The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a semi-monthly magazine 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". In 1970, writer Tom Wolfe described it as "the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic".
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
Early years
The New York Review was founded by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein, together with publisher A. Whitney Ellsworth 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, where Silvers was then an editor, in a special issue that he edited called "Writing in America". Her essay was an indictment of American book reviews of the time, "light, little article" 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." The group was inspired to found a new magazine to publish thoughtful, probing, lively reviews featuring what Hardwick called "the unusual, the difficult, the lengthy, the intransigent, and above all, the interesting".During the 1962–1963 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. Jason Epstein knew that book publishers would advertise their books in the new publication, since they had no other outlet for promoting new books. The group turned to the Epsteins' friend Silvers, who had been an editor at The Paris Review and was still at Harper's, to edit the publication, and Silvers asked Barbara Epstein to co-edit with him. 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 Partisan Review. 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." The first issue of the Review was published on February 1, 1963, and sold out its printing of 100,000 copies. It prompted nearly 1,000 letters to the editors asking for the Review to continue. The New Yorker called it "surely the best first issue of any magazine ever."
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." 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. 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". After the success of the first issue, the editors assembled a second issue to demonstrate that "the Review was not a one-shot affair". The founders then collected investments from a circle of friends and acquaintances, and Ellsworth joined as publisher. The Review began regular biweekly publication in November 1963.
Silvers said of the editors' philosophy, that "there was no subject we couldn't deal with. And if there was no book , 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." 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". 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." 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." 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, 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.
Since 1979
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. In 1990 the Review founded an Italian edition, la Rivista dei Libri. It was published for two decades until May 2010.For over 40 years, Silvers and Epstein edited the Review together. In 1984, Silvers, Epstein and their partners sold the Review to publisher Rea S. Hederman, who still owns the paper, but the two continued as its editors. In 2006, Epstein died of cancer at the age of 77. 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."
After Epstein's death, Silvers was the sole editor until his own death in 2017. 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." 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. The 45th anniversary edition of the Review began with a posthumous piece by Edmund Wilson, who wrote for the paper's first issue in 1963.
In 2008, the paper moved its headquarters from Midtown Manhattan to 435 Hudson Street located in the West Village. In 2010, it launched a blog section of its website that The New York Times called "lively and opinionated", and it hosts podcasts. Asked in 2013 how social media might affect the subject matter of the Review, Silvers commented:
"I might imagine witty, aphoristic, almost Oscar Wildean 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."
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. 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 and a reception in November at the Frick Collection. 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. It was later seen at various film festivals, on BBC television and on HBO in the US. 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." 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.
Ian Buruma, who had been a regular contributor to the Review since 1985, became editor in September 2017. 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. 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". Gabriel Winslow-Yost and Emily Greenhouse were named co-editors in February 2019; Daniel Mendelsohn, a longtime Review contributor, was named to the new position of "editor at large". In February 2021, Greenhouse was made editor of the Review, while Winslow-Yost became a senior editor.
In 2023, the Review moved its headquarters to 207 East 32nd Street in Kips Bay; it had purchased the townhouse in 2020 from graphic designer Milton Glaser.