Andrew Delbanco | The New York Review of Books

The Connoisseur of Desire

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great theme of erotic anticipation is never more alive than in the longings of Jay Gatsby.

The Annotated Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by James L.W. West III, with an introduction by Amor Towles

May 29, 2025 issue

A Hell of a Performance

Norman Mailer wrote with an unstable mixture of self-indulgence and self-awareness, bravado and diffidence, glibness and bracing honesty, macho posturing and an almost sheepish gentleness.

The Naked and the Dead and Selected Letters, 1945–1946

by Norman Mailer, edited by J. Michael Lennon

April 18, 2024 issue

Endowed by Slavery

The history of university coffers suggests a centuries-long conversion of blood money into benefactions.

Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities

by Craig Steven Wilder

Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies

edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy

The Princeton Fugitive Slave: The Trials of James Collins Johnson

by Lolita Buckner Inniss

Thomas Jefferson’s Education

by Alan Taylor

Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices

edited by John Torpey

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June 23, 2022 issue

Kubrick’s Human Comedy

Though Stanley Kubrick was often characterized as icy, his life and filmography reveal that his heart was as large as his mind.

Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker

by David Mikics

May 13, 2021 issue

Letter

Roger R. Smith

Getting His Way

July 22, 2021 issue

Even More Rod Serling

January 14, 2021 issue

Rod Serling’s Night Terrors

The creator of ‘The Twilight Zone’ dramatized isolation and fear but still believed in the best of humanity.

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television

by Koren Shadmi

November 19, 2020 issue

Letter

Andrew Delbanco

Even More Rod Serling

January 14, 2021 issue

A Great American Hater

Diaries, 1779–1821
Diaries, 1821–1848

by John Quincy Adams, edited by David Waldstreicher

January 17, 2019 issue

On the Election—II

A struggle for political power in which, for once, all is at stake

November 10, 2016 issue

Mysterious, Brilliant Frederick Douglass

The Lives of Frederick Douglass

by Robert S. Levine

Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American

by John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier

April 7, 2016 issue

Outrageous Universities

October 8, 2015 issue

Our Universities: The Outrageous Reality

The relentlessly rising cost of higher education

Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream

by Suzanne Mettler

The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem

by Joel Best and Eric Best

Financing American Higher Education in the Era of Globalization

by William Zumeta, David W. Breneman, Patrick M. Callan, and Joni E. Finney

Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education

by William G. Bowen and Eugene M. Tobin

Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality

by Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton

Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates

by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa

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July 9, 2015 issue

Letter

Sajay Samuel

Outrageous Universities

October 8, 2015 issue

The Civil War Convulsion

“The real war will never get in the books,” Whitman wrote. What kind of reality did he have in mind?

The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War

by James Oakes

The Civil War: Told by Those Who Lived It

edited by Brooks D. Simpson, Stephen W. Sears, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean

March 19, 2015 issue

The New Adventures of Abe

I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War

by Jerome Charyn

March 6, 2014 issue

The Two Faces of US Education

The competing visions of Diane Ravitch and Michelle Rhee

Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch

Radical: Fighting to Put Students First

by Michelle Rhee

October 10, 2013 issue

‘The Central Event of Our Past’: Still Murky

American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era

by David W. Blight

February 9, 2012 issue

New Travels with Mark Twain

A conversation about the first volume of Mark Twain’s unabridged Autobiography and the distinctive joys and challenges of reading Twain in the twenty-first century.

April 18, 2011

Twain on Twain

April 7, 2011 issue

His Own Best Straight Man

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume One

edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, and Leslie Diane Myrick

February 24, 2011 issue

Letter

Michael J. Kiskis

Twain on Twain

April 7, 2011 issue

Learning from Wiseman

The first film by Frederick Wiseman I saw was *Titicut Follies* (1967). It was the fall of 1969, my freshman year of college, too long ago to trust my memory scene by scene.

December 10, 2010

Dreams of Better Schools

The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools

by E.D. Hirsch Jr.

Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us

by Mike Rose

November 19, 2009 issue

Letter

E. D. Hirsch Jr.

The Schools Have Gone Down!

February 11, 2010 issue