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The New York Review of Books

November 28, 2023

"New York Review" redirects here. For other uses, see New York Review (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with The New York Times Book Review.

The New York Review of Books (or NYREV or NYRB) is a semi-monthly magazine[2] with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of important books is an indispensable literary activity. Esquire called it "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language."[3] In 1970, writer Tom Wolfe described it as "the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic".[4]

The New York Review of Books
Categories
FrequencyApproximately semi-monthly
PublisherRea S. Hederman
Total circulation
(2017)		132,522[1]
First issueFebruary 1, 1963
CountryUnited States
Based inNew York City, New York
LanguageEnglish
Websitenybooks.com
ISSN0028-7504

The Review publishes long-form reviews and essays, often by well-known writers, original poetry, and has letters and personals advertising sections that had attracted critical comment. In 1979 the magazine founded the London Review of Books, which soon became independent. In 1990 it founded an Italian edition, la Rivista dei Libri, published until 2010. The Review has a book publishing division, established in 1999, called New York Review Books, which publishes reprints of classics, as well as collections and children's books. Since 2010, the journal has hosted a blog written by its contributors. The Review celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013. A Martin Scorsese film called The 50 Year Argument documents the history and influence of the paper over its first half century.

Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein edited the paper together from its founding in 1963 until Epstein's death in 2006. From then until his death in 2017, Silvers was the sole editor. Ian Buruma became editor in September 2017 and left the post in September 2018. Gabriel Winslow-Yost and Emily Greenhouse became co-editors in February 2019; in February 2021 Greenhouse was made editor.

History and description edit

Early years edit

The New York Review was founded by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein, together with publisher A. Whitney Ellsworth[5] and writer Elizabeth Hardwick. They were backed and encouraged by Epstein's husband, Jason Epstein, a vice president at Random House and editor of Vintage Books, and Hardwick's husband, poet Robert Lowell. In 1959 Hardwick had published an essay, "The Decline of Book Reviewing", in Harper's,[6] where Silvers was then an editor, in a special issue that he edited called "Writing in America".[7][8] Her essay was an indictment of American book reviews of the time, "light, little article[s]" that she decried as "lobotomized", passionless praise and denounced as "blandly, respectfully denying whatever vivacious interest there might be in books or in literary matters generally."[9] The group was inspired to found a new magazine to publish thoughtful, probing, lively reviews[10] featuring what Hardwick called "the unusual, the difficult, the lengthy, the intransigent, and above all, the interesting".[6][11]

During the 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike, when The New York Times and several other newspapers suspended publication, Hardwick, Lowell and the Epsteins seized the chance to establish the sort of vigorous book review that Hardwick had imagined.[12] Jason Epstein knew that book publishers would advertise their books in the new publication, since they had no other outlet for promoting new books.[13] The group turned to the Epsteins' friend Silvers, who had been an editor at The Paris Review and was still at Harper's,[14] to edit the publication, and Silvers asked Barbara Epstein to co-edit with him.[8][12] She was known as the editor at Doubleday of Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl, among other books, and then worked at Dutton, McGraw-Hill and The Partisan Review.[15] Silvers and Epstein sent books to "the writers we knew and admired most. ... We asked for three thousand words in three weeks in order to show what a book review should be, and practically everyone came through. No one mentioned money."[8] The first issue of the Review was published on February 1, 1963, and sold out its printing of 100,000 copies.[3] It prompted nearly 1,000 letters to the editors asking for the Review to continue.[8] The New Yorker called it "surely the best first issue of any magazine ever."[16]

Salon later commented that the list of contributors in the first issue "represented a 'shock and awe' demonstration of the intellectual firepower available for deployment in mid-century America, and, almost equally impressive, of the art of editorial networking and jawboning. This was the party everyone who was anyone wanted to attend, the Black and White Ball of the critical elite."[17] The Review "announced the arrival of a particular sensibility ... the engaged, literary, post-war progressive intellectual, who was concerned with civil rights and feminism as well as fiction and poetry and theater.[18] The first issue projected "a confidence in the unquestioned rightness of the liberal consensus, in the centrality of literature and its power to convey meaning, in the solubility of our problems through the application of intelligence and good will, and in the coherence and clear hierarchy of the intellectual world".[17] After the success of the first issue, the editors assembled a second issue to demonstrate that "the Review was not a one-shot affair".[8] The founders then collected investments from a circle of friends and acquaintances, and Ellsworth joined as publisher.[8][19] The Review began regular biweekly publication in November 1963.[20]

The New York Review does not pretend to cover all the books of the season or even all the important ones. Neither time nor space, however, have been spent on books which are trivial in their intentions or venal in their effects, except occasionally to reduce a temporarily inflated reputation or to call attention to a fraud. ... The hope of the editors is to suggest, however imperfectly, some of the qualities which a responsible literary journal should have and to discover whether there is, in America, not only the need for such a review but the demand for one.

From the only editorial ever published in the Review[21]

Silvers said of the editors' philosophy, that "there was no subject we couldn't deal with. And if there was no book [on a subject], we would deal with it anyway. We tried hard to avoid books that were simply competent rehearsals of familiar subjects, and we hoped to find books that would establish something fresh, something original."[8] In particular, "We felt you had to have a political analysis of the nature of power in America – who had it, who was affected". The editors also shared an "intense admiration for wonderful writers".[22] But, Silvers noted, it is a mystery whether "reviews have a calculable political and social impact" or will even gain attention: "You mustn't think too much about influence – if you find something interesting yourself, that should be enough."[8] Well-known writers were willing to contribute articles for the initial issues of the Review without pay because it offered them a chance to write a new kind of book review. As Mark Gevisser explained: "The essays ... made the book review form not just a report on the book and a judgment of the book, but an essay in itself. And that, I think, startled everyone – that a book review could be exciting in that way, could be provocative in that way."[7] Early issues included articles by such writers as Hardwick, Lowell, Jason Epstein, Hannah Arendt, W. H. Auden, Saul Bellow, John Berryman, Truman Capote, Paul Goodman,[23] Lillian Hellman, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Lewis, Dwight Macdonald, Norman Mailer, Mary McCarthy, Norman Podhoretz, Philip Rahv, Adrienne Rich, Susan Sontag, William Styron, Gore Vidal, Robert Penn Warren and Edmund Wilson. The Review pointedly published interviews with European political dissidents, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov and Václav Havel.[22][18]

Since 1979 edit

During the year-long lockout at The Times in London in 1979, the Review founded a daughter publication, the London Review of Books. For the first six months this journal appeared as an insert in the New York Review of Books, but it became an independent publication in 1980.[24][25] In 1990 the Review founded an Italian edition, la Rivista dei Libri. It was published for two decades until May 2010.[26]

For over 40 years, Silvers and Epstein edited the Review together.[3] In 1984, Silvers, Epstein and their partners sold the Review to publisher Rea S. Hederman,[27] who still owns the paper,[28] but the two continued as its editors.[14] In 2006, Epstein died of cancer at the age of 77.[29] In awarding to Epstein and Silvers its 2006 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, the National Book Foundation stated: "With The New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein raised book reviewing to an art and made the discussion of books a lively, provocative and intellectual activity."[30]

After Epstein's death, Silvers was the sole editor until his own death in 2017.[31] Asked about who might succeed him as editor, Silvers told The New York Times, "I can think of several people who would be marvelous editors. Some of them work here, some used to work here, and some are just people we know. I think they would put out a terrific paper, but it would be different."[32] In 2008, the Review celebrated its 45th anniversary with a panel discussion at the New York Public Library, moderated by Silvers, discussing "What Happens Now" in the United States after the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president. Panelists included Review contributors such as Joan Didion, Garry Wills, novelist and literary critic Darryl Pinckney, political commentator Michael Tomasky, and Columbia University professor and contributor Andrew Delbanco.[33] The 45th anniversary edition of the Review (November 20, 2008) began with a posthumous piece by Edmund Wilson, who wrote for the paper's first issue in 1963.[22]

 
Robert Silvers in 2012

In 2008, the paper moved its headquarters from Midtown Manhattan to 435 Hudson Street located in the West Village.[34] In 2010, it launched a blog section of its website[35] that The New York Times called "lively and opinionated",[32] and it hosts podcasts.[36][37] Asked in 2013 how social media might affect the subject matter of the Review, Silvers commented:

