The New York Review of Books
| Editor | Robert B. Silvers |
|---|---|
| Categories | literature, culture, current affairs |
| Frequency | fortnightly |
| Circulation | 125,000 |
| Publisher | Rea S. Hederman |
| First issue | 1963 |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | American English |
| Website | www.nybooks.com |
| ISSN | 0028-7504 |
The New York Review of Books (or NYREV or NYRB) is a biweekly magazine on literature, culture, and current affairs published in New York which takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity. Esquire has called it "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language."[1] As of 2003, the publication had a circulation of over 125,000.
History and critical reaction
The New York Review was founded by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein, together with publisher A. Whitney Ellsworth, and with the backing of Barbara's husband Jason Epstein, a vice president at Random House and editor of Viking Books. It was founded during the New York publishing strike of 1963. Silvers had been an editor at Vanity Fair and Harper's. [2] The Review's first issues included articles by such writers as W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Hardwick, Hannah Arendt, Edmund Wilson, Susan Sontag, Robert Penn Warren, Lillian Hellman, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Saul Bellow, Robert Lowell, Truman Capote, William Styron, and Mary McCarthy. The public responded by buying up practically all the copies printed and writing thousands of letters to request that the Review continue publication.
The Review has continued publishing reviews by such notable authors and thinkers as Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, Richard Lewontin, John Searle, Steven Weinberg, Ronald Dworkin, and Paul Krugman. James Atlas, in a 2006 New York magazine feature stated, "It's an eclectic but impressive mix [of articles] that has made The New York Review of Books the premier journal of the American intellectual elite...."[3] "It is a "kind of magazine... in which the most interesting and qualified minds of our time would discuss current books and issues in depth... a literary and critical journal based on the assumption that the discussion of important books was itself an indispensable literary activity."[4]
The Review has, perhaps, had its most effective voice in wartime. According to a 2004 feature in The Nation,
- "One suspects they yearn for the day when they can return to their normal publishing routine--that gentlemanly pastiche of philosophy, art, classical music, photography, German and Russian history, East European politics, literary fiction--unencumbered by political duties of a confrontational or oppositional nature. That day has not yet arrived. If and when it does, let it be said that the editors met the challenges of the post-9/11 era in a way that most other leading American publications did not, and that The New York Review of Books... was there when we needed it most."[5]
As editor Bob Silvers noted, "The pieces we have published by such writers as Brian Urquhart, Thomas Powers, Mark Danner and Ronald Dworkin have been reactions to a genuine crisis concerning American destructiveness, American relations with its allies, American protections of its traditions of liberties.... The aura of patriotic defiance cultivated by the Administration, in a fearful atmosphere, had the effect of muffling dissent."[6]
The Review has sometimes been called "The New York Review of Each Other's Books" (see Alexander Bloom, Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World, Oxford University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-19-505177-7; p. 329). Philip Nobile voiced a mordant critique along these lines in his book Intellectual Skywriting: Literary Politics and the New York Review of Books.[7]
Other publications
The Review also publishes some foreign editions and many books that have gone out of print in the United States, as well as articles or collections of articles from regular contributors under the imprint NYRB.
See also
- Media of New York City
- London Review of Books
- Partisan Review
- Lingua Franca
- Dissent (magazine)
- Boston Review
- n+1
References
- Feature on the Review in the September 25, 2006 issue of New York Magazine
- Extensive interview with Silvers
- 2004 feature on the Review from The Nation
- Guardian: The writer's editor (profile of Robert Silvers)
- New Yorker: Barbara Epstein (posthumous appreciation)