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Today in The New York Review of Books: Anne Diebel surveys the women who freeze their eggs; Samuel Stein weighs the YIMBYs and the NIMBYs; Zadie Smith, Tash Aw, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez expound on literature’s relationship to the soul; a poem by Rae Armantrout; and, from the archives, James M. McPherson on John Brown.

Anne Diebel
A Woman’s Burden

Freezing eggs has been marketed as a panacea for ambitious professional women supposedly hungry for more time to focus on their careers, when in reality it’s often a last resort for women negotiating a mating crisis.

Samuel Stein
Reshaping the City

What does zoning reform have the power to change?

Zadie Smith, Tash Aw, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez
The Solidarity of the Hopeful

Reflections on literature, politics, and religion from the second installment of the Georgetown Global Dialogues

No Promises

a poem by
Rae Armantrout

If I know you now at all
it’s because I know what not
to say in your presence.

If I remind you of something
you once said or did
you’ll scoff…

Free from the Archives

One hundred and sixty-six years ago today, John Brown was found guilty of treason, murder, and conspiracy for his raid on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, which had commenced barely two weeks earlier. He was executed a month later.

In the Review’s May 12, 2005, issue, James M. McPherson wrote about Brown’s life, legacy, and legend, asking the question that has long dogged political radicals: “Was Brown a terrorist who killed innocent victims or a hero-martyr who struck a mighty blow against the accursed institution of slavery?”

James M. McPherson
Days of Wrath

“Nothing became John Brown’s life like his leaving of it. In death he became much larger than life. As the words of the Union army’s favorite song expressed it, even though John Brown’s body lay a-moldering in the grave, his soul kept marching on—right down to our own time. The symbolism and power of John Brown’s legend and legacy are the principal themes of the large literature about him, fiction and nonfiction alike. ”

Recently in the Review

Ben Lerner
Cardiography

“One moment you’re in the OR, the next moment you’re in recovery, but the tubes and wires run between those experiences, and when they pull them, they tug some of the controlled trauma into consciousness.”

Suzanne Schneider
From the Cesspool to the Mainstream

“The rapidity with which many in the contemporary far right have shed their libertarian principles…indicates that the economic philosophies of Rothbard and Hoppe were more disposable than their racial project.”

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