"I might imagine [a] witty, aphoristic, almost Oscar Wildean [anthology of] remarks, drawn from the millions and millions of tweets. Or from comments that follow on blogs. ... Facebook is a medium in which privacy is, or at least is thought to be, in some way crucial. ... And so there seems a resistance to intrusive criticism. We seem at the edge of a vast, expanding ocean of words ... growing without any critical perspective whatever being brought to bear on it. To me, as an editor, that seems an enormous absence."[38]

The Review began a year-long celebration of its 50th anniversary with a presentation by Silvers and several contributors at The Town Hall in New York City in February 2013.[39][40] Other events included a program at the New York Public Library in April, called "Literary Journalism: A Discussion", focusing on the editorial process at the Review[41][42] and a reception in November at the Frick Collection.[43][44] During the year, Martin Scorsese filmed a documentary about the history and influence of the Review, and the debates that it has spawned, titled The 50 Year Argument, which premiered in June 2014 at the Sheffield Doc/Fest in England.[45][46] It was later seen at various film festivals, on BBC television and on HBO in the US.[8] Asked how he maintained his "level of meticulousness and determination" after 50 years, Silvers said that the Review "was and is a unique opportunity ... to do what one wants on anything in the world. Now, that is given to hardly any editor, anywhere, anytime. There are no strictures, no limits. Nobody saying you can't do something. No subject, no theme, no idea that can't be addressed in-depth. ... Whatever work is involved is minor compared to the opportunity."[38] A special 50th anniversary issue was dated November 7, 2013. Silvers said:

An independent, critical voice on politics, literature, science, and the arts seems as much needed today as it was when Barbara Epstein and I put out the first edition of the New York Review fifty years ago – perhaps even more so. Electronic forms of communication grow rapidly in every field of life but many of their effects on culture remain obscure and in need of new kinds of critical scrutiny. That will be a central concern of the Review for the years to come.[20]

Ian Buruma, who had been a regular contributor to the Review since 1985, became editor in September 2017.[47] He left the position in September 2018 after backlash over publishing an essay by Jian Ghomeshi, who has been accused by 20 women of sexual assault, and defending the publication in an interview with Slate magazine.[48][49] The Review stated that it did not follow its "usual editorial practices", as the essay "was shown to only one male editor during the editing process", and that Buruma's statement to Slate about the staff of the Review "did not accurately represent their views".[50] Gabriel Winslow-Yost (formerly a senior editor at the Review) and Emily Greenhouse (formerly the managing editor of The New Yorker and earlier an editorial assistant at the Review) were named co-editors in February 2019; Daniel Mendelsohn, a longtime Review contributor, was named to the new position of "editor at large".[51] In February 2021, Greenhouse was made editor of the Review, while Winslow-Yost became a senior editor.[52]

Description edit

The Review has been described as a "kind of magazine ... in which the most interesting and qualified minds of our time would discuss current books and issues in depth ... a literary and critical journal based on the assumption that the discussion of important books was itself an indispensable literary activity."[53][54] Each issue includes a broad range of subject matter, including "articles on art, science, politics and literature."[32] Early on, the editors decided that the Review would "be interested in everything ... no subject would be excluded. Someone is writing a piece about Nascar racing for us; another is working on Veronese."[11] The Review has focused, however, on political topics; as Silvers commented in 2004: "The pieces we have published by such writers as Brian Urquhart, Thomas Powers, Mark Danner and Ronald Dworkin have been reactions to a genuine crisis concerning American destructiveness, American relations with its allies, American protections of its traditions of liberties. ... The aura of patriotic defiance cultivated by the [Bush] Administration, in a fearful atmosphere, had the effect of muffling dissent."[55] Silvers told The New York Times: "The great political issues of power and its abuses have always been natural questions for us."[32]

The Nation gave its view of the political focus of the New York Review of Books in 2004:

The Review took a vocal role in contesting the Vietnam War. ... Around 1970, a sturdy liberalism began to supplant left-wing radicalism at the paper. As Philip Nobile observed in ... 1974 ... the Review returned to its roots and became "a literary magazine on the British nineteenth-century model, which would mix politics and literature in a tough but gentlemanly fashion." ... The publication has always been erudite and authoritative – and because of its analytical rigor and seriousness, frequently essential – but it hasn't always been lively, pungent and readable. ... But the election of George W. Bush, combined with the furies of 9/11, jolted the editors. Since 2001, the Review's temperature has risen and its political outlook has sharpened. ... Prominent [writers for] the Review ... charged into battle not only against the White House but against the lethargic press corps and the "liberal hawk" intellectuals. ... In stark contrast to The New Yorker ... or The New York Times Magazine ..., the Review opposed the Iraq War in a voice that was remarkably consistent and unified.[56]

Over the years, the Review has featured reviews and articles by such international writers and intellectuals, in addition to those already noted, as Timothy Garton Ash, Margaret Atwood, Russell Baker, Saul Bellow, Isaiah Berlin, Harold Bloom, Joseph Brodsky, Ian Buruma, Noam Chomsky, J. M. Coetzee, Frederick Crews, Ronald Dworkin, John Kenneth Galbraith, Masha Gessen, Nadine Gordimer, Stephen Jay Gould, Christopher Hitchens, Tim Judah, Murray Kempton, Paul Krugman, Richard Lewontin, Perry Link, Alison Lurie, Peter Medawar, Daniel Mendelsohn, Bill Moyers, Vladimir Nabokov, Ralph Nader, V. S. Naipaul, Peter G. Peterson, Samantha Power, Nathaniel Rich, Felix Rohatyn, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Searle, Zadie Smith, Timothy Snyder, George Soros, I. F. Stone, Desmond Tutu, John Updike, Derek Walcott, Steven Weinberg, Garry Wills and Tony Judt. According to the National Book Foundation: "From Mary McCarthy and Edmund Wilson to Gore Vidal and Joan Didion, The New York Review of Books has consistently employed the liveliest minds in America to think about, write about, and debate books and the issues they raise."[30]

The Review also devotes space in most issues to poetry, and has featured the work of such poets as Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Ted Hughes, John Ashbery, Richard Wilbur, Seamus Heaney, Octavio Paz, and Czeslaw Milosz.[citation needed] For writers, the "depth [of the articles], and the quality of the people writing for it, has made a Review byline a résumé definer. If one wishes to be thought of as a certain type of writer – of heft, style and a certain gravitas – a Review byline is pretty much the gold standard."[57] In editing a piece, Silvers said that he asked himself "if [the point in any sentence could] be clearer, while also respecting the writer's voice and tone. You have to listen carefully to the tone of the writer's prose and try to adapt to it, but only up to a point. [No change was made without the writers' permission.] ... Writers deserve the final word about their prose."[38]

In addition to domestic matters, the Review covers issues of international concern.[58] In the 1980s, a British commentator noted: "In the 1960s [the Review] opposed American involvement in Vietnam; more recently it has taken a line mildly Keynesian in economics, pro-Israeli but Anti-Zionist, sceptical of Reagan's Latin-American policy".[59] The British newspaper The Independent has described the Review as "the only mainstream American publication to speak out consistently against the war in Iraq."[60] On Middle East coverage, Silvers said, "any serious criticism of Israeli policy will be seen by some as heresy, a form of betrayal. ... [M]uch of what we've published has come from some of the most respected and brilliant Israeli writers ... Amos Elon, Avishai Margalit, David Grossman, David Shulman, among them. What emerges from them is a sense that occupying land and people year after year can only lead to a sad and bad result."[38]

