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The New Yorker

Books & Culture

A Critic at Large

The House That Alvin Ailey Built

In “Revelations” and other works, the choreographer created a home for Black dancers.
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The New Yorker Interview

Rachel Bloom Has a Funny Song About Death

In her new Netflix special, the comedian turns a tragic life episode into a riotous study of motherhood, mortality, and the meaning of pet heaven.
Critic’s Notebook

Even in Her Memoir, Melania Trump Remains a Mystery

The former First Lady’s new book, “Melania,” promises to draw back the drapery and expose the person behind the persona. It obscures more than it reveals.
Infinite Scroll

Taylor Lorenz’s Plan to Dance on Legacy Media’s Grave

A reporter known for chronicling the “extremely online” is making the leap to the creator economy. The most surprising thing is that she waited this long.
Open Questions

Should You Just Give Up?

Sisyphus couldn’t stop pushing his boulder—but you can.

Books

Books

Briefly Noted

“The Burning Earth,” “The Notebook,” “Enlightenment,” and “The Sequel.”
Books

Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Temptations of Narrative

In “The Message,” Coates counsels against myth but proves susceptible to his own.
Page-Turner

The Mordant Intimacy of Cécile Desprairies’s “The Propagandist”

In her début novel, a historian of Vichy France tackles her family’s real-life collaboration during the Second World War.
Page-Turner

Four-Hundred-Plus Pages and a Day

In a new graphic novel, the petty and tedious appear magical and strangely beautiful.

Movies

The Front Row

“The Apprentice,” Reviewed: The Immoral Makings of Donald Trump

A new film dramatizes Trump’s rise to success and his fall into turpitude, but fails to capture his dubious star power.
The Front Row

“The Outrun,” Reviewed: A Disappointingly Constrained Showcase for Saoirse Ronan

The movie tells an admirable and moving story about a woman coming through her troubles, but it conveys no sense of creative or emotional risk.
The Front Row

What to See in the 2024 New York Film Festival’s Second Week

Recognized directors deliver surprising works that expand both their own horizons and the possibilities of the art at large.
The Front Row

The Flat Provocations of “Joker: Folie à Deux”

Todd Phillips’s movie musical, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, walks back the hectic ideology that gave “Joker” its energy.

Food

The Food Scene

Putting the Breakfast in Breakfast Ramen

At the tiny food stall Ramen by Ra, Rasheeda Purdie combines Japanese technique with the flavors of morning in New York, including noodles topped with bacon, egg, and cheese.
On and Off the Menu

A Food Critic Walks Into a Fasting Spa

How Southern California became the epicenter of hype diets and twenty-dollar smoothies.
The Food Scene

A Tiny Brooklyn Restaurant with Big (and Bewitching) Ideas About Dinner

Cafe Kestrel, in Red Hook, offers cooking that is highly idiosyncratic but not confrontational, from applesauce sundaes to Sunday-night curry.
The Food Scene

Three New Classic Cookies

An audacious take on chocolate-chip, a pastelito-style micro-pie, and a cookie-spiked cookie.
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Photo Booth

A Bronx “Family Album” from Hip-Hop’s Early Days

In the eighties, the Puerto Rican photographer Ricky Flores captured the parties and the people that shaped his teen-age years.

Television

On Television

Ryan Murphy’s Latest Era of Cynical Hits

In “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” the astoundingly prolific showrunner melds his modes as provocateur and clumsy social-justice warrior, with mixed results.
On Television

Is Matt Walsh Trying to Make “Am I Racist?” the “Borat” of the Right?

In his work with the Daily Wire and in a new movie, the conservative podcaster and activist tries to expose the hypocrisies of the left.
On Television

Nicole Kidman Gives Us What We Want in the Silly, Soapy “The Perfect Couple”

The Netflix murder mystery recalls a time when TV wasn’t supposed to be art.
On Television

Monkey Business in “Chimp Crazy”

People who claim to love chimpanzees the most are examined in the new HBO docuseries.

The Theatre

The Theatre

Doppelgängers Abound in “The Hills of California” and “Yellow Face”

In Jez Butterworth’s melancholy drama and David Henry Hwang’s mischievously postmodern play, stardom is both a lure and a lie.
The Theatre

Even Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone Can’t Power “The Roommate”

A Midwestern empty nester opens her home to a tough-talking New Yorker in Jen Silverman’s sputtering star vehicle.
Persons of Interest

Cole Escola’s Great Day on Broadway

With their deranged portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln, the actor and writer emerges from the “gay shadows” in a hysterical farce.
The Theatre

Politics and “The Real” at the Festival d’Avignon

A series of international productions held power to account at a fraught moment.

Music

Musical Events

A Mesmerizing New Opera About a Sonic Cult

In Missy Mazzoli’s “The Listeners,” a group of suburbanites hear a low, pervasive hum that others cannot.
Persons of Interest

The Killers’ Return to Las Vegas

A recent residency at Caesars Palace doubled as a homecoming. As one band member says, “We never lost the Vegas.”
Pop Music

Coldplay’s Self-Help Pop

Chris Martin, the band’s front man, discusses reading Rumi, making music like an apple tree grows apples, and the band’s new album, “Moon Music.”
Musical Events

An Idyllic Music Series in the Hebrides

Mendelssohn on Mull celebrates chamber music away from urban pressures.

More in Culture

Postscript

Lore Segal Will Keep Talking Through Her Stories

The novelist and short-story writer, who died Monday at ninety-six, contributed to The New Yorker for more than six decades.
Cover Story

Owen Smith’s “Alexei Navalny”

A portrait of the defiant Russian opposition leader.
Goings On

The Press-on-Nail Renaissance

Also: Elizabeth Marvel and Amber Iman star in “The Ford/Hill Project,” American Ballet Theatre dances Dostoyevsky, Hilton Als picks Lower East Side galleries, and more.
The Current Cinema

“Anora” Is a Strip-Club Cinderella Story—and a Farce to Be Reckoned With

Sean Baker’s thrilling film, starring Mikey Madison as a New York sex worker, pushes comic misadventure to the brink of chaos.
On Television

The Rise and Fall of Vince McMahon

The Netflix docuseries “Mr. McMahon” explores the sordid history of the W.W.E. and the man who made it what it is.
Blitt’s Kvetchbook

Mar-a-Lago Calling Moscow

Reach out and touch someone.
Book Currents

Sarah Smarsh on Capturing the Richness of Working-Class America

The author of “Heartland,” a memoir about growing up on a farm in Kansas, talks about the books that have influenced her career-long exploration of the country’s poor.
The New Yorker Documentary

A Public Defender’s Radical Approach to Representing the January 6th Rioters

Andrea Kalin’s documentary follows the work of a criminal-defense lawyer who strives to confront America’s political divisions with empathy.
Under Review

The Best Books We’ve Read in 2024 So Far

Our editors and critics review notable new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
Under Review

The Challenge of Mapping the Latino Right

In a new book, the journalist Paola Ramos advances a unified theory of why more Latinos are supporting Donald Trump. But such a theory risks ignoring the diversity of this demographic’s experience.