Today in The New York Review of Books: Omer Bartov on the Nazis’ war on communism; Susan Rubin Suleiman on André Breton; Philp Clark on Liza Lim’s pure sound; a poem by Jim Johnstone; and, from the archives, Andrew Raftery on the Declaration of Independence.

Omer Bartov
The Judeo-Bolshevist Target

Popular memory in the West tends to separate the Holocaust from the German war against the Soviet Union, but for the Nazi regime they were two faces of the same undertaking.

Susan Rubin Suleiman
On the Precipice

Critics who call André Breton’s Nadja a novel miss its most innovative aspects.

Philip Clark
The Grain of the Note

For the composer Liza Lim, voices and instruments alike are materials to be fractured, strained, and pushed to the edge.

Tornado

a poem by
Jim Johnstone

I know less and less about who I am.

Touching down, I lift
a nail, a plank,

take an entire
yard and dress up like I’m going to

spend the night…

Free from the Archives

The words of the Declaration of Independence are now 250 years and one day old, but the document itself wasn’t completed and signed until August 2, 1776. In the Review’s November 21, 2024, issue, Andrew Raftery wrote about the history of the parchment—and the many efforts over the years to preserve it as well as market it with florid redesigns and a variety of “official” reproductions and prints.

Andrew Raftery
Rescuing the People’s Parchment

The design aesthetic of these prints reflected the eclectic, industrially produced wares that entranced visitors in the exhibition halls. There was no such thing as too much ornament in the endless recombinations of historical references and styles. The faded parchment original, on loan to Philadelphia from the State Department, must have seemed a sober reminder of another era.

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