Caricaturist David Levine illustrated The New York Review of Books from 1963 to 2007, giving the paper a distinctive visual image.[34] Levine died in 2009.[61] John Updike, whom Levine drew many times, wrote: "Besides offering us the delight of recognition, his drawings comfort us, in an exacerbated and potentially desperate age, with the sense of a watching presence, an eye informed by an intelligence that has not panicked, a comic art ready to encapsulate the latest apparitions of publicity as well as those historical devils who haunt our unease."[62] Levine contributed more than 3,800 pen-and-ink caricatures of famous writers, artists and politicians for the publication.[62][63] Silvers said: "David combined acute political commentary with a certain kind of joke about the person. He was immensely sensitive to the smallest details – people's shoulders, their feet, their elbows. He was able to find character in these details."[64] The New York Times described Levine's illustrations as "macro-headed, somberly expressive, astringently probing and hardly ever flattering caricatures of intellectuals and athletes, politicians and potentates" that were "replete with exaggeratedly bad haircuts, 5 o'clock shadows, ill-conceived mustaches and other grooming foibles ... to make the famous seem peculiar-looking in order to take them down a peg".[61] In later years, illustrators for the Review included James Ferguson of Financial Times.[65]

The Washington Post described the "lively literary disputes" conducted in the 'letters to the editor' column of the Review as "the closest thing the intellectual world has to bare-knuckle boxing".[3] In addition to reviews, interviews and articles, the paper features extensive advertising from publishers promoting newly published books. It also includes a popular "personals" section that "share[s] a cultivated writing style" with its articles.[36][66] One lonely heart, author Jane Juska, documented the 63 replies to her personal ad in the Review with a 2003 memoir, A Round-Heeled Woman, that was adapted as a play.[67][68] In The Washington Post, Matt Schudel called the personal ads "sometimes laughably highbrow" and recalled that they were "spoofed by Woody Allen in the movie Annie Hall".[69]

Several of the magazine's editorial assistants have become prominent in journalism, academia and literature, including Jean Strouse, Deborah Eisenberg, Mark Danner and A. O. Scott.[70] Another former intern and a contributor to the Review, author Claire Messud, said: "They're incredibly generous about taking the time to go through things. So much of [business today] is about people doing things quickly, with haste. One of the first things to go out the window is a type of graciousness. ... There's a whole sort of rhythm and tone of how they deal with people. I'm sure it was always rare. But it feels incredibly precious now."[57] Still another, Sigrid Nunez, commented of the editors: "You had these two people who were at the top of everything, who had no interest in anything except doing this amazing job. They were strangely without ego."[71]

The Review has published, since 2009, the NYR Daily, which focuses on the news.[72]

Critical reaction edit

The Washington Post calls the Review "a journal of ideas that has helped define intellectual discourse in the English-speaking world for the past four decades. ... By publishing long, thoughtful articles on politics, books and culture, [the editors] defied trends toward glibness, superficiality and the cult of celebrity".[3] The Chicago Tribune praised the paper as "one of the few venues in American life that takes ideas seriously. And it pays readers the ultimate compliment of assuming that we do too."[73] Esquire termed it "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language."[3] Similarly, in a 2006 New York magazine feature, James Atlas stated: "It's an eclectic but impressive mix [of articles] that has made The New York Review of Books the premier journal of the American intellectual elite".[74] The Atlantic commented in 2011 that the Review is written with "a freshness of perspective", and "much of it shapes our most sophisticated public discourse."[75] In celebrating the 35th birthday of the Review in 1998, The New York Times commented, "The N.Y.R. gives off rogue intimations of being fun to put out. It hasn't lost its sneaky nip of mischief".[76]

In 2008, Britain's The Guardian deemed the Review "scholarly without being pedantic, scrupulous without being dry".[77] The same newspaper wrote in 2004:

The ... issues of the Review to date provide a history of the cultural life of the east coast since 1963. It manages to be ... serious with a fierce democratic edge. ... It is one of the last places in the English-speaking world that will publish long essays ... and possibly the very last to combine academic rigour – even the letters to the editor are footnoted – with great clarity of language.[14]

In New York magazine, in February 2011, Oliver Sacks stated that the Review is "one of the great institutions of intellectual life here or anywhere."[78] In 2012, The New York Times described the Review as "elegant, well mannered, immensely learned, a little formal at times, obsessive about clarity and factual correctness and passionately interested in human rights and the way governments violate them."[32]

Throughout its history, the Review has been known generally as a left-liberal journal, what Tom Wolfe called "the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic".[4] A 1997 New York Times article, however, accused the paper of having become "establishmentarian".[79] The paper has, perhaps, had its most effective voice in wartime. According to a 2004 feature in The Nation,

One suspects they yearn for the day when they can return to their normal publishing routine – that gentlemanly pastiche of philosophy, art, classical music, photography, German and Russian history, East European politics, literary fiction – unencumbered by political duties of a confrontational or oppositional nature. That day has not yet arrived. If and when it does, let it be said that the editors met the challenges of the post-9/11 era in a way that most other leading American publications did not, and that The New York Review of Books ... was there when we needed it most.[80]

Sometimes accused of insularity, the Review has been called "The New York Review of Each Other's Books".[81] Philip Nobile expressed a mordant criticism along these lines in his book Intellectual Skywriting: Literary Politics and the New York Review of Books.[74] The Guardian characterized such accusations as "sour grapes".[14] Phillip Lopate commented, in 2017, that Silvers "regarded his contributors as worthy authors, and so why punish them by neglecting their latest work?".[82] In 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "the pages of the 45th anniversary issue, in fact, reveal the actuality of [the paper's] willfully panoramic view".[22]

The Washington Post called the 2013 50th Anniversary issue "gaudy with intellectual firepower. Four Nobel Laureates have bylines. US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer muses on reading Proust. There's the transcript of a long-lost lecture by T. S. Eliot."[57] In 2014, Rachel Cooke wrote in The Observer of a recent issue: "The offer of such an embarrassment of riches is wholly amazing in a world where print journalism increasingly operates in the most threadbare of circumstances".[11] America magazine echoed Zoë Heller's words about the Review: "I like it because it educates me."[83] Lopate adds that the Review "was and is the standard bearer for American intellectual life: a unique repository of thoughtful discourse, unrepentantly highbrow, in a culture increasingly given to dumbing down."[82] Timothy Noah of Politico called it "the country's best and most influential literary journal. ... It's hard to imagine that Hardwick ... would complain today that book reviewing is too polite."[84]

Book-publishing arm edit

The book-publishing arm of the Review is New York Review Books. Established in 1999, it has several imprints: New York Review Books, NYRB Classics, The New York Review Children's Collection, New York Review Comics, NYRB Poets, NYRB Lit and the Calligrams. NYRB Collections publishes collections of articles from frequent Review contributors.[85] The Classics imprint reissues books that have gone out of print in the US, as well as translations of classic books. It has been called "a marvellous literary imprint ... that has put hundreds of wonderful books back on our shelves."[11]

The Robert B. Silvers Foundation edit

The Robert B. Silvers Foundation is a charitable trust established in 2017 by a bequest of the late Robert Silvers, a founding editor of The New York Review of Books.[86] Its annual activities include the Silvers Grants for Work in Progress, given in support of long-form non-fiction projects within the fields cultivated by Silvers as editor of the Review, and the Silvers-Dudley Prizes, awarded for notable achievements in journalism, criticism, and cultural commentary.[87]

Archives edit

The New York Public Library purchased the NYRB archives in 2015.[88]

