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Second Read

New insights from old books

Colonial Postcards and Women as Props for War-Making
When French photographers arrived in Algeria, they encountered women whose bodies could not be seen. They were undeterred.
By Sarah Sentilles
October 5, 2017
An Out-of-Print Novel About Gay Activism, with a Trump Stand-In as Its Villain
Sarah Schulman’s “People in Trouble” takes aim at a real-estate magnate named Ronald Horne—and the self-satisfied liberals who fail to stop him.
By Peter C. Baker
September 21, 2017
“Hamlet on the Holodeck,” Twenty Years Later
Janet Murray was tempted to write a three-word preface for the reissue of “Hamlet on the Holodeck,” first published in 1997: “I was right!”
By Matt Margini
August 30, 2017
Ricardo Piglia’s Prescient Conspiracies
“To read between the lines—as though there were always something to decipher—is in itself a political act,” Piglia wrote.
By Alejandro Chacoff
August 15, 2017
The Critic Who Refuted Trump’s World View—in 1916
Randolph Bourne’s insights are more essential to American hopes now than when he articulated them a century ago.
By Jeremy McCarter
August 13, 2017
How We Should Respond to Photographs of Suffering
Images can transform the world, and the only reason they haven’t yet is because we don’t know how to look at them.
By Sarah Sentilles
August 3, 2017
Rereading Albert Speer’s “Inside the Third Reich”
Right-wing populism is rising around the world; there are lessons to be learned from the memoir of Hitler’s close associate.
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
August 1, 2017
Octavia Butler’s Prescient Vision of a Zealot Elected to “Make America Great Again”
In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Butler’s “Parable” books may be unmatched.
By Abby Aguirre
July 26, 2017
The Secrets of the Forgotten 1965 Classic “Talking to Women”
At the heart of Nell Dunn’s project is a single voice, more or less unsure of itself, more or less in crisis.
By Joanna Biggs
July 10, 2017
A Parable for the Distance Between Language and Truth
“The Parable of the Blind” is a strikingly contemporary commentary on the slipperiness of language and facts.
By Nicole Rudick
June 28, 2017

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