“The tug between family ties and one’s own choice to construct a substitute family has been a constant tension within Christianity.... That makes the association of ‘family values’ with Christian faith more than a little problematic.” —Diarmaid MacCulloch

The Elaine massacre gave rise to the legal strategy that the NAACP would use to chip away at Jim Crow, but “the legal history…remains better known than that of the killings” —Atul Dev https://go.nybooks.com/4s8lRGQ

“The most stunning moment in Resurrection…[is] the oldest movie-making trick of all: the world itself, the simple miracle of light—the right light—hitting a camera.” —Gabriel Winslow-Yost

For Trump, peace in Ukraine "seems to amount to little more than a business deal, preferably delivered before Christmas, or at the very least before nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize are due on January 31." —Linda Kinstler

Suzanne Schneider on the crack-up at the Heritage Foundation

“The Bible is a collection of texts beyond and outside us, and we may find its messages strange and even unwelcome. There’s nothing we can do about that, except to examine ourselves afresh.” —Diarmaid MacCulloch, interviewed by Chandler Fritz

Linda Kinstler on Ukraine's impossible bind https://go.nybooks.com/4jhWq1t

Atul Dev on the contested memory of the Elaine massacre, a little-discussed mass killing of black people in rural Arkansas in 1919 https://go.nybooks.com/4arkPiQ

Harold Sonny Ladoo’s novel Yesterdays “cocks a snook at readers who…recoil from its visceral descriptions. It’s worth sticking around, though, and getting accustomed to its unashamedly frank and fecund storytelling.” —@colincraiggrant.bsky.social

“It’s hard to overstate the potential implications of disturbing the ocean’s ecology…. If deep-sea mining contaminates the mid-water column, it could cause a significant die-off of marine life that would threaten global food systems.” —Rebecca Egan McCarthy

“Few movies, really, have ever had this much movie in them, stuffed full of what feels like every conceivable camera trick, trope, and stylistic flourish.” —Gabriel Winslow-Yost on Bi Gan’s Resurrection

“The way to endure the pitilessness of a life raft is not insist on a mental barrier between oneself and the harsh environment but to dissolve into those surroundings—to become, in a way, an honorary fish.” —@jewilsn.bsky.social

Frank Gehry “made the world safe for oddball buildings, and whatever one might think of the idiosyncratic architecture by the generation who followed him…their careers would be unthinkable without the precedent he set.” —Martin Filler

Nawal Arjini on Marty Supreme, the movie that brings Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin O’Leary, Naomi Fry, Isaac Mizrahi, and John Catsimatidis

Gabriel Winslow-Yost on Bi Gan’s Resurrection

The latest dispatch from our Art Editor, Leanne Shapton

“Should [deep-sea] mining commence just on these tracts that have already been licensed, it would cover a larger geographic area by far than any other extractive industry on the planet.” —Rebecca Egan McCarthy

An entertaining read on Frank Gehry from Martin Filler: www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

“The number of anti-trans bills considered each year has grown from twenty-one in 2015 to over one thousand in 2025.” — @paisleycurrah.com

“Even as Harold Sonny Ladoo humbly professed to be an apprentice novelist, he considered himself a better, more authentic writer than Naipaul and would clash with anyone who dared to challenge that notion.” —@colincraiggrant.bsky.social

“The story that Death and the Gardener tells is sadly universal. For some, there will be almost overwhelming instances of déjà vu.” —Francine Prose

With the Trump administration’s backing, an emerging industry could start mining minerals from the bottom of the sea—and risk turning the ocean into a free-for-all. www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

"It’s hard to overstate the..implications of disturbing the ocean’s ecology..As Orcutt put it, “We would only know there’s a problem when there are no animals...40 states have called for a pause; President Macron instated a ban, calling the rush to mine “madness”' www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

"For The New York Review of Books, Philip Clark considers the work of Steely Dan, a band whose early music and sound relied heavily on studio wizardry for their recordings" @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

