Books
When Yuppies Ruled
Defining a social type is a way of defining an era. What can the time of the young urban professional tell us about our own?
Should We Abolish Prisons?
Our carceral system is characterized by frequent brutality and ingrained indifference. Finding a better way requires that we freely imagine alternatives.
The Original Bluestockings Were Fiercer Than You Imagined
In eighteenth-century England, a cohort of intellectual women braved vicious mockery. But when it came to policing propriety, they could dish it out, too.
Briefly Noted
“The God of the Woods,” “Gretel and the Great War,” “They Called It Peace,” and “The Friday Afternoon Club.”
1982 and the Fate of Filmgoing
A new book claims that a few big summer movies heralded an epochal shift in the motion-picture industry, but is that really how cultural history works?
The Seditious Writers Who Unravel Their Own Stories
“Consent,” by Jill Ciment, and “Change,” by Édouard Louis, revisit the past with an eye for distortion and error.
Briefly Noted
“The Silence of the Choir,” “In Tongues,” “Woman of Interest,” and “The Museum of Other People.”
Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Scabrous Satire of the Super-Rich
In “Long Island Compromise,” wealth is a curse. Or is that just what we’d like to think?
How to Start a War Over Taiwan
American efforts to deter Chinese belligerence could easily provoke it.