The philosopher was a champion of political and intellectual freedom, but he had no interest in being a martyr. Instead, he shows us how prudence and boldness can go hand in hand.
Though his younger brother Isaac Bashevis Singer eventually eclipsed him, Israel Joshua Singer excelled at showing characters buffeted by the tides of history.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/04/the-forgotten-giant-of-yiddish-fiction
His startlingly intimate love poems fell from favor for centuries, but his drive to see every subject anew makes him seem more contemporary than ever.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/john-donnes-proto-modernism
How Milman Parry proved that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by a lone genius.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/14/the-classicist-who-killed-homer
After the First World War, the members of the Vienna Circle tried to put European thought on a rigorously logical footing. Then the times caught up with them.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/19/philosophy-in-the-shadow-of-nazism
For the philosopher, unhappiness became not a condition but a vocation.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/soren-kierkegaards-struggle-with-himself
Because the late Israeli novelist could not remember his own past, he was forced to imagine it.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/09/aharon-appelfelds-legends-of-home
Arthur Koestler’s novel of the Moscow Trials laid bare the gulf between Communist ideals and the reality they produced.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/the-desperate-plight-behind-darkness-at-noon
The theologian’s attempts to arrive at a new conception of Judaism made him influential to thinkers of other faiths.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/modernity-faith-and-martin-buber
The stories Hesse tells appeal to young people because they keep faith with the powerful emotions of adolescence, which most adults forget or outgrow.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/hermann-hesses-arrested-development
New books by Simon Schama and Martin Goodman present very different approaches to their subject.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/26/why-jewish-history-is-so-hard-to-write
The mysterious masterpiece of Portugal’s great modernist.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/fernando-pessoas-disappearing-act
Having experienced both Nazi and Communist rule, Poland’s great exile poet arrived at a unique blend of skepticism and sincerity.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/29/czeslaw-miloszs-battle-for-truth
S. Y. Agnon’s exquisite ironic fiction examined traditional Jewish life through a twentieth-century lens.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/israels-founding-novelist
For all our technological breakthroughs, we’re still wrestling with the same basic questions as the Enlightenment philosophers.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/05/the-dream-of-enlightenment-by-anthony-gottlieb
What’s great about Goethe?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/design-for-living-books-adam-kirsch
Adam Kirsch reviews Nikolaus Wachsmann’s “KL” and Sarah Helm’s “Ravensbrück.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/the-system-books-kirsch
Derek Walcott’s seascapes.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/03/full-fathom-five-2
A poet confronts illness and God.
A new history of political thought.
Rome and us.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/the-empire-strikes-back-adam-kirsch
Adam Kirsch on the writing, politics, science, and sex of H. G. Wells.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/17/utopian-pessimist
What did the West see in Rabindranath Tagore?
Giacomo Leopardi’s radical despair.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/25/under-the-volcano-adam-kirsch
America’s quiet poet laureate.
How Gerard Manley Hopkins remade English poetry.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/11/back-to-basics-2
Hannah Arendt and the power of the impersonal.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/01/12/beware-of-pity-Hannah-Arendt
John Keats’s obsession with fame and death.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/07/cloudy-trophies
Inside Shelley’s Manichaean mind.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/27/avenging-angel
How Thomas Hardy became everyone’s favorite misanthrope.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/01/15/gods-undertaker