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Today in The New York Review of Books: Jake Bernstein follows the money in politics all the way to the local level; Dan Chiasson reads the Bernie Sanders playbook; Alexander Stille revisits Italy’s Years of Lead; Ursula Lindsey confronts a literary scandal in France; Jé Wilson goes to Olana; Spencer Lee-Lenfield looks at that art of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha; and a poem by Jenny Grassl.

Jake Bernstein
Big Money, Small Races

Since Citizens United, super PACs have poured billions of dollars into elections. A new book argues that outside money has its biggest impact in local races, where voters know the least.

Dan Chiasson
Very Bernie

Today’s outsider political campaigns have a blueprint in Bernie Sanders’s canny, long-standing use of emergent media.

Alexander Stille
One Battle After Another

Two new histories of the Red Brigades explain how terrorism took hold in the wealthiest parts of Italy in the 1970s.

Ursula Lindsey
‘A Doubt That Takes Easily’

When critics accused Thélyson Orélien of using AI to write his breakthrough novel, it exposed the currents of mistrust and confusion that flow through the world of French letters.

Jé Wilson
Olana Interrupted

The sublime landscapes that inspired Frederic Edwin Church are refracted through climate change in an outdoor installation by the artist Ellen Harvey.

Spencer Lee-Lenfield
A Collective Reminiscing

In her influential art and writings, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha used her own experience of exile to plumb unconscious, preverbal states of mind.

Deer Woman in the Dining Room

a poem by
Jenny Grassl

            antlers bud blood-pink     twelve points

rise with woman pain                     always the escaped

                    smell of iron and shame             I stain

serve sore at table in apron whites              pour wine

                    fork meat diners         finger silver

knives around this heartbeat                     centerpiece…

Breaking the Grip:
Ben Rhodes, Astra Taylor, and Fintan O’Toole on the Midterms

Monday, November 9, 2026

In November Democrats could take back power in Congress, if the polls are to be believed. But will they? Is Trump’s unpopularity enough to shake up turnout, and will voters’ rights be respected everywhere? Where does the balance of power lie between progressives and centrists in the Democratic Party?

Fintan O’Toole, Advising Editor of The New York Review, hosts contributors Ben Rhodes and Astra Taylor to discuss these questions and more for the latter half of a two-part online conversation, held before and after the midterms, that takes the measure of America at a crucial moment. The event is pay-what-you-wish (with a suggested fee of $10) and open to the public. Registration grants access to both installments.

Register for “Breaking the Grip” Today!

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