Innholdsfortegnelse for November 23, 2023 i The New York Review of Books

How Life Works A User’s Guide to the New Biology Philip Ball “Ball writes that evolution has consistently invented new ways of creating living beings, and it will continue to do so…. A bold effort to create a new language that forces a ‘rethinking’ of ‘thinking itself.’”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review CLOTH $29.00 Mountains of Fire The Menace, Meaning, and Magic of Volcanoes Clive Oppenheimer “Mountains of Fire is a love letter to volcanoes and an investigation into all the ways that they have and continue to sustain humanity—spiritually and scientifically.”—Economist CLOTH $27.50 Performance All the Way Down Genes, Development, and Sexual Difference Richard O. Prum “A renowned biologist meets queer theory, and creativity takes flight. A joyful and expansive celebration of the complexity and contingency of sex.”—Sarah S. Richardson, Harvard University…

Into the Amazon: The Life of Cândido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist by Larry Rohter. Norton, 454 pp., $38.00 When the Paraguayan army invaded Mato Grosso in 1864, the Brazilian province was so remote that it took an entire month for the news to reach the government in Rio de Janeiro. “At the end of the world there exists a river,” wrote the nineteenth-century general and politician Floriano Peixoto; “at the end of this river there rises a hill; behind the hill stands Cuiabá,” the capital of Mato Grosso. And quite a ways behind Cuiabá—“our tropical Siberia,” it was called in Rio—was the tiny village of Mimoso, where Cândido Rondon was born six months after the Paraguayan invasion. Yet even this corner of the back of the back…

Brian by Jeremy Cooper. London: Fitzcarraldo, 180 pp., $17.95 (paper) At the very end of Growing Up: The Young British Artists at 50 (2012), an account of the friendships, romances, and working relationships among the students who met at Goldsmiths College of Art in the late 1980s—including Anya Gallacio, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Michael Landy, and Sarah Lucas—the art historian Jeremy Cooper reproduces a sketch by Tracey Emin. It is of a man’s head and torso; he is leaning against a wall, one arm bent across his chest, the other disappearing behind his back, like a body preparing to fold in half. Under the portrait Emin has written, “This is My Friend Geremy, Tracy Emin 1997.” Cooper’s note explains: Tracey Emin’s monoprint portrait drawing of Jeremy Cooper was executed on…

Ginster by Siegfried Kracauer, translated from the German by Carl Skoggard, with an afterword by Johannes von Moltke. New York Review Books, 336 pp., $18.95 (paper) (to be published in March) Kracauer: A Biography by Jörg Später, translated from the German by Daniel Steuer. Polity, 584 pp., $45.00 Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda, and Political Communication by Siegfried Kracauer, edited by Jaeho Kang, Graeme Gilloch, and John Abromeit. Columbia University Press, 451 pp., $115.00; $28.00 (paper) Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer:  Correspondence 1923–1966 edited by Wolfgang Schopf, translated from the German by Susan Reynolds and Michael Winkler. Polity, 537 pp., $45.00 In the crowded field of German novels published in 1928 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the end of World War I, it might have been easy to…

AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES The Garretts of Columbia A Black South Carolina Family from Slavery to the Dawn of Integration David Nicholson Carefully researched and beautifully written, The Garretts of Columbia is a multigenerational story of Black hope and resilience. In tracing his family’s history from the years after the Civil War to World War II, David Nicholson details the sacrifices, defeats, and affirming victories of his family members who believed in the possibility of America despite a society that denied their humanity and discounted their abilities. January 9, 2024. 6 × 9 in. Pages: 328. 27 b&w illus. University of South Carolina Press 978-1-64336-454-4, Cloth, $27.99 The Words and Wares of David Drake Revisiting “I Made This Jar” and the Legacy of Edgefield Pottery Edited by Jill Beute Koverman and…

Permanent War, Permanent Protest To the Editors: I take serious issue with the sweeping generalizations Suzy Hansen makes in her review of two books by Phil Klay [“Twenty Years of Outsourced War,” NYR, October 19] with regard to Americans’ ignorance and lack of concern about the wars the US continually perpetrates. When she says “Americans’ relationship to … recent wars [is] one of indifference or ignorance,” she is erasing the millions of us who did everything we could to prevent the Iraq War, who railed against our involvement in Afghanistan for twenty full years, who pushed President Biden to pull back from Yemen. What more would Hansen have had us do? Yes, I suppose, we could have engaged in extreme acts of civil disobedience, or even revolutionary violence, to try…

