Sponsored by The MIT Press
Fara Dabhoiwala
Life Is Short. Indexes Are Necessary.
In his new history of the index, Dennis Duncan traces its evolution through the constantly changing character of reading itself.
Jessica Riskin
A Poisonous Legacy
Two new books reveal the story of Stanford University’s early years to be rife with corruption, autocracy, incompetence, white supremacy, and murder.
Martin Filler
Too Good for Hollywood
Despite her long career on stage and screen—from an Oscar nomination to the blacklist—Aline MacMahon never became a household name.
Joshua Cohen
The Imps of His Age
In a harrowing, witty novel by Miroslav Krleža, written in Yugoslavia on the eve of World War II, a mediocre lawyer succumbs to the impetus to speak against all reason.
Murat Oztaskin
‘A Can of Gasoline Under Indian Law’
In their efforts to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act, a constellation of law firms and conservative organizations have put tribal sovereignty in jeopardy.
Free from the Archives
In the Review’s September 26, 2019, issue, Jonathan Mingle reviewed three books about the global health emergency posed by air pollution. Decades after the “radical achievement” of the 1970 Clean Air Act, “the problem of air pollution is far from being solved in the US or anywhere else.” With “a cadre of former lobbyists, lawyers, and consultants for the coal, power, automotive, and oil industries” leading the Environmental Protection Agency and “taking a sledgehammer to the law’s core protections,” Mingle drew two overarching conclusions: “(1) air pollution is severely under-regulated; (2) we need to get beyond combustion, as fast as we can. Burning stuff is burying us.”
Jonathan Mingle
Our Lethal Air
“As air temperatures rise, smog events will last longer and expose people to higher concentrations of ozone. Residents of the American Southwest can expect to breathe more airborne dust and die in higher numbers as droughts become longer and more intense. Other parts of the country can expect sharp increases in airborne allergens. Wildfires will become more frequent and burn larger areas, unleashing carbon stored by forests along with a toxic stew of particles and gases.”
Manhattan, June 7, 2023
