3Contents
4 Pandemic Journal
Anna Badkhen, Rachael Bedard, Eula Biss, Anastasia Edel, Anne Enright,
Mark Gevisser, Lauren Groff, Alma Guillermoprieto, Eduardo Halfon, Ian Jack,
Leslie Jamison, Hari Kunzru, Nick Laird, Ruth Margalit, Minae Mizumura,
Miguel-Anxo Murado, Rachel Pearson, Sylvia Poggioli, and Jenny Uglow
12 Jason Farago Overthrow by Caleb Crain
18 Jake Bernstein The Fundraising Pulpit
22 David Quammen Darwin’s Most Wonderful Plants: A Tour of His Botanical Legacy by Ken Thompson
On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galápagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden
by Elizabeth Hennessy
Evolution Before Darwin: Theories of the Transmutation of Species in Edinburgh, 1804 –
by Bill Jenkins
25 Martin Filler Gordon Bunshaft and SOM: Building Corporate Modernism by Nicholas Adams
28 Ed Park East Goes West by Younghill Kang, with a foreword by Alexander Chee and an afterword
by Sunyoung Lee
31 Nathaniel Rich Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson
33 Nadja Spiegelman Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Despentes, translated from the French by Frank Wynne
35 Rae Armantrout Poem
36 Larry Rohter Brazil Apart: 1964 –2019 by Perry Anderson
The Edge of Democracy a documentary film directed by Petra Costa
The Mechanism a television series created by José Padilha and Elena Soarez
39 Erica Getto and Max Nelson Work 19 61–73 by Yvonne Rainer
Parts of Some Sextets, 1965/ 2019 a performance by Yvonne Rainer
Again? Now What? a performance by Yvonne Rainer
42 Giles Harvey Weather by Jenny Offill
46 David A. Bell To Begin the World Over Again: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe
by Matthew Lockwood
48 Laura Kolbe Forgotten Journey by Silvina Ocampo
The Promise by Silvina Ocampo
50 Benjamin Nathans The Right to Memory a documentary film directed by Ludmila Gordon
Meeting Gorbachev a documentary film directed by Werner Herzog and André Singer
53 Colin Grant The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
55 Eric Klinenberg On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein
This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth by Jedediah Purdy
A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni,
Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, with a foreword by Naomi Klein
58 Letters from Ishmael Reed, Darryl Pinckney, and Amitai Etzioni
CONTRIBUTORS
Maya Chung and Nawal Arjini, Editorial Assistants; Willa Glickman, Editorial Intern; Sylvia Lonergan, Researcher; Katie Jefferis, Daniel Drake, and Will Simpson,
Type Production; Kazue Soma Jensen, Production; Maryanne Chaney, Web Production Coordinator; Michael King, Technical Director; Daisy Alioto, Audience
Development Manager; Sharmaine Ong, Advertising Associate; Nicholas During, Publicity; Nancy Ng, Design Director; Janice Fellegara, Director of Marketing
and Planning; Janis Harden, Fulfillment Director; Andrea Moore, Assistant Circulation Manager; Matthew Howard, Editorial Director, D i g i t a l ; A n g e l a H e d e r m a n ,
Special Projects; Diane R. Seltzer, Office Manager; Patrick Hederman, Rights; Margarette Devlin, Comptroller; Pearl Williams, Assistant Comptroller; Teddy
Wright, Receptionist; Microfilm and Microcard Services: NAPC, 300 North Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106.
NYRDaily Matt Seaton, Editor; Lucy McKeon, Associate Editor.
On the cover: Victoria Burge, Chicago, 2010 (© Victoria Burge). The drawings on pages 6 and 31 are by Tom Bachtell. The drawing on page 18 is by John Cuneo.
The illustration on page 22 is by Siegfried Woldhek. The drawing on page 28 is by Karl Stevens. The illustration on page 42 is by Ellie Foreman-Peck. The illustra-
tion on page 53 is by Johnalynn Holland. The etching on page 58 is by Giovanni Battista Bracelli.
