Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child, edited by Ralph Rugoff. Hatje Cantz. 208 pages. $48. The Artist’s Studio: A Century of the Artist’s Studio 1920–2020, edited by Iwona Blazwick. Whitechapel Gallery.

I went to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005 because I’d won a writing prize, and with that prize came an invitation to a luncheon and awards ceremony. Each honoree was allowed to bring ...

Harper’s Magazine turns 175 this month, but New Books is only twenty-three—too young to rent a car without incurring an additional fee. It feels older, doesn’t it? Those two imperious monosyllables, ...

I first encountered Robert Crumb at my local Blockbuster, in the mid-Nineties, when Crumb became available for rental. I wasn’t more than ten at the time, so I didn’t understand that the movie was a ...

From an introduction to the audiobook edition of J. F. Martel’s Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, which was released in May by Hachette Audio. T oward the end of the nineteenth century, the ...

Once, on a river-rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, I traveled with a charming, good-humored man who happened to run an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. He liked to rail against Nancy Pelosi, who ...

Elden Ring, developed by FromSoftware. Bandai Namco. $59.99. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, developed by FromSoftware. Bandai Namco. $39.99. Video games, even when played alone, have to be ...

C oming of age in the Seventies as a Midwesterner, a Mormon, and a resident of a town of about five hundred people, I didn’t get to meet a lot of outspoken liberals, but those I did meet made strong ...

Discussed in this essay: The Letters of Seamus Heaney, edited by Christopher Reid. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 848 pages. $45. T his buoyant anvil of a book has brought me to the edge of a nervous ...

Adapted from “The Diplomatic Path to a Secure Ukraine,” a paper that was published in February by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. M ore than two years into Russia’s invasion, it is ...

Ian Penman is the author of Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors. His most recent article for Harper’s Magazine, “An Anthropologist of Filth,” appeared in the June 2023 issue.

Discussed in this essay: Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World, by Mary Beard. Liveright. 512 pages. $39.99. I f men think about the Roman Empire all the time, they do not do it under ...