The New Yorker
Swimming with My Daughters
“I got married at nineteen and then got pregnant immediately, and was often conscious of how much I didn’t know about being a mother. I’d never even babysat. The nurses at the Army hospital where Val was born had to show me how to put her cloth diaper on.” Mary Grimm reflects on motherhood.
Above the Fold
Essential reading for today.
Stormy Daniels’s American Dream
Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to portray the scrappy adult-film actress as a lying profiteer. Instead, she emerged as an intelligent, credible witness who is also very good at making money.
Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Our Moment of Bad Reading
The once-upon-a-time defense of the poetics of rap has been ceded to the millennial mind of Genius.com, taking every syllable as ripe for mundane exegesis.
Biden’s Public Ultimatum to Bibi
A hostage and ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel is “not dead,” a senior U.S. official says, but only if Netanyahu holds off on invading Rafah.
Miranda July Turns the Lights On
A few years ago, July began writing a novel, “All Fours,” about how middle age changes sex, marriage, and ambition. Then the novel changed her.
The Workingman and the Company Store
Can a progressive campaign break the coal industry’s hold on West Virginia politics?
The Political Scene
The American Student Protests in Israeli Media
The Israeli right is using the demonstrations roiling American campuses to its own ends, and the schism between Israel and young Jews in America is widening.
What Is Hope Hicks Crying About?
During Donald Trump’s criminal trial, the former White House aide was inscrutable on the witness stand, despite breaking out into tears.
Is 2024 Doomed to Repeat 1968 or 2020—or Both?
Donald Trump has now made clear that he won’t concede if he loses the election. Believe him.
How Much Aid Is Actually Reaching Gazans?
The chief economist of the U.N.’s World Food Programme on imminent famine and what’s needed to avoid it.
Can Suing People for Lying Save Democracy?
The lawyers at Protect Democracy have brought defamation suits against Rudy Giuliani, Kari Lake, and Project Veritas, hoping to limit the spread of disinformation. Others worry that their efforts could impinge on freedom of speech.
The Critics
Nellie Bowles’s Failed Provocations
In “Morning After the Revolution,” the former New York Times reporter sets out to uncover a not-so-forbidden truth—that the left can be somewhat goofy.
How Hindsight Distorts Our View of the Beatles in “Let It Be”
Usually seen as a document of the band’s breakup, the documentary, newly restored by Peter Jackson, is just as much a record of freewheeling inspiration.
The Beautiful Rawness of Steve Albini
The producer was uncompromising in his opposition to the commercialization of music. That might seem today like a Gen X relic—or it might seem kind of awesome.
Our Collective Obsession with True Crime
Today’s audiences have a seemingly insatiable appetite for stories about people who do—or experience—terrible things. Is there a right way to turn real-life tragedy into mass entertainment?
Claire Messud’s New Novel Maps the Search for a Home That Never Was
“This Strange Eventful History” traces three generations of an itinerant French family with roots in colonial Algeria.
“The Contestant” Is More Than a Cautionary Tale
The documentary charts the rise of an early reality-TV star and the ethically queasy choices that cemented his fame—but it’s elevated by its interest in what came afterward.
What We’re Reading This Week
A detailed history of humanity’s prehistoric roots, a thoughtful study of four of Shakespeare’s female contemporaries, a novel that follows a family of globe-trotters and interlopers searching for perfect love, and more.
Goings On
Recommendations from our writers on what to read, eat, watch, listen to, and more.
Summer in the City
Our culture writers and editors share the upcoming season’s performances and happenings—many al fresco—that they’re most looking forward to.
“I Saw the TV Glow” Is a Profound Vision of the Trans Experience
Richard Brody reviews Jane Schoenbrun’s new feature, in which two teens search for their true selves through their shared obsession with a horror TV series.
A Martini Tour of New York City
Martinis often appear in art as symbols of joy and closure. Gary Shteyngart dedicates himself to the cult of the cocktail, in a month of vermouth-rinsing and fat-washing.
The Power Lunch Is Back (Again)
Helen Rosner visits Four Twenty Five, a luxe new dining room from the mega-restaurateur Jean-Georges Vongerichten, aimed at the expense-account crowd.
New Tricks
The A-list animal trainer Bill Berloni has worked with pigs, geese, and butterflies. He recently prepared Bing, a Great Dane, for a starring role in the adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s “The Friend.”
Ideas
The Secret Society Chasing Our Fading Attention
As ads and apps reduce our ability to focus, an order purportedly reaching back centuries seeks to reset the world by understanding what happens between a person and a work of art.
The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment
An attempt to hide personal news from online ad trackers makes clear how much surveillance we are engaged in, as both subjects and objects, and how insidious the problem is becoming.
Blurring the Line Between Money and Media
The hybrid media-finance company Hunterbrook wants to monetize investigative journalism in the public interest. Is it a visionary game changer or a cynical ploy?
How ECMO Is Redefining Death
A medical technology can keep people alive when they otherwise would have died. Where will it lead?
Death Skull let out a hysterical cackle, which echoed piercingly from the stone walls of his lair.
“Why so combative?” he said, emerging from the shadows. “At the end of the day, we’re not so different, you and I.”Continue reading »
The Peculiar Delights of the Enormous Cicada Emergence
As loud as leaf blowers, as miraculous as math, the insects are set to overtake the landscape.
Puzzles & Games
Take a break and play.
In Case You Missed It
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Can Turning Office Towers Into Apartments Save Downtowns?
Nathan Berman has helped rescue Manhattan’s financial district from a “doom loop” by carving attractive living spaces from hulking buildings that once housed fields of cubicles.
The Talk of the Town
Fiction from the Archives
Don DeLillo
Selected Stories
Midnight in Dostoevsky
“We listened earnestly, all of us, hoping to understand and to transcend the need to understand.”Still-Life
“The second plane coming out of that ice-blue sky, this was the footage that entered the body, that seemed to run beneath her skin.”Baader–Meinhof
“When she came out of the bathroom, he was standing at the kitchen window as if waiting for a view to materialize.”
Selected Stories
Midnight in Dostoevsky
Still-Life
Baader–Meinhof
Daily Cartoon