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ "eCirc for Consumer Magazines", Audit Bureau of Circulations, accessed June 30, 2017
  2. ^ Normally, it is published 20 times a year, with only one issue in each of January, July, August and September. See Tucker, Neely. "The New York Review of Books turns 50", The Washington Post, November 6, 2013
  3. ^ a b c d e f Schudel, Matt. Obituary: "N.Y. Review of Books Founder Barbara Epstein", The Washington Post, June 19, 2006, p. B05
  4. ^ a b Wolfe, Tom. "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's", New York, June 8, 1970, accessed April 20, 2009
  5. ^ Grimes, William. "A. Whitney Ellsworth, First Publisher of New York Review, Dies at 75". The New York Times, June 20, 2011
  6. ^ a b Hardwick, Elizabeth. "The Decline of Book Reviewing", Harpers, October 1959, accessed March 16, 2013
  7. ^ a b Gevisser, Mark. "Robert Silvers on the Paris and New York Reviews", The Paris Review, March 20, 2012
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Fassler, Joe. "A 50-Year Protest for Good Writing", The Atlantic, October 1, 2014
  9. ^ "Elizabeth Hardwick's 'The Decline of Book Reviewing' (1959)", Harper's, January 30, 2013
  10. ^ Meyer, Eugene L. "Jason Epstein '49: Publishing Icon, Perennial Student", Columbia College Today, Spring 2012, p. 44
  11. ^ a b c d Cooke, Rachel. "Robert Silvers interview: 'Someone told me Martin Scorsese might be interested in making a film about us. And he was'", The Observer, The Guardian, 7 June 2014
  12. ^ a b Jason Epstein recounts the story of the initial meeting of the Epsteins, Hardwick and Lowell in "A Strike and a Start: Founding The New York Review", NYR Blog, The New York Review of Books, March 16, 2013
  13. ^ Harvey, Matt. "Brawls and books: Skepticism lives on as New York Review of Books ages but thrives", The Villager, vol. 78, no. 24, November 12–18, 2008, reprinted in Downtown Express 2017-10-16 at the Wayback Machine, Vol. 21, No. 28, November 21, 2008.
  14. ^ a b c d Brown, Andrew. "The writer's editor", The Guardian, January 24, 2004
  15. ^ McGrath, Charles. "Barbara Epstein, Editor and Literary Arbiter, Dies at 77", The New York Times, June 17, 2006, accessed March 21, 2012
  16. ^ Remnick, David. "Barbara Epstein", Barbara Epstein, The New Yorker, July 3, 2006
  17. ^ a b Howard, Gerald. "Out of a newspaper strike dawned a new age in American letters", Salon, February 1, 2013
  18. ^ a b Haglund, David, Aisha Harris, and Alexandra Heimbach. "Was This the Best First Issue of Any Magazine Ever?", Slate magazine, February 1, 2013
  19. ^ Haffner, Peter. "Robert Silvers: We Do What We Want" 2014-08-02 at the Wayback Machine, 032c, Issue #23, Winter 2012/2013, accessed July 21, 2014
  20. ^ a b "The New York Review of Books Announces its 50th Anniversary", Book Business magazine, January 31, 2013
  21. ^ Silvers, Robert and Barbara Epstein. "The Opening Editorial", The New York Review of Books, Issue 1 (1963), reprinted November 7, 2013, accessed October 1, 2014
  22. ^ a b c d Benson, Heidi. "New York Review of Books' Robert Silvers", San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2008
  23. ^ Biography The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
  24. ^ "About the LRB". London Review of Books, accessed 8 June 2011
  25. ^ Grimes, William (20 June 2011). "A. Whitney Ellsworth, First Publisher of New York Review, Dies at 75". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 June 2011.
  26. ^ Erbani, Francesco. "la Rivista dei Libri ha Deciso di Chiudere ma Torna Alfabeta", la Repubblica, May 12, 2010, accessed February 5, 2013 (in Italian)
  27. ^ Blum, David. "Literary Lotto". New York, January 21, 1985, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 38–43, accessed April 25, 2011
  28. ^ McLure, Jason and Ilenia Caia. "Fired by family, Hederman made New York Review second act", Global Journalist, January 11, 2016
  29. ^ Obituary, The New York Times, June 17, 2006
  30. ^ a b , Press release from The National Book Foundation (2006)
  31. ^ Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. "Robert Silvers obituary", The Guardian, March 21, 2017
  32. ^ a b c d e McGrath, Charles. "Editor Not Ready to Write an Ending", The New York Times, March 16, 2012
  33. ^ Bradley, Bill. "Joan Didion on Slouching Towards the Presidency" 2009-02-14 at the Wayback Machine, Vanity Fair, November 11, 2008
  34. ^ a b Neyfakh, Leon. "What's New at The New York Review of Books?", The New York Observer, December 13, 2007
  35. ^ New York Review of Books Blog, accessed April 14, 2010
  36. ^ a b Mohan, Jake. "New York Review of Books Podcast Gets Political (Like It or Not)", October 22, 2008
  37. ^ NYRB podcasts archive. Accessed April 14, 2010.
  38. ^ a b c d Danner, Mark. "In Conversation: Robert Silvers", New York, April 7, 2013
  39. ^ Kirchner, Lauren. "At 50, New York Review of Books celebrates the longevity of a magazine, and a mission", Capital New York, February 6, 2013
  40. ^ Ulin, David L. "The New York Review of Books turns 50", Los Angeles Times, January 3, 2013
  41. ^ "Literary Journalism: A Discussion",
  42. ^ "Celebrating 50 Years of The New York Review of Books", New York Public Library, accessed January 22, 2013
  43. ^ Pellien, Jessica. "Congratulations to The New York Review of Books on Their 50th Anniversary", Princeton University Press Blog, November 8, 2013
  44. ^ Bloomgarden-Smoke, Kara. "The New York Review of Books Keeps the Golden Jubilee Celebration Going All Year", The New York Observer, November 13, 2013
  45. ^ Barnes, Henry. "Sheffield Doc/Fest 2014 review: The 50 Year Argument - Scorsese's love letter to old media", The Guardian, June 7, 2014
  46. ^ "Martin Scorsese premiere for Sheffield Doc/Fest", BBC, May 8, 2014; Roddy, Michael. "Scorsese says NY Review film meant as guide to young" 2014-02-26 at the Wayback Machine, Chicago Tribune, February 15, 2014; and Han, Angie. "Martin Scorsese Has a New York Review of Books Doc Premiering in Berlin", Slashfilm.com, January 28, 2014
  47. ^ Williams, John. "Ian Buruma on a New Era at The New York Review of Books", The New York Times, September 9, 2017
  48. ^ Pilkington, Ed. "New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma departs amid outrage over essay", The Guardian, September 19, 2018; and Vanderhoof, Erin. "How Ian Buruma’s New York Review of Books Ouster Became Inevitable", Vanity Fair, September 19, 2018
  49. ^ O'Rourke, Meghan. "What Magazines Can’t Do in the Age of #MeToo", The Atlantic, September 21, 2018
  50. ^ Williams, John. "New York Review of Books Acknowledges 'Failures' in a #MeToo Essay", The New York Times, September 24, 2018
  51. ^ Williams, John. "New York Review Names 2 Top Editors 5 Months After Ian Buruma's Departure", The New York Times, February 25, 2019
  52. ^ Williams, John. "Emily Nemens Departs as Paris Review Editor", The New York Times, March 3, 2021
  53. ^ Profile of the Review 2007-03-18 at the Wayback Machine, US Consulate General in China
  54. ^ "About the Review", The New York Review of Books, accessed October 1, 2014
  55. ^ Sherman, Scott. "The Rebirth of the NYRB", The Nation, May 20, 2004, p. 2
  56. ^ Sherman, Scott. "The Rebirth of the NYRB", The Nation, May 20, 2004, p. 1, accessed 18 August 2010
  57. ^ a b c Tucker, Neely. "The New York Review of Books turns 50", The Washington Post, November 6, 2013
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  59. ^ Fender, Stephen. "The New York Review of Books", The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 16, Literary Periodicals Special Number (1986), p. 189 (subscription required)
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  61. ^ a b Weber, Bruce (December 29, 2009). "David Levine, Astringent Illustrator, Dies at 83". The New York Times. Retrieved December 30, 2009.
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  65. ^ Grossman, Ron. "New York Review of Books personal ads reveal intellectuals' romantic ideals", Chicago Tribune, March 13, 2012
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  67. ^ Spencer, Charles. "A Round-Heeled Woman, Aldwych Theatre, review", The Telegraph, December 1, 2011, accessed January 18, 2015
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  73. ^ a b Atlas, James. "The Ma and Pa of the Intelligentsia", New York, September 18, 2006
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  76. ^ "In praise of ... New York Review of Books", Editorial, The Guardian, October 25, 2008, p. 34
  77. ^ Salisbury, Vanita. "Oliver Sacks Has Luxuriant Eyelashes". New York magazine, February 9, 2011
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  87. ^ Gajanan, Mahita. "New York Review of Books archive acquired by New York Public Library", The Guardian, November 17, 2015

External links edit

  • Official website
External videos
  Robert Silvers on the history and operations of The New York Review of Books. C-SPAN, September 23, 1997.
  Barbara Epstein on The New York Review of Books and its 35-year history. C-SPAN, September 2, 1998.
  New York Review of Books: 35th Anniversary. Authors and poets read from their own selected books and poetry. C-SPAN, October 19, 1998.
  • Neyfakh, Leon. "Mr. Silvers, Will You Peek at My Books?" New York Observer, February 6, 2008.
  • 2011 NPR interview of Silvers about the Review
  • Danner, Mark. "Editing the New York Review of Books: A Conversation with Robert B. Silvers", April 28, 1999.