“You cannot take away billions of dollars in annual federal support [for SNAP] without doing damage, and food bank leaders doubt that private philanthropy can compensate for a hollowed-out state.” —Christopher Bosso

“The great liberator of late-twentieth-century architecture, Gehry was a latter-day Alexander who sliced through the Gordian Knot formed by an exhausted Modernism intertwined with a callow Postmodernism.” —Martin Filler

“While amnesty [for fascists] was and remains controversial [in Italy]…it may have also been one of the things that guaranteed a peaceful transition from civil war to democracy.” —Alexander Stille

“A life raft is a kind of tent where the infinite has come inside: with few supplies and little protection from the surrounding sea and weather, there’s almost no division between the two.” —@jewilsn.bsky.social

In Death and the Gardener, “Georgi Gospodinov warns us that he has no intention of prettifying death or looking away from a tragic and humbling deterioration.” —Francine Prose

“Joe Brainard had the touch. He fought with self-doubt but his line never wavered. His mise-en-page was flawless.” —Lucy Sante

Martin Filler on the life and legacy of Frank Gehry

Cool article about the Native American activism, much of it in the Pacific Northwest, that led to the Boldt decision. It centered on fishing rights, but the ruling was the first (in a minute) to respect the rights given to Native Americans by treaty. (1/6) ($ site) www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

The New York Review is now on Substack. Follow us to receive interviews, videos, issue previews, notes from our editors, and free selections from our sixty-year archive. substack.nybooks.com

“US nationalism did not grow out of the revolution of nationalization. It has always been programmatically universalist and has nothing analogous to the Hungarian nation to go back to.” —Yuri Slezkine

Anti-trans laws “ultimately insist that…the ‘material reality’ of sex ought to be the basis of all norms and expectations about how one should live…. This is exactly the constraint that feminism has long fought to undo.” —@paisleycurrah.com

“In Russia, you build a fence and draw your curtains, just in case. Because you do have something to hide.” —an interview with Yuri Slezkine

Rebecca Egan McCarthy on the perils of deep-sea mining

"The Nativity stories are not history but prophetic descriptions of what happened in Christian history. A child in southwest Asia whose birth, by any reckoning, fell outside conventional family patterns took on a cosmic significance that brought allegiance worldwide." www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Jé Wilson (@jewilsn.bsky.social) on the married couple who survived 118 days lost at sea

“The prospect that hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of people will get kicked off SNAP…gives charitable food sector executives nightmares. They know that SNAP supports far more meals than food banks could ever provide.” —Christopher Bosso

Colin Grant (@colincraiggrant.bsky.social) on the outhouse genius of Harold Sonny Ladoo’s novel Yesterdays

“It would be absurd for Roman officials to consider a thousand-year-old claim to Davidic kinship as relevant to their filing systems; whereas to pious Christian readers…it would make perfect devotional sense.” —Diarmaid MacCulloch on the Nativity story

Great to see, not a drop of equivocation “The current crusade against trans people imperils not just their rights but the survival of the legal doctrine built to protect all women from discrimination” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

My latest. The shutdown stressed food banks, and the Republican attack on SNAP may create a food insecurity crisis that the charitable system cannot meet. www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Read about it here! www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

“tuberculosis is not a relic of medical history. It remains the leading infectious cause of death worldwide” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

How did multilevel marketing schemes come to be legal, let alone so widespread? In this op-ed for New York Review of Books (@nybooks.com), Fordham Law Professor Zephyr Teachout says the answer has to do with how we think of workers and how we think of consumers.

"Dropping prerecorded, improvised solos into carefully worked-out backdrops was, in theory, a supreme creative balance of control and spontaneity." @musicclerk.bsky.social on Steely Dan for @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

‘The biggest rock bands not only make the best noise but talk the most nonsense…’: the opening of a glorious, clear-eyed celebration of Oasis by Andrew O’Hagan in @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

"Along one block of East 6th Street was a string of Indian restaurants run by Bangladeshi immigrants [...] The food was rumored to come from a common kitchen, the curries distributed by large underground pipes." I heard the same rumor in 1992. @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...