The Magazine
August 2, 2021
Reporting
Dept. of Returns
New York’s Dreamy, Disorienting Reopening
Matthew Pillsbury’s long-exposure photographs capture the return of crowds after COVID lockdown. As communal city life comes back, can we find one another?
The Sporting Scene
Hou Yifan and the Wait for Chess’s First Woman World Champion
For years, Hou was the only woman who stood a chance against the very best. But she had her own ambitions.
Annals of Justice
Can Affirmative Action Survive?
The policy has made diversity possible. Now, after decades of debate, the Supreme Court is poised to decide its fate.
The Critics
The Art World
The Photographs That Women Took
“The New Woman Behind the Camera,” at the Met, is dizzying in its scope, acting as an index of female photographers between the nineteen-twenties and the fifties.
Books
Anthony Veasna So Takes On Trauma, but Doesn’t Leave Out the Jokes
Classics of immigrant storytelling can feel sparse and solemn. The stories in So’s “Afterparties” fill the silence, spilling over with transgressive humor and exuberant language.
Books
Briefly Noted
“Intimacies,” “A Passage North,” “Until Proven Safe,” and “The Invention of Sicily.”
On Television
The Brilliant, Biting Social Satire of “The White Lotus”
Mike White’s HBO tragicomedy is one of the best shows of the year.
Podcast Dept.
The Post-Dirtbag Left
For years, “Chapo Trap House” and other podcasts have paired anti-capitalist ideas with the rhetorical style of social media. Is a new form emerging?
A Critic at Large
Facebook’s Broken Vows
How the company’s pledge to bring the world together wound up pulling us apart.
The Talk of the Town
Steve Coll on spyware vs. the free press; a secret pseudo-garden; snapshots, A to Z; Camille Cottin’s candor; crazy rich antics.
Crazy Rich Dept.
Kevin Kwan Dreams of Capri
The author of “Crazy Rich Asians” stayed home during lockdown, as unmasked jet-set friends checked out Tulum and Hawaii. Can he bust loose to celebrate the publication of his latest, “Sex and Vanity”?
Paris Postcard
Camille Cottin Always Feels Like a Beginner
The French actress, known for “Call My Agent!,” “Killing Eve,” and “Connasse,” co-habits with “fucking Matt Damon” in the Trump-inflected Cannes hit “Stillwater.”
The Sights, the Smells
Smoke-Orange Sky? It’s Always Sunny in Citrovia
Seeking shelter from the mega-fires and superstorms inside the psychedelic, Teletubby-evoking plastic-lemon-grove installation in midtown, contrived to disguise a giant construction shed.
Public Images Dept.
A Thousand Words, a Million Times Over
The New York Public Library’s Picture Collection, an archive of more than a million printed images that Andy Warhol used as a proto-Pinterest, is celebrated in a new book and Gagosian exhibition by the artist Taryn Simon.
Comment
The Spyware Threat to Journalists
In this gathering age of digital autocracy, it is hard to avoid the impression that the dictators are winning.
Shouts & Murmurs
Shouts & Murmurs
May Not Cause Side Effects
Cartoons
1/15
Cartoon by Sofia Warren
Fiction
Fiction
Coda
Puzzles & Games Dept.
Poems
Poems
Swimming Laps
Poems
Reasons to Log Off
Goings On About Town
Night Life
The Indie Rock of Bright Eyes
The band’s multi-instrumentalists bring their diaristic folk and pop music to Forest Hills Stadium, in a show that includes Lucy Dacus and Waxahatchee.
Tables for Two
Ice Cream from Gimmick to Rapture
The summer’s flavors include Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Sea Salt Saba, and Roasted Banana with Coffee Caramel, made by the intrepid purveyors Van Leeuwen, Caffè Panna, and Bad Habit.
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