November 28, 2023
york, review, books, york, review, redirects, here, other, uses, york, review, disambiguation, confused, with, york, times, book, review, nyrev, nyrb, semi, monthly, magazine, with, articles, literature, culture, economics, science, current, affairs, published. New York Review redirects here For other uses see New York Review disambiguation Not to be confused with The New York Times Book Review The New York Review of Books or NYREV or NYRB is a semi monthly magazine 2 with articles on literature culture economics science and current affairs Published in New York City it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of important books is an indispensable literary activity Esquire called it the premier literary intellectual magazine in the English language 3 In 1970 writer Tom Wolfe described it as the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic 4 The New York Review of BooksCategoriesLiteratureculturecurrent affairsFrequencyApproximately semi monthlyPublisherRea S HedermanTotal circulation 2017 132 522 1 First issueFebruary 1 1963CountryUnited StatesBased inNew York City New YorkLanguageEnglishWebsitenybooks wbr comISSN0028 7504The Review publishes long form reviews and essays often by well known writers original poetry and has letters and personals advertising sections that had attracted critical comment In 1979 the magazine founded the London Review of Books which soon became independent In 1990 it founded an Italian edition la Rivista dei Libri published until 2010 The Review has a book publishing division established in 1999 called New York Review Books which publishes reprints of classics as well as collections and children s books Since 2010 the journal has hosted a blog written by its contributors The Review celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013 A Martin Scorsese film called The 50 Year Argument documents the history and influence of the paper over its first half century Robert B Silvers and Barbara Epstein edited the paper together from its founding in 1963 until Epstein s death in 2006 From then until his death in 2017 Silvers was the sole editor Ian Buruma became editor in September 2017 and left the post in September 2018 Gabriel Winslow Yost and Emily Greenhouse became co editors in February 2019 in February 2021 Greenhouse was made editor Contents 1 History and description 1 1 Early years 1 2 Since 1979 1 3 Description 2 Critical reaction 3 Book publishing arm 4 The Robert B Silvers Foundation 5 Archives 6 See also 7 References 8 External linksHistory and description editEarly years edit The New York Review was founded by Robert B Silvers and Barbara Epstein together with publisher A Whitney Ellsworth 5 and writer Elizabeth Hardwick They were backed and encouraged by Epstein s husband Jason Epstein a vice president at Random House and editor of Vintage Books and Hardwick s husband poet Robert Lowell In 1959 Hardwick had published an essay The Decline of Book Reviewing in Harper s 6 where Silvers was then an editor in a special issue that he edited called Writing in America 7 8 Her essay was an indictment of American book reviews of the time light little article s that she decried as lobotomized passionless praise and denounced as blandly respectfully denying whatever vivacious interest there might be in books or in literary matters generally 9 The group was inspired to found a new magazine to publish thoughtful probing lively reviews 10 featuring what Hardwick called the unusual the difficult the lengthy the intransigent and above all the interesting 6 11 During the 1962 63 New York City newspaper strike when The New York Times and several other newspapers suspended publication Hardwick Lowell and the Epsteins seized the chance to establish the sort of vigorous book review that Hardwick had imagined 12 Jason Epstein knew that book publishers would advertise their books in the new publication since they had no other outlet for promoting new books 13 The group turned to the Epsteins friend Silvers who had been an editor at The Paris Review and was still at Harper s 14 to edit the publication and Silvers asked Barbara Epstein to co edit with him 8 12 She was known as the editor at Doubleday of Anne Frank s Diary of a Young Girl among other books and then worked at Dutton McGraw Hill and The Partisan Review 15 Silvers and Epstein sent books to the writers we knew and admired most We asked for three thousand words in three weeks in order to show what a book review should be and practically everyone came through No one mentioned money 8 The first issue of the Review was published on February 1 1963 and sold out its printing of 100 000 copies 3 It prompted nearly 1 000 letters to the editors asking for the Review to continue 8 The New Yorker called it surely the best first issue of any magazine ever 16 Salon later commented that the list of contributors in the first issue represented a shock and awe demonstration of the intellectual firepower available for deployment in mid century America and almost equally impressive of the art of editorial networking and jawboning This was the party everyone who was anyone wanted to attend the Black and White Ball of the critical elite 17 The Review announced the arrival of a particular sensibility the engaged literary post war progressive intellectual who was concerned with civil rights and feminism as well as fiction and poetry and theater 18 The first issue projected a confidence in the unquestioned rightness of the liberal consensus in the centrality of literature and its power to convey meaning in the solubility of our problems through the application of intelligence and good will and in the coherence and clear hierarchy of the intellectual world 17 After the success of the first issue the editors assembled a second issue to demonstrate that the Review was not a one shot affair 8 The founders then collected investments from a circle of friends and acquaintances and Ellsworth joined as publisher 8 19 The Review began regular biweekly publication in November 1963 20 The New York Review does not pretend to cover all the books of the season or even all the important ones Neither time nor space however have been spent on books which are trivial in their intentions or venal in their effects except occasionally to reduce a temporarily inflated reputation or to call attention to a fraud The hope of the editors is to suggest however imperfectly some of the qualities which a responsible literary journal should have and to discover whether there is in America not only the need for such a review but the demand for one From the only editorial ever published in the Review 21 Silvers said of the editors philosophy that there was no subject we couldn t deal with And if there was no book on a subject we would deal with it anyway We tried hard to avoid books that were simply competent rehearsals of familiar subjects and we hoped to find books that would establish something fresh something original 8 In particular We felt you had to have a political analysis of the nature of power in America who had it who was affected The editors also shared an intense admiration for wonderful writers 22 But Silvers noted it is a mystery whether reviews have a calculable political and social impact or will even gain attention You mustn t think too much about influence if you find something interesting yourself that should be enough 8 Well known writers were willing to contribute articles for the initial issues of the Review without pay because it offered them a chance to write a new kind of book review As Mark Gevisser explained The essays made the book review form not just a report on the book and a judgment of the book but an essay in itself And that I think startled everyone that a book review could be exciting in that way could be provocative in that way 7 Early issues included articles by such writers as Hardwick Lowell Jason Epstein Hannah Arendt W H Auden Saul Bellow John Berryman Truman Capote Paul Goodman 23 Lillian Hellman Irving Howe Alfred Kazin Anthony Lewis Dwight Macdonald Norman Mailer Mary McCarthy Norman Podhoretz Philip Rahv Adrienne Rich Susan Sontag William Styron Gore Vidal Robert Penn Warren and Edmund Wilson The Review pointedly published interviews with European political dissidents including Alexander Solzhenitsyn Andrei Sakharov and Vaclav Havel 22 18 Since 1979 edit During the year long lockout at The Times in London in 1979 the Review founded a daughter publication the London Review of Books For the first six months this journal appeared as an insert in the New York Review of Books but it became an independent publication in 1980 24 25 In 1990 the Review founded an Italian edition la Rivista dei Libri It was published for two decades until May 2010 26 For over 40 years Silvers and Epstein edited the Review together 3 In 1984 Silvers Epstein and their partners sold the Review to publisher Rea S Hederman 27 who still owns the paper 28 but the two continued as its editors 14 In 2006 Epstein died of cancer at the age of 77 29 In awarding to Epstein and Silvers its 2006 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community the National Book Foundation stated With The New York Review of Books Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein raised book reviewing to an art and made the discussion of books a lively provocative and intellectual activity 30 After Epstein s death Silvers was the sole editor until his own death in 2017 31 Asked about who might succeed him as editor Silvers told The New York Times I can think of several people