The New York Review of Books - 07.11.2019

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Contents

4 Andrew O’Hagan Never a Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren by Colin Asher

8 Regina Marler Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury
by Carolyn Burke
Alfred Stieglitz: Taking Pictures, Making Painters by Phyllis Rose

11 Michael Gorra Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil by Susan Neiman
Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz
Remembering Emmett Till by Dave Tell

14 Sophie Pinkham Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait by Bathsheba Demuth

17 Louise Glück Poem

18 Linda Greenhouse First: Sandra Day O’Connor by Evan Thomas

20 Anna Della Subin City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut by Robyn Creswell

23 Joshua Hammer Two Weeks in November: The Astonishing Untold Story of the Operation That Toppled
Mugabe by Douglas Rogers

26 Morten Høi Jensen Henrik Ibsen: The Man and the Mask by Ivo de Figueiredo, translated from the Norwegian
by Robert Ferguson

29 G. W. Bowersock Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire by Paul J. Kosmin

31 Yusef Komunyakaa Poem

32 Assaf Sharon Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel
by Dan Ephron
Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman by Itamar Rabinovich

35 Nick Laird The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem: From Baudelaire to Anne Carson
edited and with an introduction by Jeremy Noel-Tod

38 Garry Wills When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II
by John W. O’Malley

40 Elaine Blair Becoming Beauvoir: A Life by Kate Kirkpatrick
Diary of a Philosophy Student, Volume 2, 1928 –29 by Simone de Beauvoir,
edited by Barbara Klaw, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, Margaret A. Simons,
and Marybeth Timmermann, and translated from the French by Barbara Klaw

57 Letters from Adriana Queiroz Testa, Alexandre Clistenes, Aline da Cruz, and sixty-two others,
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Sarah Churchwell, and Bruce Weber

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On the cover: A statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee being removed from Lee Circle, New Orleans, May 2017 (Scott Threlkeld/AP Images); John Bertonccini:
Winter Quarters at Herschel Island (detail), circa 1894 (New Bedford Whaling Museum). The drawing on page 4 is by Tom Bachtell. The photograph on page 10 is ©
Aperture Foundation, Inc., Paul Strand A rchive. T he drawing on page 26 is by David L evine. T he collage on page 35 is by Joanna Neborsky; the photographs are by (clock-
wise from top left) Christopher Morris, Blue Flower Arts, Harry Mattison, Peter Smith, Beowulf Sheehan, and Grep Hoax. The drawing on page 40 is by Karl Stevens.
The New York Review of Books (ISSN 0028-7504), published 20 times a year, monthly in January, July, August, and September; semi-monthly in February, March, April,
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Editors: Emily Greenhouse, Gabriel Winslow-Yost
Deputy Editor: Michael Shae
Senior Editors: Eve Bowen, Prudence Crowther,
Julie Just, Andrew Katzenstein
Senior Editor, Poetry: Jana Prikryl
Editor-at-Large: Daniel Mendelsohn

Founding Editors : Robert B. Silvers (1929–2017)

Barbara Epstein (1928–2006)

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» Helen Joyce: My Adventures in Psychedelia

» Martin Lukas: Justin Trudeau, Liberal Let-Down

» Sarah Seo: A Secret History of Police Surveillance

» Mary S. Booth: The Great Biomass Boondoggle

Plus: Adam Shatz on a jazz improv duo, Jenny Uglow on William Blake at the Tate, and more...

nybooks.com/daily

HIGHS & LOWS

ELAINE BLAIR is a regular contributor to The New York
Review.

G. W. BOWERSOCK is Professor Emeritus of Ancient
History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
His latest book is The Crucible of Islam.

LOUISE GLÜCK ’s most recent books are American Origi-
nality: Essays on Poetry and the poetry collection Faithful
and Virtuous Night, which won the National Book Award.

MICHAEL GORRA is the author of The Bells in Their Si-
lence: Travels Through Germany and The Saddest Words:
William Faulkner’s Civil War, which will be published next
year. He teaches English at Smith.

LINDA GREENHOUSE teaches at Yale Law School. Her
most recent book is Just a Journalist: On the Press, Life, and
the Spaces Between, a memoir.

JOSHUA HAMMER is a former Newsweek Bureau Chief
and Correspondent- at-Large in Africa and the Middle East.
His new book, The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure,
Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird, will be pub-
lished in February.

MORTEN HØI JENSEN is the author of A Difficult Death:
The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen.

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA ’s new collection of poems,

Every day Mojo Songs of Earth, will be published next year.

He teaches at NYU. His poem in this issue was commis-

sioned by the Museum of Modern Art; it and ten other new

poems written in response to works at MoMA can be heard

on the museum’s audio guide (www.moma.org/audio).

NICK LAIRD ’s fourth collection of poetry, Feel Free, was

published in the US in July.

REGINA MARLER is the author of Bloomsbury Pie: The

Making of the Bloomsbury Boom. She edited Queer Beats:

How the Beats Turned America on to Sex and Selected Let-

ters of Vanessa Bell.

ANDREW O’HAGAN is the author, most recently, of The

Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age and the

novel The Illuminations.

SOPHIE PINKHAM recently received a Ph.D. from Co-

lumbia’s Slavic Department. She is the author of Black

Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine.

ASSAF SHARON is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at

Tel Aviv University and Co-Chair of Molad: The Center for

the Renewal of Israeli Democracy.

ANNA DELLA SUBIN ’s book Accidental Gods will be

published next year.

GARRY WILLS ’s most recent book is What the Qur’an

Meant: And Why It Matters.

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