PETER SARRIS JUSTINIAN Emperor, Soldier, Saint “A majestic, sparkling account of one of the most important rulers in history. Meticulously researched, beautifully written, filled with insights, this is modern history writing at its finest.” —PETER FRANKOPAN, New York Times–bestselling author of The Silk Roads “Superb and gripping” Epic historical biography that brings the emperor to life with analysis and empathy and a work of scholarship filled with new ideas and revelations.” —SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE,  New York Times–bestselling author of The World “Effortlessly erudite, lucidly written, with a sharp eye for the telling detail, Peter Sarris has written the great biography of the greatest of the Byzantine emperors.” —RORY STEWART, New York Times–bestselling author of The Places in Between basicbooks.com…

personal as well as historically significant… In his moral clarity and baring of the heart, his self-questioning and insistence on focusing on the experience of the individual within the storms of nationalist myth and hubris, Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan Kanafani and Primo Levi…a quiet and deeply felt book that illustrates how being dispossessed and being occupied are not merely legal or political conditions.” —NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Absolutely gripping… Shehadeh’s writing is clear and pared-back; it wears its power lightly. But his masterly, remorseless selection and accumulation of detail builds an unanswerable case against Palestine’s historic and current oppressors.”—THE GUARDIAN “Raja’s memoir is a vital history of his father Aziz’s overlooked achievements; but it is also a son’s love letter to his father.” —HARPER’S OTHER PRESS OTHERPRESS.COM…

for B.C. Remembering that little trick of lightIn “The Idea of Order at Key West”When we turn from the singing at the shore,Shine-minded, ponderous, and raw, to find There in its debonair, the distant port,Not a mile off now but right here,High on nocturne and brine, biding its timeIn the muddy waters of distortion Which flood Key West until everythingHas happened and nothing that has happened will,Like the apocryphal songs of yacht rockThat mean nothing to you until they do.…

God of a lack of abundance, wanting, bone strength, ready god,among the lemon groves your presenceis disputed. Even afterthey are picked, the fruits keep breathing.Description comes so easily in this interpreted world.Please findanother way to pose your questions. God of a lack of abundance,ablative god, in the middle of a procession, in the middle of things god,your desires are showing.Jade dust in the hair of those who quarry rough slabs of jadeis not the definition of plenty.What then is too much, when a sleight of the rational names plentyas recursion in thickets, absent blaring dataand the insects vanish. God of a lack of abundance,what kind of fight does the sea god put up?In rows & rows the consorts watch.Beneath the surface, the seais breathless, they say; first engraver, still wealthy…

Lady Caroline Lamb: A Free Spirit by Antonia Fraser. Pegasus, 205 pp., $28.95 Lady Caroline Ponsonby, the daughter of the Earl and Countess of Bessborough, was born in London in 1785 and swiftly proved herself to be as enchanting as she was uncontrollable. Laudanum, even when sweetened with lavender, failed to calm her. Governesses left. Her grandmother, the pious and well-read Lady Spencer—she became Caroline’s primary educator at home—despaired. To her cousin Georgiana, known as Little G—the daughter of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the beautiful, uncrowned queen of Whig society—the elevenyear-old Caroline announced: I’m mad That’s bad I’m sad That’s bad I’m bad That’s mad Later, in the spring of 1812, or so Caroline liked to recall, she summed up the already notorious Lord Byron, about to become her bewitched…

Christopher de Bellaigue’s latest book is The Lion House. Dan Chiasson is at work on Bernie for Burlington: Sanders in a Changing Vermont. He teaches at Wellesley. Vivian Gornick is the author, most recently, of Taking a Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time. Alice Gribbin is completing her first book of poems. Her essays on the arts appear on her Substack, “Notes of an Aesthete.” Daniel Immerwahr is Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern and the author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. Joshua Leifer is a member of the Dissent editorial board. His first book, Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life, will be published next year.…

Oct7 - Feb 19 Catalogue available at publications.artic.edu Lead support for Camille C/audel is provided by an anonymous donor. Major funding is provided by theWalter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation, an anonymous donor, Amyand Paul Carbone, Marion A. Cameron-Gray, Nancy and Sanfred Koltun, Barbaraand James MacGinnitie, Monika A. McLennan, Robin and Sandy Stuart, and Diane M. Tkach and James F. Freundt. Members ofthe LuminaryTrust provide annual leadership support for the museum’s operations, including exhibition development, conservation and collection care, and educational programming. The Luminary Trust includes an anonymous donor, Karen Gray Krehbiel and John Krehbiel, Jr., Kenneth C. Griffin, the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris, Josef and Margot Lakonishok, Robert M. and Diane v.S. Levy, Ann and Samuel M. Mencoff, Sylvia Neil and Dan Fischel, Cari and…

THE VICE PRESIDENT’S BLACK WIFE The Untold Life of Julia Chinn Amrita Chakrabarti Myers “A meticulously researched biography … Myers shows how a Black woman and her kin contributed to state and national politics but, because of their race, status, and gender, have been purposely forgotten or misremembered by the general public and historians. A major intervention.” —Hilary Green, author of Educational Reconstruction 304 pages $30.00 A Ferris and Ferris Book WILD, TAMED, LOST, REVIVED The Surprising Story of Apples in the South  Diane Flynt Foreword by Sean Brock and Photographs by Angie Mosier “Diane Flynt says it herself: she’s someone who loves nothing more than being at the top of a swing, because it lets her see the familiar with new eyes. Decades ago, she trained those eyes on—if…