The New York Review of Books - 26.03.2020

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Contents

4 Hari Kunzru It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally
Memed Donald Trump into Office by Dale Beran
6 Damion Searls Poem
10 Susan Tallman Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection an exhibition
at the Grolier Club, New York City
Catalog of the exhibition edited by Naomi L. Nelson, Lauren Reno, and Lisa Unger Baskin
16 Merve Emre The Complete Gary Lutz by Gary Lutz
20 Elisa Gabbert Poem
22 Darryl Pinckney Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race by Thomas Chatterton Williams
25 David Motadel What Do the Hohenzollerns Deserve?
28 Helen Epstein Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case and Angus Deaton
We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America by Jennifer M. Silva
31 Jed Perl The Householders: Robert Duncan and Jess by Tara McDowell
and six other books by and about Duncan and Jess
34 Anne Applebaum Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography: Herself Alone by Charles Moore
36 David Shulman Creating the Universe: Depictions of the Cosmos in Himalayan Buddhism by Eric Huntington
Awaken: A Tibetan Buddhist Journey Toward Enlightenment an exhibition at the Asian Art Museum
of San Francisco
Catalog of the exhibition by John Henry Rice and Jeffrey S. Durham
39 Michael Hofmann Intimate Ties: Two Novellas by Robert Musil, translated and with an afterword by Peter Wortsman
Agathe, or, The Forgotten Sister by Robert Musil, translated and with an introduction by Joel Agee
41 Stephen Yenser Poem
42 Lynn Hunt A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution by Jeremy D. Popkin
The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History by Alexander Mikaberidze
46 Ian Johnson Voices from the Chinese Century: Public Intellectual Debate from Contemporary China
edited by Timothy Cheek, David Ownby, and Joshua A. Fogel
Rethinking China’s Rise: A Liberal Critique by Xu Jilin, translated and edited by David Ownby
Minjian: The Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals by Sebastian Veg
49 Ange Mlinko Feel Free by Nick Laird
O Positive by Joe Dunthorne
51 Lewis Lockwood Beethoven’s Conversation Books, Volume 1: Nos. 1 to 8 (February 1818 to March 1820)
Beethoven’s Conversation Books, Volume 2: Nos. 9 to 16 (March 1820 to September 1820)
both volumes translated and edited by Theodore Albrecht
54 Fara Dabhoiwala A Day at Home in Early Modern England: Material Culture and Domestic Life, 1500 –
by Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson
56 Alan Ryan Nationalism: A Short History by Liah Greenfeld
Reclaiming Patriotism by Amitai Etzioni
Why Nationalism by Yael Tamir
60 Michael Tomasky The Party Cannot Hold

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On the cover: An untitled drawing by Saul Steinberg, 1969 (The Saul Steinberg Foundation); © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York. The drawings on pages 28 and 30 are by Anders Nilsen. The illustration on page 34 is by Ellie Foreman-Peck. The drawing on page 39 is by David Levine.
T he illustration on page 51 is by Joanna Neborsky. T he artwork on page 56 is © 20 20 Estate of T hornton Dial /A rtists R ights Society (ARS), New York. The drawing
on page 60 is by Tom Bachtell. The drawings on page 61 are by James Ferguson.
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» Katherine Stewart: The Meaning of ‘Religious Liberty’

» Gabrielle Bellot: Kamau Brathwaite’s Gift of Language

» Corey Robin : Democracy’s Tyranny of the Minority

» Louis Althusser: What the Honest Capitalist Will Say

Plus: Langdon Hammer on Elizabeth Bishop’s letters, Sarah M. Lee’s photo-portrait of the West Coast, and more ...

nybooks.com/daily

MOMENTS OF REVELATION

ANNE APPLEBAUM is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her new
book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism,
will be published in July.
FARA DABHOIWALA , the author of The Origins of Sex, teaches
at Princeton and is writing a global history of free speech.
MERVE EMRE is Associate Professor of English Literature at
Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College. Her latest book is The
Ferrante Letters: An Exercise in Collective Criticism.
HELEN EPSTEIN is Visiting Professor of Human Rights and
Global Public Health at Bard. She is the author of Another Fine Mess:
America, Uganda, and the War on Terror and The Invisible Cure:
Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa.
ELISA GABBERT is the author of three books of poetry. Her latest
book is The Word Pretty, a collection of essays.
MICHAEL HOFMANN is a poet and translator from the German. His
latest translation is of Heinrich von Kleist’s novella Michael Kohlhaas,
and his latest book of poems, One Lark, One Horse, will be published
in paperback in the US in July. He teaches at the University of Florida.
LYNN HUNT is Distinguished Research Professor in History at the
University of California at Los Angeles. Her books include Inventing
Human Rights, Writing History in the Global Era, and, most recently,
History: Why It Matters.
IAN JOHNSON is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who lives in
Beijing, his home for more than twenty years. His most recent book is
The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao.
HARI KUNZRU ’s next novel, Red Pill, will be published in
September.
LEWIS LOCKWOOD is an Emeritus Professor of Music at Harvard
and Co-Director of the Boston University Center for Beethoven Re-
search. His new book, Beethoven’s Lives, will be published in September.
ANGE MLINKO is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at
the University of Florida. Her fifth book of poems is Distant Mandate.

DAVID MOTADEL is Associate Professor of History at the London

School of Economics and Political Science and currently a Fellow at

the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study. He is the author of Islam and

Nazi Germany’s War, which was awarded the Fraenkel Prize.

JED PERL ’s Calder: The Conquest of Space, the second and

concluding volume of his biography of the American sculptor, will be

published in April.

DA R RY L PI NCK N EY ’s most recent book is Busted in New York

and Other Essays.

ALAN RYAN was Warden of New College, Oxford, and Professor

of Political Thought. He is the author of On Politics, which will be

published in paperback in the fall.

DA M ION SEA R L S ’s translation of Jon Fosse’s The Other Name

will be published in the US in April; his translation of Rilke’s Letters

to a Young Poet will be published in November. He is currently the

Translator in Residence at Princeton.

DAV I D SH U LM A N ’s Freedom and Despair: Notes from the South

Hebron Hills was published in 2018. He is Professor Emeritus at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was awarded the Israel Prize for

Religious Studies in 2016.

SUSAN TALLMAN is an art historian. She is currently working on

a book about the prints of Kerry James Marshall.

MICHAEL TOMASKY is a Special Correspondent for The Daily

Beast, the Editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and a con-

tributing opinion writer for The New York Times. His book If We Can

Keep It: How the Republic Collapsed, and How It Might Be Saved

will be published in paperback in June.

STEPHEN YENSER ’s most recent book of poems is Stone Fruit. He

is coeditor of the forthcoming volume A Whole World: Letters from

James Merrill and Distinguished Research Professor in English at the

University of California at Los Angeles.

basicbooks.com

BEYOND

DREAMS AND

NIGHTMARES

“The Sword and the Shield

is a landmark. It is what

happens when one of

America’s greatest historians

of African America shines

the same light on two of

African America’s greatest

historical fi gures.”

—IBRAM X. KENDI,

author of

How to Be an Antiracist

“The Sword and the Shield

is a masterwork of bold

historical revisionism that

will change how we think of

the dynamic relationship

between Harlem’s Hero

Malcolm X, and America’s

Apostle Martin Luther King,

Jr.... Joseph brilliantly

illuminates the defi ning

personalities at the heart of

the black freedom struggle.”

—MICHAEL ERIC DYSON,

author of

Jay-Z: Made in America

THE SWORD AND

THE SHIELD

PENIEL E. JOSEPH

The Revolutionary Lives

of Malcolm X and

Martin Luther King Jr.