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Hollinghurst’s Ghosts  

The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst Knopf, 2018, 432 pp. Keith Vaughan, “Drawing of a seated male nude,” 1949 (The estate of Keith Vaughan) If a novel gains its reader’s regard but not her affection, does she like it? Can …



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Joy Amid the Ruins  

Amid the wreckage of the Trump administration, growing numbers of people are discovering solidarity—democratic socialism, even. Their vision may be radical. But have you seen the alternative?





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Improbable Outcomes  

Some Trick: Thirteen Stories by Helen DeWitt New Directions, 2018, 224 pp.   Some Trick is Helen DeWitt’s third book. That is to say, her third published book. She has written dozens of others that haven’t made it from her …





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Duck Unchained  

Equal parts muckraking journalism and biting satire, the print-only, century-old French newspaper Le Canard enchaîné represents one of the most remarkable stories in modern journalism.



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Trickle-Down Urbanism  

For all his differences with his predecessor, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has inherited the same fundamental dilemmas that faced Michael Bloomberg—and much of the billionaire’s approach to resolving them.



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Edifices of Empire  

Capitalism, from its very beginning, was twinned with racism. Two books describe how these two forces emerged together, at the same moment in the unfolding of Western political economy.