who would be marvelous editors Some of them work here some used to work here and some are just people we know I think they would put out a terrific paper but it would be different 32 In 2008 the Review celebrated its 45th anniversary with a panel discussion at the New York Public Library moderated by Silvers discussing What Happens Now in the United States after the 2008 election of Barack Obama as president Panelists included Review contributors such as Joan Didion Garry Wills novelist and literary critic Darryl Pinckney political commentator Michael Tomasky and Columbia University professor and contributor Andrew Delbanco 33 The 45th anniversary edition of the Review November 20 2008 began with a posthumous piece by Edmund Wilson who wrote for the paper s first issue in 1963 22 nbsp Robert Silvers in 2012In 2008 the paper moved its headquarters from Midtown Manhattan to 435 Hudson Street located in the West Village 34 In 2010 it launched a blog section of its website 35 that The New York Times called lively and opinionated 32 and it hosts podcasts 36 37 Asked in 2013 how social media might affect the subject matter of the Review Silvers commented I might imagine a witty aphoristic almost Oscar Wildean anthology of remarks drawn from the millions and millions of tweets Or from comments that follow on blogs Facebook is a medium in which privacy is or at least is thought to be in some way crucial And so there seems a resistance to intrusive criticism We seem at the edge of a vast expanding ocean of words growing without any critical perspective whatever being brought to bear on it To me as an editor that seems an enormous absence 38 The Review began a year long celebration of its 50th anniversary with a presentation by Silvers and several contributors at The Town Hall in New York City in February 2013 39 40 Other events included a program at the New York Public Library in April called Literary Journalism A Discussion focusing on the editorial process at the Review 41 42 and a reception in November at the Frick Collection 43 44 During the year Martin Scorsese filmed a documentary about the history and influence of the Review and the debates that it has spawned titled The 50 Year Argument which premiered in June 2014 at the Sheffield Doc Fest in England 45 46 It was later seen at various film festivals on BBC television and on HBO in the US 8 Asked how he maintained his level of meticulousness and determination after 50 years Silvers said that the Review was and is a unique opportunity to do what one wants on anything in the world Now that is given to hardly any editor anywhere anytime There are no strictures no limits Nobody saying you can t do something No subject no theme no idea that can t be addressed in depth Whatever work is involved is minor compared to the opportunity 38 A special 50th anniversary issue was dated November 7 2013 Silvers said An independent critical voice on politics literature science and the arts seems as much needed today as it was when Barbara Epstein and I put out the first edition of the New York Review fifty years ago perhaps even more so Electronic forms of communication grow rapidly in every field of life but many of their effects on culture remain obscure and in need of new kinds of critical scrutiny That will be a central concern of the Review for the years to come 20 Ian Buruma who had been a regular contributor to the Review since 1985 became editor in September 2017 47 He left the position in September 2018 after backlash over publishing an essay by Jian Ghomeshi who has been accused by 20 women of sexual assault and defending the publication in an interview with Slate magazine 48 49 The Review stated that it did not follow its usual editorial practices as the essay was shown to only one male editor during the editing process and that Buruma s statement to Slate about the staff of the Review did not accurately represent their views 50 Gabriel Winslow Yost formerly a senior editor at the Review and Emily Greenhouse formerly the managing editor of The New Yorker and earlier an editorial assistant at the Review were named co editors in February 2019 Daniel Mendelsohn a longtime Review contributor was named to the new position of editor at large 51 In February 2021 Greenhouse was made editor of the Review while Winslow Yost became a senior editor 52 Description edit The Review has been described as a kind of magazine in which the most interesting and qualified minds of our time would discuss current books and issues in depth a literary and critical journal based on the assumption that the discussion of important books was itself an indispensable literary activity 53 54 Each issue includes a broad range of subject matter including articles on art science politics and literature 32 Early on the editors decided that the Review would be interested in everything no subject would be excluded Someone is writing a piece about Nascar racing for us another is working on Veronese 11 The Review has focused however on political topics as Silvers commented in 2004 The pieces we have published by such writers as Brian Urquhart Thomas Powers Mark Danner and Ronald Dworkin have been reactions to a genuine crisis concerning American destructiveness American relations with its allies American protections of its traditions of liberties The aura of patriotic defiance cultivated by the Bush Administration in a fearful atmosphere had the effect of muffling dissent 55 Silvers told The New York Times The great political issues of power and its abuses have always been natural questions for us 32 The Nation gave its view of the political focus of the New York Review of Books in 2004 The Review took a vocal role in contesting the Vietnam War Around 1970 a sturdy liberalism began to supplant left wing radicalism at the paper As Philip Nobile observed in 1974 the Review returned to its roots and became a literary magazine on the British nineteenth century model which would mix politics and literature in a tough but gentlemanly fashion The publication has always been erudite and authoritative and because of its analytical rigor and seriousness frequently essential but it hasn t always been lively pungent and readable But the election of George W Bush combined with the furies of 9 11 jolted the editors Since 2001 the Review s temperature has risen and its political outlook has sharpened Prominent writers for the Review charged into battle not only against the White House but against the lethargic press corps and the liberal hawk intellectuals In stark contrast to The New Yorker or The New York Times Magazine the Review opposed the Iraq War in a voice that was remarkably consistent and unified 56 Over the years the Review has featured reviews and articles by such international writers and intellectuals in addition to those already noted as Timothy Garton Ash Margaret Atwood Russell Baker Saul Bellow Isaiah Berlin Harold Bloom Joseph Brodsky Ian Buruma Noam Chomsky J M Coetzee Frederick Crews Ronald Dworkin John Kenneth Galbraith Masha Gessen Nadine Gordimer Stephen Jay Gould Christopher Hitchens Tim Judah Murray Kempton Paul Krugman Richard Lewontin Perry Link Alison Lurie Peter Medawar Daniel Mendelsohn Bill Moyers Vladimir Nabokov Ralph Nader V S Naipaul Peter G Peterson Samantha Power Nathaniel Rich Felix Rohatyn Jean Paul Sartre John Searle Zadie Smith Timothy Snyder George Soros I F Stone Desmond Tutu John Updike Derek Walcott Steven Weinberg Garry Wills and Tony Judt According to the National Book Foundation From Mary McCarthy and Edmund Wilson to Gore Vidal and Joan Didion The New York Review of Books has consistently employed the liveliest minds in America to think about write about and debate books and the issues they raise 30 The Review also devotes space in most issues to poetry and has featured the work of such poets as Robert Lowell John Berryman Ted Hughes John Ashbery Richard Wilbur Seamus Heaney Octavio Paz and Czeslaw Milosz citation needed For writers the depth of the articles and the quality of the people writing for it has made a Review byline a resume definer If one wishes to be thought of as a certain type of writer of heft style and a certain gravitas a Review byline is pretty much the gold standard 57 In editing a piece Silvers said that he asked himself if the point in any sentence could be clearer while also respecting the writer s voice and tone You have to listen carefully to the tone of the writer s prose and try to adapt to it but only up to a point No change was made without the writers permission Writers deserve the final word about their prose 38 In addition to domestic matters the Review covers issues of international concern 58 In the 1980s a British commentator noted In the 1960s the Review opposed American involvement in Vietnam more recently it has taken a line mildly Keynesian in economics pro Israeli but Anti Zionist sceptical of Reagan s Latin American policy 59 The British newspaper The Independent has described the Review as the only mainstream American publication to speak out consistently against the war in Iraq 60 On Middle East coverage Silvers said any serious criticism of Israeli policy will be seen by some as heresy a form of betrayal M uch of what we ve published has come from some of the most respected and brilliant Israeli writers Amos Elon Avishai Margalit David Grossman David Shulman among them What emerges from them is a sense that occupying land and people year after year can only lead to a sad and bad result 38 Caricaturist David Levine illustrated The New York Review of Books from 