Review
A Vance for All Seasons
JD Vance’s new book, “Communion,” is at odds with both his public persona and the Vance of his bestselling “Hillbilly Elegy.” Behind the contradictions, one senses the vice president laying the foundations of a future bid for power.
Truth-Teller for All 10 Villages
In his show “Olu Deniz” (“Dead Sea”), Deniz Göktaş skewered the audience, lampooned the state and took jabs at sacred cows of Turkish culture. Then the rising satirist was arrested.
How Syria’s Revolution Was Misunderstood, by Its Rulers and the World
Syria’s revolution was first crushed, and then misread. Five recent books on the long uprising and its surprising aftermath show how elites, ideologues and foreign observers alike failed to see the people at its heart.
Hind Rajab and the Dying Light
If Hind’s voice is a reproach, then the humanity of her would-be rescuers is redemption, however inadequate. For the hours they spent with her — comforting and reassuring the child on one hand, berating and beseeching her tormentors on the other — they expiate our collective guilt.
Sri Lanka’s Civil War and the Limits of Literature
As new mass graves are exhumed in Sri Lanka, a journalist who spent years embedded with the Tamil Tigers surveys the works dealing with the country’s civil war and asks whether, between myth and memory, fiction and nonfiction, a narrative can ever be complete.
A Remarkable Retelling of an Improbable Revolt
Ken Burns’ documentary “The American Revolution” has helped move citizens of Mexican descent and other people of color from the margins to the center of the country’s founding story.
America’s Unraveling on Screen
Filmmakers are increasingly registering, and, in turn, reflecting back at us from the silver screen, fears of a future defined by vigilantism, insurgencies and state violence. Films like “Civil War,” “The Order,” “Eddington” and “One Battle After Another” warn of what might follow the collapse of conventional politics.