Nabil Salih
Baghdad: The Illusion of Peace

For the past four months, ordinary Iraqis have been left in a no-man’s-land between two wars.

David Cole
The Freedom to Be Woke

A court ruling striking down Florida’s Stop WOKE Act is both a major affirmation of academic freedom and a window into the free-speech debates dividing the right.

Jenny Uglow
Wonder & Disillusion

The naturalist George Forster was fascinated by plants and animals, but he was also driven by a passionate belief in the rights of all people regardless of race, gender, or social status.

Mark Ford
The Late Bohemian

Rosemary Tonks emulated French Symbolist poets before converting to Christianity and renouncing all her own works.

Daniel Mendelsohn on The Odyssey

The acclaimed online seminars on Homer’s masterpiece, led by the award-winning author and critic Daniel Mendelsohn, are now available for purchase. Gain complete access to the six seminar sessions recorded in autumn 2025 and featuring Dr. Mendelsohn’s introductory lectures plus the lively seminar discussions.

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Free from the Archives

In what is becoming an annual hazard, smoke from Canadian wildfires has again descended upon much of the northern United States. Air quality readings in New York City have already exceeded the EPA’s threshold for “unhealthy,” while in Minneapolis the levels are well past the minimum for “hazardous.”

In the Review’s September 26, 2019, issue, Jonathan Mingle wrote about the global health emergency of air pollution, a crisis that is being rapidly accelerated by climate change. Wildfires, coal and gasoline combustion, and heavy industry are filling the air with fine particles that, Mingle writes, “penetrate deep into our lungs and reach the alveoli, the tiny air-filled sacs where oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide. From there, they cross into the bloodstream and spread throughout the body.” The result:

Air pollution cuts short the lives of far more people in the US each year—estimates range from 107,500 to over 200,000—than do traffic accidents. Together, indoor and outdoor air pollution caused one in every nine deaths globally in 2016—far more than the number felled by malnutrition, alcohol use, or malaria.

Jonathan Mingle
Our Lethal Air

The American Lung Association reported that 141 million Americans live with unhealthy levels of ozone and particle pollution, an increase of seven million from 2018. It attributed much of the rise to the effects of climate change. Even Trump’s EPA acknowledges in a new report that “most of the northern half of the country will experience greater air pollution because of climate change.”

Quebec Canada Wildfire Smoke Consumes New Jersey and New York, 2023; photograph by Anthony Quintano

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