1963 to 2007 giving the paper a distinctive visual image 34 Levine died in 2009 61 John Updike whom Levine drew many times wrote Besides offering us the delight of recognition his drawings comfort us in an exacerbated and potentially desperate age with the sense of a watching presence an eye informed by an intelligence that has not panicked a comic art ready to encapsulate the latest apparitions of publicity as well as those historical devils who haunt our unease 62 Levine contributed more than 3 800 pen and ink caricatures of famous writers artists and politicians for the publication 62 63 Silvers said David combined acute political commentary with a certain kind of joke about the person He was immensely sensitive to the smallest details people s shoulders their feet their elbows He was able to find character in these details 64 The New York Times described Levine s illustrations as macro headed somberly expressive astringently probing and hardly ever flattering caricatures of intellectuals and athletes politicians and potentates that were replete with exaggeratedly bad haircuts 5 o clock shadows ill conceived mustaches and other grooming foibles to make the famous seem peculiar looking in order to take them down a peg 61 In later years illustrators for the Review included James Ferguson of Financial Times 65 The Washington Post described the lively literary disputes conducted in the letters to the editor column of the Review as the closest thing the intellectual world has to bare knuckle boxing 3 In addition to reviews interviews and articles the paper features extensive advertising from publishers promoting newly published books It also includes a popular personals section that share s a cultivated writing style with its articles 36 66 One lonely heart author Jane Juska documented the 63 replies to her personal ad in the Review with a 2003 memoir A Round Heeled Woman that was adapted as a play 67 68 In The Washington Post Matt Schudel called the personal ads sometimes laughably highbrow and recalled that they were spoofed by Woody Allen in the movie Annie Hall 69 Several of the magazine s editorial assistants have become prominent in journalism academia and literature including Jean Strouse Deborah Eisenberg Mark Danner and A O Scott 70 Another former intern and a contributor to the Review author Claire Messud said They re incredibly generous about taking the time to go through things So much of business today is about people doing things quickly with haste One of the first things to go out the window is a type of graciousness There s a whole sort of rhythm and tone of how they deal with people I m sure it was always rare But it feels incredibly precious now 57 Still another Sigrid Nunez commented of the editors You had these two people who were at the top of everything who had no interest in anything except doing this amazing job They were strangely without ego 71 The Review has published since 2009 the NYR Daily which focuses on the news 72 Critical reaction editThe Washington Post calls the Review a journal of ideas that has helped define intellectual discourse in the English speaking world for the past four decades By publishing long thoughtful articles on politics books and culture the editors defied trends toward glibness superficiality and the cult of celebrity 3 The Chicago Tribune praised the paper as one of the few venues in American life that takes ideas seriously And it pays readers the ultimate compliment of assuming that we do too 73 Esquire termed it the premier literary intellectual magazine in the English language 3 Similarly in a 2006 New York magazine feature James Atlas stated It s an eclectic but impressive mix of articles that has made The New York Review of Books the premier journal of the American intellectual elite 74 The Atlantic commented in 2011 that the Review is written with a freshness of perspective and much of it shapes our most sophisticated public discourse 75 In celebrating the 35th birthday of the Review in 1998 The New York Times commented The N Y R gives off rogue intimations of being fun to put out It hasn t lost its sneaky nip of mischief 76 In 2008 Britain s The Guardian deemed the Review scholarly without being pedantic scrupulous without being dry 77 The same newspaper wrote in 2004 The issues of the Review to date provide a history of the cultural life of the east coast since 1963 It manages to be serious with a fierce democratic edge It is one of the last places in the English speaking world that will publish long essays and possibly the very last to combine academic rigour even the letters to the editor are footnoted with great clarity of language 14 In New York magazine in February 2011 Oliver Sacks stated that the Review is one of the great institutions of intellectual life here or anywhere 78 In 2012 The New York Times described the Review as elegant well mannered immensely learned a little formal at times obsessive about clarity and factual correctness and passionately interested in human rights and the way governments violate them 32 Throughout its history the Review has been known generally as a left liberal journal what Tom Wolfe called the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic 4 A 1997 New York Times article however accused the paper of having become establishmentarian 79 The paper has perhaps had its most effective voice in wartime According to a 2004 feature in The Nation One suspects they yearn for the day when they can return to their normal publishing routine that gentlemanly pastiche of philosophy art classical music photography German and Russian history East European politics literary fiction unencumbered by political duties of a confrontational or oppositional nature That day has not yet arrived If and when it does let it be said that the editors met the challenges of the post 9 11 era in a way that most other leading American publications did not and that The New York Review of Books was there when we needed it most 80 Sometimes accused of insularity the Review has been called The New York Review of Each Other s Books 81 Philip Nobile expressed a mordant criticism along these lines in his book Intellectual Skywriting Literary Politics and the New York Review of Books 74 The Guardian characterized such accusations as sour grapes 14 Phillip Lopate commented in 2017 that Silvers regarded his contributors as worthy authors and so why punish them by neglecting their latest work 82 In 2008 the San Francisco Chronicle wrote the pages of the 45th anniversary issue in fact reveal the actuality of the paper s willfully panoramic view 22 The Washington Post called the 2013 50th Anniversary issue gaudy with intellectual firepower Four Nobel Laureates have bylines US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer muses on reading Proust There s the transcript of a long lost lecture by T S Eliot 57 In 2014 Rachel Cooke wrote in The Observer of a recent issue The offer of such an embarrassment of riches is wholly amazing in a world where print journalism increasingly operates in the most threadbare of circumstances 11 America magazine echoed Zoe Heller s words about the Review I like it because it educates me 83 Lopate adds that the Review was and is the standard bearer for American intellectual life a unique repository of thoughtful discourse unrepentantly highbrow in a culture increasingly given to dumbing down 82 Timothy Noah of Politico called it the country s best and most influential literary journal It s hard to imagine that Hardwick would complain today that book reviewing is too polite 84 Book publishing arm editThe book publishing arm of the Review is New York Review Books Established in 1999 it has several imprints New York Review Books NYRB Classics The New York Review Children s Collection New York Review Comics NYRB Poets NYRB Lit and the Calligrams NYRB Collections publishes collections of articles from frequent Review contributors 85 The Classics imprint reissues books that have gone out of print in the US as well as translations of classic books It has been called a marvellous literary imprint that has put hundreds of wonderful books back on our shelves 11 The Robert B Silvers Foundation editThe Robert B Silvers Foundation is a charitable trust established in 2017 by a bequest of the late Robert Silvers a founding editor of The New York Review of Books 86 Its annual activities include the Silvers Grants for Work in Progress given in support of long form non fiction projects within the fields cultivated by Silvers as editor of the Review and the Silvers Dudley Prizes awarded for notable achievements in journalism criticism and cultural commentary 87 Archives editThe New York Public Library purchased the NYRB archives in 2015 88 See also editThe New York Times Book Review Media in New York City GrantaReferences edit eCirc for Consumer Magazines Audit Bureau of Circulations accessed June 30 2017 Normally it is published 20 times a year with only one issue in each of January July August and September See Tucker Neely The New York Review of Books turns 50 The Washington Post November 6 2013 a b c d e f Schudel Matt Obituary N Y Review of Books Founder Barbara Epstein The Washington Post June 19 2006 p B05 a b Wolfe Tom Radical Chic That Party at Lenny s New York June 8 1970 accessed April 20 2009 Grimes William A Whitney Ellsworth First Publisher of New York Review Dies at 75 The New York Times June 20 2011 a b Hardwick Elizabeth The Decline of Book Reviewing Harpers October 1959 accessed March 16 2013 a b Gevisser Mark Robert Silvers on the Paris and New