Our April 18 issue—the Spring Books Issue—is now online, with Walter Shaub on Donald Trump’s corruption, Laura Marsh on Adelle Waldman, Nathaniel Rich on flying saucers, Tim Judah on despondency in Ukraine, Merve Emre on marriage and funeral plots, Colin Grant on Colson Whitehead, Francine Prose on Kaveh Akbar, Héctor Tobar on the US’s grim legacy in Central America, Brenda Wineapple on Louisa May Alcott, Michelle Nijhuis on environmentalism 2.0, Andrew Delbanco on Norman Mailer’s letters, a poem by Bei Dao, and much more.
Despite the gravity of subjects in Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, which include addiction and an obsession with the metaphysical, what makes the novel feel light is its bravado, buoyancy, and innovative form.
Two years after the Russian invasion, Ukrainian morale has plummeted.
Verdi’s sprawling opera La Forza del Destino draws its power from asymmetry, arbitrary juxtapositions, and extreme situations.
Forty-five years ago today, one of the reactors at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station—on the Susquehanna River, twelve miles from the Harrisburg city center—had a partial meltdown, after which radioactive xenon and krypton gases were vented into the atmosphere.
Two months later, in the Review’s May 17, 1979, issue, the energy policy analyst Charles Komanoff made the economic case for doing away with nuclear power.
“The environmental movement has concentrated single-mindedly on the dangers of energy projects to health and to nature. With only a few exceptions,…it has done little to promote new policies that would shift economic incentives from increasing the supply of energy to improving its use.”