Sponsored by Yale University Press

Jé Wilson
Swimming Away from the Boat

Following the Golden Globe Race, a nonstop solo circumnavigation by old-fashioned sailboat, gives one a real sense of being out at sea.

Tash Aw
Personal Histories

Drawing from sources both archival and personal, the photographer Sim Chi Yin explores the legacy of British colonialism and conflict in Malaya.

Ariel Dorfman
A Profusion of Poets

In Chilean Poet, Alejandro Zambra goes beyond his habitual minimalism to portray the chaotic commotion of today’s Chile.

Jon Allsop
Extinction Coalition

After making its name with disruptive direct actions, the climate movement Extinction Rebellion is on a path to go mainstream.

The Denim Jacket

a poem by
Cyrus Console

One half hour in May
2019 deepening as if
Expressive of a process
Like cancellation but
Undergone by storms
The green dominant in
Windows of the science
Library among several
Places I recorded this…

Fintan O’Toole
Bump and Grind

Donald Trump’s indictment drags us back into the lurid world of performative politics in which he remains the leading player.

The 2023 Robert B. Silvers Lecture
Sherrilyn Ifill: How America Ends and Begins Again

Our country is experiencing a period of accelerated democratic unraveling. But within the danger of this moment, Sherrilyn Ifill argues that there is also a unique opportunity. Can we at long last build a healthy, multiracial democracy anchored in the values of equality and justice?

This year’s Robert B. Silvers Lecture will be given by Sherrilyn Ifill on Tuesday, May 9, at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. A civil rights lawyer and scholar, last year Ifill stepped down after a decade as the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She was the second woman ever to hold this position. She is now a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation.

Registration to attend the event or to watch the livestream is now open. Tickets are free, but registration is required.

Free from the Archives

In June 1971, a month after the Mayday Protests in Washington, DC—a three-day series of marches, sit-ins, and demonstrations against the Vietnam War—Noam Chomsky, who had been on the ground in the capital, took to the Review to give a full-throated defense of civil disobedience. Rebutting arguments that the protests (which resulted in the largest mass arrest in history: 12,000 people) were powerless or selfish, Chomsky argued that they had already been effective at forcing “Congress to undertake such slight measures as it has” and, more importantly, that they were one of the few remaining methods for the American people to attempt to stop the war.

Noam Chomsky
Mayday: The Case for Civil Disobedience

“What is important is not whether one who commits civil disobedience thinks that he is right, but rather the harder questions: Is he right? Will the act help to achieve a just end? Would strictly legal means be ineffective?”