwind of energy and determination, shattering the color barrier at one marquee event after the next.” —Sasha Abramsky
The New York Review of Books
Ahead of the Game | Sasha Abramsky
Althea Gibson was a tall, strong, and exceptionally hard-hitting tennis player. Her serve was a rocket, her volleys forceful, aimed not at continui...
“Everyday language can actually convey cutting-edge physics concepts very well, if only we can let go of the everyday connotations that some terms carry with them.” —an interview with Sean M. Carroll
The New York Review of Books
Far Out | Sean M. Carroll, Willa Glickman
As scientists and researchers make sense of some of the major discoveries from the turn of the twenty-first century, “the present moment in the s...
A new exhibition pays “frank attention to the financial incentives that motivated the operators of ocean liners, railroads, and airlines to...use oysters, beef Wellington, kale salad, and martinis to edge out the competition.” —Lora Kelley
The New York Review of Books
‘A Moment of Pleasant Indecision’ | Lora Kelley
In the summer of 1957 a young woman named Shirley Kubik got a job attending to passengers on Trans World Airlines. After the company determined tha...
In 1978, an English librarian discovered “two strips of paper” which “proved to be fragments of an old letter. There was no clue as to who had written it,” Charles Nicholl writes, save for the name of its recipient: “Good Mrs. Shakspaire.”
The New York Review of Books
Who Is Mrs. Shakspaire? What Is She? | Charles Nicholl
On a summer’s day in 1978, Frederick Charles Morgan was at work as usual in the ancient library of Hereford Cathedral. He was a hundred years old...
Among the notorious Mitford sisters, “fascism was less an ideological belief than a catastrophic assertion of personality, a bid for attention in a family of extremophiles.” —Frances Wilson
The New York Review of Books
Tremendous Stickers | Frances Wilson
The Mitfords, a family of extremophiles, are characters that ultimately don’t translate to the screen.
“Veronese was always the most industrious of painters, his focus never flagging from the center of a canvas right out to its corners…. His work demands an equal intensity of concentration from his viewers.” —Ingrid D. Rowland
The New York Review of Books
The Gentleman of Verona | Ingrid D. Rowland
The majesty, serenity, and opulence of Paolo Veronese's paintings bolstered the myth of Venice's vibrancy at a time of social, political,...
David S. Reynolds on a new history of slavery, slaveholders, and enslaved people during the American Revolution
The New York Review of Books
The Contradictory Revolution | David S. Reynolds
Historians have long grappled with “the American Paradox” of American Revolutionary leaders who fought for their own liberty while denying it t...
“Somehow, it exemplifies IP accretion while also telling a stylish, surprising, moving story about oppression, radicalization, violent resistance, and, in its second season, genocide.” —Gabriel Winslow-Yost on Andor
The New York Review of Books
The Revolution Will Not Be Star Wars | Gabriel Winslow-Yost
In 1982 the great French crime novelist Jean-Patrick Manchette stopped publishing fiction. In almost a dozen novels over the previous decade, he had
Charlie Dulik on the past and future of tenant organizing
The New York Review of Books
The Long Fight for Tenant Power | Charlie Dulik
More than a third of the US population rent their homes. The number of tenants in the country is growing fast—nearly triple the rate of homeowner...