Sponsored by Harvard University Press
Marina Warner
Temporale
During the pandemic I picked up the Catholic missal of my childhood, and it made me think again about its function: marking the passage of time.
Martin Filler
The Architect and the Rock Star
Two new books of personal photographs, one by Phyllis Lambert, the other by Patti Smith, have thematic congruities but markedly different tones.
Matthew Desmond
The High Cost of Being Poor
The American government gives the most help to those who need it least. This is the true nature of our welfare state.
John Banville
Special Correspondent
As a public man, John le Carré was a model of probity and rectitude; in his private life, he was not above double-dealing.
Eric Foner
A Regional Reign of Terror
Most Americans now grasp that violence was essential to the functioning of slavery, but a new book excavates the lesser known brutality of everyday Black life in the Jim Crow South.
Free from the Archives
“In 2015, Americans spent 9.78 billion hours on federal paperwork,” wrote Cass R. Sunstein in the Review’s April 4, 2019 issue. “The Treasury Department, including the Internal Revenue Service, accounted for the vast majority of the total: 7.36 billion hours.” Identifying a problem known as “sludge”—paperwork and other administrative burdens—Sunstein shows how various governmental departments succeed or fail in helping their constituents, depending on how much red tape they put in the way.
Cass R. Sunstein
Wading Through the Sludge
“Paperwork burdens can make it difficult or impossible for people to enjoy fundamental rights, such as the right to vote or to obtain life-changing benefits—or to avoid crushing hardships…. It is often tempting to put off administrative burdens until another day. That day may never come, even if the consequences of delay are quite serious.”
