CATEGORIES

A LONG WAY HOME

Ordinarily, I hate staying at someone's house, but when Hugh and I visited his friend Mary in Maine we had no other choice.

THIS ELECTION JUST PROVES WHAT I ALREADY BELIEVED

I hate to say I told you so, but here we are. Kamala Harris’s loss will go down in history as a catastrophe that could have easily been avoided if more people had thought whatever I happen to think.

HOLD YOUR TONGUE

Can the world's most populous country protect its languages?

REBELS WITH A CAUSE

In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour.

AGAINST THE CURRENT

\"Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!,\" at Soho Rep, and \"Gatz,\" at the Public.

GAINING CONTROL

The frenemies who fought to bring contraception to this country.

GET IT TOGETHER

In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.

METAMORPHOSIS

The director Marielle Heller explores the feral side of child rearing.

THE BIG SPIN

A district attorney's office investigates how its prosecutors picked death-penalty juries.

COLLISION COURSE

In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.

YULE RULES

“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”

REPRISE

Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.

WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?

Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.

COLOR INSTINCT

Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.

THE FAMILY PLAN

The pro-life movement’ new playbook.

NEW CHAPTER

Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?

STUCK ON YOU

Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.

HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG

Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.

CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS

The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives

THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON

Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.

THE HOME FRONT

Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.

SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED

Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.

THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE

Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.

THE ARTIFICIAL STATE

A different kind of machine politics.

LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES

Go with the flow like a dead fish.

BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS

How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.

TUCKER EVERLASTING

Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.

The Puppet Masters - Compulsion, complicity, and the art of Bunraku.

The National Bunraku Theatre, in New York recently for the first time in more than thirty years, presented an evening of suicides. The performance, at the Japan Society, consisted of excerpts from two of the company’s most celebrated productions. In the Fire Watchtower scene from “The Greengrocer’s Daughter,” by Suga Sensuke and Matsuda Wakichi, from 1773, the titular character sacrifices herself to save a temple page boy she loves. In a scene from “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,” by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, from 1703, two lovers are driven to take their own lives. Both plays were inspired by real events, and Chikamatsu’s was followed by a wave of double suicides that led to a ban on further performances. This mirroring of life and art is all the more astonishing given the fact that the actors are not people but puppets.

TAKE ME HOME

The filmmaker Mati Diop turns her gaze on plundered art.

THE BIG DEAL

Joe Biden's economic policies are starting to transform America. Will anyone notice?