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Surreality TV  

In his new book, Peter ​Pomerantsev depicts Russia as a place that has descended into a madness fed by the television programs that it itself inspires. But a crucial element is missing.







‘It Is Not Over Yet’  

Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope by Susan Weissman Verso, 2001, 364 pp., $35 In the months after the Nazi invasion of France, while hoping for an exit visa but expecting Stalin’s henchmen, Victor Serge managed to write …



The Marginalist  

Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere by Christopher Hitchens Verso, 2000, 538 pp., $25 On the fifth floor of Harvard’s Lamont Library, near the men’s room, there is an old, well-thumbed volume of Dwight Macdonald’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist. …



Deposition for a Master  

The Human Stain by Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin, 2000, 365 pp., $26 What Philip Roth has always needed—and what, like Joseph K., he has been unfairly denied—is a proper trial. If not for the attacks on Jewish suburbia in Goodbye, …