Timid Europe

For the past month European leaders have lent tacit and sometimes open support to the US and Israel’s war in Iran—with one notable exception.

March 31, 2026

‘Tell Me Your Worst’ 

Helene Schjerfbeck captured the difficulty—even the terror—of confronting the self.

March 29, 2026

Indecorous Decorations

Medieval ideas about sex and love, both rowdy and reverent, are recorded on objects meant for everyday use.

March 28, 2026

Syphoning Morale

The attack on the independence of Stars and Stripes is a window into Hegseth’s unaccountable military.

March 27, 2026

The Neocons’ Revenge?

Trump’s war has deepened the already-widening cracks in the MAGA coalition.

March 25, 2026

Bottling the World Economy

Now that the Gulf states have become diversified industrial giants, blocking the Strait of Hormuz will have catastrophic effects on trade networks and food systems across the globe.

March 23, 2026

The Gaza Doctrine

Over the course of two years, Israeli forces systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip’s health system. Their attacks in Iran and Lebanon follow a disturbingly similar pattern.

March 22, 2026

Elegy for Rafah

For the tens of thousands of Gazans who need to leave the Strip but want the chance to come back home, life revolves around the Rafah crossing.

March 20, 2026

Lebanon’s Negations

Tenuous modus vivendis have always defined the Lebanese state. Israel’s war will merely create a new one—at the cost of great destruction and death.

March 18, 2026

Of Fire and Rain

It was sometime in the afternoon, checking my phone for news from home, that I saw the flames.

March 14, 2026

Longing for My Tehran

On the Israeli news, I watch as the country whose citizenship I hold devastates the one where I was born.

March 14, 2026

Iran Transformed

To understand the regime the US now seeks to obliterate, we have to return to the political and economic convulsions that produced last January’s uprising.

March 8, 2026

The Gaza Doctrine

Over the course of two years, Israeli forces systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip’s health system. Their attacks in Iran and Lebanon follow a disturbingly similar pattern.

March 22, 2026

Gini Alhadeff Reads from André Breton’s ‘Nadja’

Episode 8 of Private Life

April 1, 2026

Mark Polizzotti on André Breton, Translation, and Surrealism

Episode 7 of Private Life

March 25, 2026

Richard Hell Reads from Godlike

Episode 6 of Private Life

March 18, 2026

Richard Hell on Godlike and Poetry as a Way of Life

Episode 5 of Private Life

March 11, 2026

‘There’s Nothing for Me Here’

What caused Venezuela’s collapse, and who is responsible? A recent memoir tells the story as so many families have lived it.

May 29, 2025 issue

Chavismo’s Chokehold

The party of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro maintains a strong hold on state institutions, but it has lost the people’s mandate. Will there be a transfer of power to the opposition candidate, Edmundo González—the true victor of this summer’s election?

September 19, 2024 issue

The Triumph of a Musical Adventure

“Over the last forty years, through a succession of often controversial political regimes, Venezuela has become widely known for a highly developed system of orchestras and socially directed musical education that is now being adapted and much imitated.”

September 24, 2015 issue

The Last Caudillo

All these years later, it’s still hard to know whether his was a dictablanda (a soft dictatorship) or not. For all his anti-imperialist fulminations, the flow of Venezuelan oil to US ports was not interrupted for a single day. For all his socialist preaching, his country remained firmly capitalist.

March 6, 2013

The Sense of an Endling

In the early nineteenth century, the idea of species extinction was an alien concept. That changed after an expedition to Iceland in search of the last of the great auks.

December 5, 2024 issue

Coq au Pépin

More than almost any other public figure, Jacques Pépin has followed the trajectory of twentieth-century cuisine, from the Hôtel Plaza Athénée to Howard Johnson’s, and from his Burgundy backyard to national television.

October 5, 2023 issue

Intrepid Navigators

Migration’s demands on birds are as daunting mentally as they are physically.

February 25, 2021 issue

They Covered the Sky, and Then…

Perhaps, in ethical terms, it doesn’t much matter whether overhunting was or was not the sole cause of the passenger pigeon’s extinction. Practically speaking, though, it matters a good deal.

January 9, 2014 issue

Spirit in the Sky

“Religion could be a source of catastrophic oppression for women as well as offering a way to imagine freedom.”

March 21, 2026

‘Like a Gossamer Sheet’

“The first time I experienced life on the West Bank, staying over in Palestinian homes, a whole new horizon opened up for me. I entered into that life, its personal friendships, its language, its ravishing landscapes, and its evident suffering. All of it felt meaningful and real.”

March 14, 2026

En Pointe 

“I’m struck by ballet’s ability to create something extraordinarily beautiful out of something so difficult and so taxing on the brain and body.”

March 7, 2026

For the Fossil Record

“I took the opportunity to observe the surviving lemurs in their natural habitats—and it was love at first sight.”

February 28, 2026

Gaza: The Threat of Partition

By putting the possibility of reconstruction out of reach for many Palestinians in Gaza, the current UN-endorsed “peace plan” may make it impossible for them to remain. 

November 23, 2025

What ‘Day After’ for Gaza?

The most influential plans for rebuilding Gaza start from the premise that Palestinians have no right to determine their future.

October 25, 2025

‘A Life That Is Not a Life’

My friend Awdah Hathaleen devoted himself to ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. His killing demonstrates just how little distance remains between settlers and the state.

September 5, 2025

‘Infinite License’

The memory of the Holocaust has, perversely, been enlisted to justify both the eradication of Gaza and the extraordinary silence with which that violence has been met.

April 24, 2025 issue