Sponsored by The Morgan Library & Museum

Nick Laird
Auden’s Dialectic

In Auden’s complete poems, edited by Edward Mendelson, the poet veers from puckish youth to adult diagnostician and back again.

Anna Della Subin
A Body That’s Divine

A recent book catalogs the Old Testament’s physical descriptions of God, who ate, probably drank, got mistaken for an ordinary man, and was likely circumcised.

Martin Filler
The Architect of Subtraction

Adolf Loos’s radical designs pared down architecture to its most basic elements.

Susan Neiman
Longing for Reconciliation

The philosopher Jacob Taubes was torn between the desire to heal the split between Judaism and Christianity— particularly between Germans and Jews—and his doubts that it was possible.

Raja Shehadeh
The Rebellion and the Dream

Only after his death did I discover how many battles my father had fought during his lifetime of struggle for Palestinian rights.

The Garden Between Days

a poem by
Zuyi Zhao

after John Singer Sargent

The lilies above the girls in white look
like girls in white,
dancing. The girls hang paper lanterns
in the garden, careful
with the candles inside. They watch
the small flames flicker, kept safe
from the drifting wind by white
and red paper…

True Crime and Punishment: An Exchange

Sarah Weinman and others respond to John J. Lennon’s review of her book, Scoundrel.

“Lennon does not take into account the many instances in which Smith’s humanity was prioritized, championed, and celebrated, and that the root of his inevitable (and tragic) recidivism was his rage toward and hatred of women.”

Madeleine Schwartz
Macron’s Folly

The French president has appealed to economic necessity as he pushes through his pension plan, but the reform has few supporters among economists.

Free from the Archives

Forty-four years ago today, the Peace Treaty Between the State of Israel and the Arab Republic of Egypt was signed in Washington, D.C., by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. A result of the framework for peace that the two leaders devised with Jimmy Carter during the Camp David Accords, the treaty was met with condemnation in much of the Arab world for normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel while it continued to occupy Palestinian territory. In the Review’s May 17, 1979, issue, the Palestinian-American scholar Elias H. Tuma greeted the agreement with cautious optimism, arguing that traditional diplomacy—and military action—had failed to produce any meaningful change, and Sadat’s initiative in trying to forge peace was worth following.

Elias H. Tuma
An Opportunity for Palestinians?

“Peace is difficult to attain and even more difficult to sustain, but the gains of attaining and sustaining peace will more than offset the costs of doing so, and far outweigh the imaginary advantages of the no-peace-no-war situation that has prevailed in the region for years.”