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Eric Foner
Seeing Was Not Believing

A new book identifies the 1968 Democratic convention as the moment when broad public regard for the news media gave way to widespread distrust, and American divisiveness took off.

Fintan O’Toole
Paradise Lost

In spreading lies about the risks of vaccines, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long played on anxieties about purity and pollution.

Ben Tarnoff
Better, Faster, Stronger

Two recent books illuminate the dark foundations of Silicon Valley.

Justin Davidson
Growing Up on Moan Street

The Naples of Domenico Starnone’s novel The House on Via Gemito is a hot-breathed, dragonlike city that keeps its children bound even after they escape.

James Quandt
Jean Eustache’s Vehement Realism

The French director Jean Eustache used his films to examine his ravaged life and relationships with merciless accuracy.

Liza Batkin
Not All Men

The sitcom Jury Duty exploits the controversial tactics of the prank show to make us feel good about mankind.

Free from the Archives

In the Review’s December 4 and 18, 2008, issues, well into the school year, Alison Lurie wrote a two-part history of the evolution of school designs, educational methods, and, underneath it all, ideas of what childhood is. In the second part, she takes in Louisa May Alcott, Waldorf and Montessori schools, open classrooms, playgrounds, school violence, and much more to ask: “Do Schools Have to Be Boring?”

Alison Lurie
Do Schools Have to Be Boring?

“Experts in school design and architecture today tend to write and speak as if their goal is to make school buildings as attractive and comfortable as possible, and education as much fun. But it has also been argued that school (and indeed childhood in general) should not be made too wonderful.”

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