The New York Review of Books (ISSN 0028-7504), published 20 times a year, monthly in January, June, August, and September; semi-monthly in February, March, April,
May, July, October, November, and December. NYREV, Inc., 435 Hudson Street, Suite 300, New York, NY 10014-3994. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY 10001
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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)
Publisher: Rea S. Hederman
Advertising Director: Lara Frohlich Andersen» Laura Kolbe: How Doctors Do ‘Distributive Justice’
» Spencer Strub: Medieval Plague Tracts & Our Current Crisis» Mark Honigsbaum: The 1918 Pandemic & This One
» Vincent Bevins: Bolsonaro’s Covid-19 Culture War Lockdown
Plus: Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider,’ Jiwei Xiao on Wuhan noir, and more ...nybooks.com/dailyMORBID SYMPTOMSRAE ARMANTROUT ’s newest book of poems, Conjure, will be
published in September.
DAVID A. BELL is Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of His-
tory at Princeton. His book Men on Horseback: The Power of
Charisma in the Age of Revolutions will be published in the
spring.
JAKE BERNSTEIN is a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning jour-
nalist. A movie of The Laundromat, his most recent book, was re-
leased last year.
JASON FARAGO is an art critic for The New York Times and
the editor of the anthology Out of Practice: Ten Issues of “Even,”
2015–2018. In 2017 he was awarded the inaugural Rabkin Prize for
art criticism.
MARTIN FILLER ’s latest book is Makers of Modern Architec-
ture, Volume III: From Antoni Gaudí to Maya Lin, a collection of
his writing on architecture in these pages.
ERICA GETTO ’s writing about dance has appeared in the NYR
Daily, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. MAX
NELSON, a former member of the editorial staff of The New York
Review, studies English at Yale.
COLIN GRANT is the author of several books, including Negro
with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of
Mother Africa. His latest book, Homecoming: Voices of the Wind-
rush Generation, was published last year.
GILES HARVEY is a Contributing Writer at The New York Times
Magazine.
ERIC KLINENBERG is Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the
Social Sciences and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge
at NYU. His most recent book is Palaces for the People: How So-
cial Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the
Decline of Civic Life.
LAURA KOLBE is a poet and doctor. She teaches at Weill Cornell
Medical College.
BENJAMIN NATHANS , currently a Senior Fellow at the Freiburg
Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany, is completing To t h e
Success of Our Hopeless Cause, a history of the Soviet dissident
movement.
ED PARK is the author of the novel Personal Days and a Founding
Editor of The Believer.
DAVID QUAMMEN is the author of fifteen books, including
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. His
latest book is The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life.
NATHANIEL RICH ’s latest book, Losing Earth: A Recent His-
tory, a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing
Award, was published in paperback in March.
LARRY ROHTER was Rio de Janeiro Bureau Chief for The New
York Time s from 1997 to 2007. He is the author of three books
about Brazil, most recently a biography of the explorer and states-
man Candido Rondon.
NADJA SPIEGELMAN is the author of the memoir I’m Supposed
to Protect You from All This, as well as three children’s books, in-
cluding Lost in NYC. She is the Editor of The Paris Review online.basicbooks.comSUFFRAGETTE
SURGEONS
“How can a spectacular
story like No Man’s Land just
disappear? Luckily for us, it
fell into the hands of one of
our fi nest biographers. Wendy
Moore’s rich storyteller’s voice
has brought back the lives and
achievements of these brave
and brilliant women.”—ANDREA WULF,
author of The Invention of Nature“No Man’s Land is an
absolute delight. Wendy
Moore has performed an
incredible feat of historical
detective work, and the
result is a gripping account of
courage and determination
in the face of death.”—AMANDA FOREMAN,
author of The Duchess and
A World on FireNO MAN’S LAND
W ENDY MOORE
The Trailblazing Women
Who Ran Britain’s Most
Extraordinary Military
Hospital During World War I“The story of the
extraordinary women who
ran the ‘Suffragettes’ Hospital’
is visceral, timely, urgent,
and spellbinding.”—HELEN CASTOR,
author of She-Wolves