New York Review of Books

New York Review of Books
source
Title	New York Review of Books
Category	Literary, cultural, political
Frequency	Biweekly
Founded	1963
Country	United States
Based	New York City
Language	English

New York Review of Books is an American magazine of intellectual commentary and literary criticism founded in 1963 in New York City by a group of writers and editors responding to a newspaper strike. It combines long-form essays and reviews on literature, politics, history, science, and the arts, featuring contributors from across the international cultural and academic scenes. The publication has been associated with debates on Vietnam War, Cold War, Civil Rights Movement, Middle East conflicts, and numerous literary controversies, publishing responses that connect to figures across literature, politics, and scholarship.

History

The magazine was established in 1963 by Robert Silvers, Barbara Epstein, Jason Epstein, Elizabeth Hardwick, and others amid the backdrop of a prolonged strike affecting The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Daily News (New York). Early issues addressed events such as the Kennedy assassination, the escalating Vietnam War, and the cultural shifts of the 1960s, featuring essays that engaged with writers like T. S. Eliot, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Truman Capote, Dylan Thomas, and E. M. Forster. Over decades its editorial leadership included prominent editors who shaped debates involving figures such as Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, and Philip Roth. The journal navigated controversies tied to the Watergate scandal, the Soviet Union, the collapse of Yugoslavia, and the Iraq War, reflecting shifts in global intellectual life and connecting with historians of events like the Battle of Stalingrad, the Yalta Conference, and the Treaty of Versailles through commissioned scholarship and reviews.

Editorial profile and content

The Review publishes long essays and review-essays that place new books in dialogue with works by authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Chinua Achebe, W. B. Yeats, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Rimbaud, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. It covers art exhibitions involving figures like Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and Marina Abramović, as well as music and performance tied to Igor Stravinsky, Bob Dylan, John Cage, Maria Callas, and Leonard Bernstein. The Review's essays routinely address scholarship on treaties such as the Treaty of Westphalia and events including the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, World War I, and World War II, engaging historians like Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, Barbara Tuchman, A. J. P. Taylor, and John Keegan. Its coverage extends to science and technology via reviews of works by authors and scientists connected to Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, and Rachel Carson.

Contributors and notable writers

The Review has published pieces by an array of prominent intellectuals, novelists, critics, and scholars including Susan Sontag, Christopher Hitchens, John Updike, George Steiner, Edward Said, Tony Judt, Harold Bloom, Judith Butler, Seymour Hersh, Martin Amis, Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, Alice Munro, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Orhan Pamuk. It has also carried essays from public intellectuals and activists such as Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Noam Chomsky, Amartya Sen, Milton Friedman, Herman Melville (in reprints), and historians like Simon Schama, Niall Ferguson, Mary Beard, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Robert Caro. Critics and reviewers associated with the Review have engaged with works by poets like Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, and Maya Angelou, as well as filmmakers such as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, and Federico Fellini. The magazine's archives include exchanges with scientists and intellectuals tied to Linus Pauling, Jane Goodall, Carl Sagan, and Noam Chomsky.

Influence and reception

The Review has influenced literary and political discourse in contexts ranging from debates over the Vietnam War and critiques of McCarthyism to controversies about Palestine Liberation Organization policy, the dissolution of Soviet Union, and interventions in Iraq. Its reviews have shaped reputations for novelists like Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Julian Barnes, Margaret Atwood, and Vladimir Nabokov, while its essays on history and biography have been cited alongside works by Gordon Wood, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David McCullough, and Robert A. Caro. The magazine's positions provoked responses from public figures such as Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, Madeleine Albright, and Ariel Sharon, and generated debate in outlets like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. Critics have alternately praised its rigor and accused it of ideological bias during moments involving commentators like Christopher Hitchens and Noam Chomsky.

Business, circulation, and format changes

Founded as a print fortnightly in 1963, the publication adapted to shifts affecting periodicals alongside rivals such as The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's Magazine. It has adjusted circulation strategies in the face of changing media landscapes that include The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time (magazine), and the rise of digital platforms like The Huffington Post and Slate (magazine). The Review experimented with book-length anthologies, special issues, and digital archives, reflecting business pressures similar to those experienced by Condé Nast, Hearst Corporation, Gannett, and Advance Publications. Circulation and subscription models evolved amid debates over paywalls like those implemented by The New York Times and subscription services such as Amazon (company), while its funding and endowments have intersected with philanthropic support patterns found in institutions like the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Category:American magazines