nybooks

In this episode of Private Life, the art historian Ingrid D. Rowland joins Jarrett Earnest for an in-depth discussion about art history and disegno, an Italian word for “design” that was also a Renaissance-era concept describing some artists’ ability simultaneously to draw and to conceive of a grander scheme in their work. Rowland also talks about the lives […]

In Love, two women fight until they understand their fighting as a pretense to touch. The fighting is a kind of intimacy, an annual rite of slapping, biting, and hair-pulling that eventually gives way to a “realization that the fights did nothing other than allow them to hold each other.” The epiphany that they are […]

“Most memoirists Botox out their own imperfections, but celebrity ghostwriters tend to do the full facelift.”

Bill Gates was the monopolistic father figure who Silicon Valley’s young founders rebelled against—and, in so rebelling, became.

In Liza Minnelli’s riveting memoir, the ghost of Judy Garland is felt on every page.