York Reviews The Paris Review March 20 2012 a b c d e f g h i Fassler Joe A 50 Year Protest for Good Writing The Atlantic October 1 2014 Elizabeth Hardwick s The Decline of Book Reviewing 1959 Harper s January 30 2013 Meyer Eugene L Jason Epstein 49 Publishing Icon Perennial Student Columbia College Today Spring 2012 p 44 a b c d Cooke Rachel Robert Silvers interview Someone told me Martin Scorsese might be interested in making a film about us And he was The Observer The Guardian 7 June 2014 a b Jason Epstein recounts the story of the initial meeting of the Epsteins Hardwick and Lowell in A Strike and a Start Founding The New York Review NYR Blog The New York Review of Books March 16 2013 Harvey Matt Brawls and books Skepticism lives on as New York Review of Books ages but thrives The Villager vol 78 no 24 November 12 18 2008 reprinted in Downtown Express Archived 2017 10 16 at the Wayback Machine Vol 21 No 28 November 21 2008 a b c d Brown Andrew The writer s editor The Guardian January 24 2004 McGrath Charles Barbara Epstein Editor and Literary Arbiter Dies at 77 The New York Times June 17 2006 accessed March 21 2012 Remnick David Barbara Epstein Barbara Epstein The New Yorker July 3 2006 a b Howard Gerald Out of a newspaper strike dawned a new age in American letters Salon February 1 2013 a b Haglund David Aisha Harris and Alexandra Heimbach Was This the Best First Issue of Any Magazine Ever Slate magazine February 1 2013 Haffner Peter Robert Silvers We Do What We Want Archived 2014 08 02 at the Wayback Machine 032c Issue 23 Winter 2012 2013 accessed July 21 2014 a b The New York Review of Books Announces its 50th Anniversary Book Business magazine January 31 2013 Silvers Robert and Barbara Epstein The Opening Editorial The New York Review of Books Issue 1 1963 reprinted November 7 2013 accessed October 1 2014 a b c d Benson Heidi New York Review of Books Robert Silvers San Francisco Chronicle November 9 2008 Biography The New York Review of Books Retrieved 13 September 2013 About the LRB London Review of Books accessed 8 June 2011 Grimes William 20 June 2011 A Whitney Ellsworth First Publisher of New York Review Dies at 75 The New York Times Retrieved 20 June 2011 Erbani Francesco la Rivista dei Libri ha Deciso di Chiudere ma Torna Alfabeta la Repubblica May 12 2010 accessed February 5 2013 in Italian Blum David Literary Lotto New York January 21 1985 Vol 18 No 3 pp 38 43 accessed April 25 2011 McLure Jason and Ilenia Caia Fired by family Hederman made New York Review second act Global Journalist January 11 2016 Obituary The New York Times June 17 2006 a b Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein to Be Honored Press release from The National Book Foundation 2006 Wheatcroft Geoffrey Robert Silvers obituary The Guardian March 21 2017 a b c d e McGrath Charles Editor Not Ready to Write an Ending The New York Times March 16 2012 Bradley Bill Joan Didion on Slouching Towards the Presidency Archived 2009 02 14 at the Wayback Machine Vanity Fair November 11 2008 a b Neyfakh Leon What s New at The New York Review of Books The New York Observer December 13 2007 New York Review of Books Blog accessed April 14 2010 a b Mohan Jake New York Review of Books Podcast Gets Political Like It or Not October 22 2008 NYRB podcasts archive Accessed April 14 2010 a b c d Danner Mark In Conversation Robert Silvers New York April 7 2013 Kirchner Lauren At 50 New York Review of Books celebrates the longevity of a magazine and a mission Capital New York February 6 2013 Ulin David L The New York Review of Books turns 50 Los Angeles Times January 3 2013 Literary Journalism A Discussion Celebrating 50 Years of The New York Review of Books New York Public Library accessed January 22 2013 Pellien Jessica Congratulations to The New York Review of Books on Their 50th Anniversary Princeton University Press Blog November 8 2013 Bloomgarden Smoke Kara The New York Review of Books Keeps the Golden Jubilee Celebration Going All Year The New York Observer November 13 2013 Barnes Henry Sheffield Doc Fest 2014 review The 50 Year Argument Scorsese s love letter to old media The Guardian June 7 2014 Martin Scorsese premiere for Sheffield Doc Fest BBC May 8 2014 Roddy Michael Scorsese says NY Review film meant as guide to young Archived 2014 02 26 at the Wayback Machine Chicago Tribune February 15 2014 and Han Angie Martin Scorsese Has a New York Review of Books Doc Premiering in Berlin Slashfilm com January 28 2014 Williams John Ian Buruma on a New Era at The New York Review of Books The New York Times September 9 2017 Pilkington Ed New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma departs amid outrage over essay The Guardian September 19 2018 and Vanderhoof Erin How Ian Buruma s New York Review of Books Ouster Became Inevitable Vanity Fair September 19 2018 O Rourke Meghan What Magazines Can t Do in the Age of MeToo The Atlantic September 21 2018 Williams John New York Review of Books Acknowledges Failures in a MeToo Essay The New York Times September 24 2018 Williams John New York Review Names 2 Top Editors 5 Months After Ian Buruma s Departure The New York Times February 25 2019 Williams John Emily Nemens Departs as Paris Review Editor The New York Times March 3 2021 Profile of the Review Archived 2007 03 18 at the Wayback Machine US Consulate General in China About the Review The New York Review of Books accessed October 1 2014 Sherman Scott The Rebirth of the NYRB The Nation May 20 2004 p 2 Sherman Scott The Rebirth of the NYRB The Nation May 20 2004 p 1 accessed 18 August 2010 a b c Tucker Neely The New York Review of Books turns 50 The Washington Post November 6 2013 Silvers Robert B Barbara Epstein Rea S Hederman eds 1993 The First Anthology Thirty Years of the New York Review New York New York Review of Books ISBN 0 940322 01 3 Fender Stephen The New York Review of Books The Yearbook of English Studies Vol 16 Literary Periodicals Special Number 1986 p 189 subscription required O Hagan Andrew Barbara Epstein Obituaries The Independent June 20 2006 accessed March 13 2012 a b Weber Bruce December 29 2009 David Levine Astringent Illustrator Dies at 83 The New York Times Retrieved December 30 2009 a b David Levine Gallery New York Review of Books accessed April 15 2009 Margolick David Levine in Winter Vanity Fair November 2008 Wiener Jon Jon Wiener interviews Robert Silvers Los Angeles Review of Books June 9 2013 Ferguson James Notes on Robert Silvers Financial Times March 24 2017 Grossman Ron New York Review of Books personal ads reveal intellectuals romantic ideals Chicago Tribune March 13 2012 Shenton Mark A Round Heeled Woman Starring Sharon Gless to Transfer to West End s Aldwych Theatre Playbill November 4 2011 accessed January 18 2015 Spencer Charles A Round Heeled Woman Aldwych Theatre review The Telegraph December 1 2011 accessed January 18 2015 Schudel Matt Robert Silvers a founding editor of New York Review of Books dies at 87 The Washington Post March 21 2017 The Amazing Human Launching Pads Who Runs New York New York magazine September 26 2010 Mason Wyatt Sigrid Nunez s Art of Noticing The New York Times October 30 2023 NYR Daily The New York Review of Books Retrieved March 15 2019 Keller Julia Farewell to a champion of ideas Chicago Tribune June 26 2006 accessed October 1 2014 a b Atlas James The Ma and Pa of the Intelligentsia New York September 18 2006 Osnos Peter The Phenomenal New York Review of Books The Atlantic December 13 2011 Wolcott James 35 Years of Fireworks The New York Times October 4 1998 In praise of New York Review of Books Editorial The Guardian October 25 2008 p 34 Salisbury Vanita Oliver Sacks Has Luxuriant Eyelashes New York magazine February 9 2011 Scott Janny November 1 1997 Ideas One Mind But What a Mind Defining the Passions of the Liberal Elite for Over 2 Decades The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved April 8 2021 Sherman Scott The Rebirth of the NYRB The Nation May 20 2004 p 5 Bloom Alexander Prodigal Sons The New York Intellectuals and Their World Oxford University Press 1987 ISBN 0 19 505177 7 p 327 a b Lopate Philip Robert Silvers In memoriam The American Scholar March 31 2017 Reidy Maurice Timothy Minds at Work America magazine September 15 2014 Noah Timothy Robert Silvers New York s Presiding Man of Letters Politico December 28 2017 New York Review Books About Us The New York Review of Books accessed March 9 2019 The New York Review of Books announces new editorial lineup and the creation of the Robert B Silvers Foundation The New York Review of Books accessed July 14 2020 The Robert B Silvers Foundation The Robert B Silvers Foundation Retrieved July 14 2020 Gajanan Mahita New York Review of Books archive acquired by New York Public Library The Guardian November 17 2015External links editOfficial websiteExternal videos nbsp Robert Silvers on the history and operations of The New York Review of Books C SPAN September 23 1997 nbsp Barbara Epstein on The New York Review of Books and its 35 year history C SPAN September 2 1998 nbsp New York Review of Books 35th Anniversary Authors and poets read from their own selected books and poetry C SPAN October 19 1998 Neyfakh Leon Mr Silvers Will You Peek at My Books New York Observer February 6 2008 2011 NPR interview of Silvers about the Review Danner Mark Editing the New York Review of Books A Conversation with Robert B Silvers April 28 1999 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The New York Review of Books amp oldid 1182908094, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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