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What the 1619 Project Means

Helen Rittelmeyer

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Storycreated by nikole hannah-jonesone world, 624 pages, $38 In 1930, Lorenzo Greene traveled around the United States selling books about black history on...

Rancher Rebels

Helen Rittelmeyer

Chosen Country:A Rebellion in the Westby james pogue henry holt & co., 304 pages, $28 At a time when most of the news on television is at some level...

The Critical Eye of Janet Malcolm

Helen Rittelmeyer

Janet Malcolm died on Wednesday, June 16, the same day that the New Yorker signed its first deal with an employee union after resisting every unionization attempt since 1976—in...

Benevolent Autocrat

Helen Rittelmeyer

Salazar:The Dictator Who Refused to Dieby tom gallagher hurst, 360 pages, $34.95 The sinister character ­Salazar Slytherin, of Harry Potter fame, was named after Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, prime...

Mrs. America’s Mistakes

Helen Rittelmeyer

How unsurprising that Dahvi Waller, creator of the recent miniseries about Phyllis Schlafly, Mrs. America, used to work on AMC’s Mad Men. The things people say in this miniseries...

Marriage of Genius

Helen Rittelmeyer

The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circleby elizabeth hardwick and robert lowell edited by saskia hamilton farrar, straus and giroux, 560 pages, $50 In the...

Our Socialist Moment

Helen Rittelmeyer

The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalityby bhaskar sunkarabasic, 288 pages, $28 In the spring of 2019, even the staid old AFL-CIO...

Shame Storm

Helen Rittelmeyer

After a lifetime of impeccably correct opinions, Ian Buruma found himself on the wrong side of the liberal consensus in September 2018, when he was forced to resign as...

Poet in History

Helen Rittelmeyer

Miłosz: A Biographyby andrzej franaszektranslated by aleksandra parker and michael parkerbelknap, 544 pages, $35 The impression left in the mind of an American reader, after he finishes Andrzej Franaszek’s...

Saint Louverture

Helen Rittelmeyer

Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Lifeby philippe girardbasic books, 352 pages, $29.99 The Virginia planter and Fire-Eater Edmund Ruffin, who in 1865 blew his brains out rather than live under...

Tocqueville in the Gutter

Helen Rittelmeyer

The Art of Being Free: How Alexis de Tocqueville Can Save Us from Ourselvesby james poulosst martin’s, 304 pages, $26.99 Alexis de Tocqueville was sensitive about his height, a...

The Green and the Brown

Helen Rittelmeyer

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warningby timothy snydertim duggan books, 462 pages, $30 F aced with the challenge of finding something new to say about the Holocaust,...

Counterfeit Goods

Helen Rittelmeyer

Every Day Is for the Thief by teju colerandom house, 176 pages, $23 n Republishing the early work of a novelist who has hit it big is usually a...

Bloodless Moralism

Helen Rittelmeyer

Dame Rebecca West had a theory that the history of civilization since Christ could be divided into three panels like a triptych. In the first panel, stretching roughly from...

Cronyism’s Charms

Helen Rittelmeyer

Against Fairness by Stephen T. Asma Chicago, 224 pages, $22.50 Stephen Asma buries in the endnotes of Against Fairness the information that he is from Chicago, but I think...