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Thomas Rogers
The Long Shadow of German Colonialism

The people of what was once German-occupied Africa are demanding reparations for the colonial violence that shapes the region to this day.

Kathryn Hughes
A Complicated Reformer

Adherents to Maria Montessori’s radical methods have extended from progressive parents to Benito Mussolini.

Michael Dirda
‘Devilish Agencies at Work’

Walter de la Mare, a poet and writer of weird tales, once counted T. S. Eliot and Graham Greene among his admirers, and now his ghost stories persist with an underground influence.

What the Cedar May Have Said

a poem by 
Jesse Nathan

If I were half as free as you
I wouldn’t droop,
make faces of parchment,
shed branches like phantoms,
wouldn’t hide…

Daniel Drake
Present Imperfect

Aftersun captures the loss of a parent, a story for which there are no spoilers.

Free from the Archives

Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published sixty years ago today, when it became an instant best-seller. “Friedan’s premise,” observed Diane Johnson in the Review’s November 28, 1996, issue, “was that ‘women were really people—no more—no less,’ and her conclusion was that ‘all the things that kept them from being full people in our society would have to be changed.’”

Johnson’s essay surveyed the state of feminism in the years after The Feminine Mystique brought second-wave feminist arguments to the mainstream:

Despite the raised voices, and all the variations sprung up to accommodate the nuances of self-expression that have become important to us, despite the escalation in tone and the balkanization of the feminist movement, and despite considerable legal and social progress, thirty-three years after Betty Friedan the basic debate turns on much the same issues as in 1963 (or in 1863): “Is anatomy destiny,” i.e., are females naturally inferior, superior, and/or different? and “What do women want?”

Diane Johnson
What Do Women Want?

“Friedan quotes Adlai Stevenson enjoining the Smith graduate of 1955 to ‘inspire in her home a vision of the meaning of life and freedom…to help her husband find values that will give purpose to his specialized daily chores…. If you’re clever, maybe you can even practice your saving arts on that unsuspecting man while he’s watching television.’”