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The New York Review of
Books
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Not to be
confused with
The New York Times Book
Review
.
The New York Review
of Books
David
Levine
's caricature of
John
Updike
in the
November 24,
1983 issue
Editor
Robert B.
Silvers
Categories
literature
,
culture
,
current
affairs
Frequency
fortnightly
Publisher
Rea S. Hederman
Total
circulation
(2011)
First
issue
134,488
[1]
February 1, 1963
Country
United States
Based in
New York, New York
Language
American English
Website
ISSN
0028-7504
< br>The
New
York
Review
of
Books
(or
NYREV
or
NYRB
)
is
a
fortnightly
magazine
with articles on
literature
,
culture
and
current affairs
. Published
in
New York City
, it takes
as its point of departure that the discussion of
important
books
is itself an indispensable literary activity.
Esquire
called it
language.
[2]
In
1970
Tom
Wolfe
described
it
as
chief
theoretical
organ
[3]
of
Radical Chic
Robert
B.
Silvers
has
edited
the
paper
since
its
founding
in
1963,
together
with
Barbara Epstein
until her
death in 2006. The
Review
has a book
publishing division,
established in 1999, called
New York
Review Books
.
Contents
[
hide
]
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1 History and
description
o
1.1 Early years
o
1.2
Description
o
1.3 Recent years
2 Critical reaction
3 Other publications
4 See also
5
Notes
6
References
7 External
links
[
edit
] History
and description
[
edit
] Early
years
The
New
York
Review
was
founded
by
Robert
B.
Silvers
and
Barbara
Epstein
,
together with publisher
A.
Whitney Ellsworth
[4]
and
writer
Elizabeth
Hardwick
, who 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
. Hardwick had
published an
essay
in
Harpers
in
1959,
edited
by
Robert
Silvers,
[5]
called
Decline
of Book Reviewing
reviews of
the time, that inspired this
group.
[6]
During the New
York
printing
strike
of
1963,
when
The
New
York
Times
had
ceased
publication,
the
founders
of
The
Review
seized
the
opportunity
to
establish
a
vigorous
book review. They
knew that book publishers would advertise their
books
in the new publication,
since they had
no other
outlet for promoting new
books.
[7]
Their
first
idea
was
to
make
Norman
Podhoretz
editor,
but
he
chose
to
stay
at
Commentary
magazine.
The
group
then
turned
to
Silvers,
a
friend
of Jason Epstein's,
who had been an editor at
The Paris
Review
and was
then
at
Harper's
,
[8]
to
co-
edit
with
Barbara
Epstein.
She
had
become
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
The Partisan
Review
.
[9]
The first
issue of the
Review
was
published on February 1, 1963 and sold
out.
[2]
Silvers
says of the editors' philosophy,
a
political analysis of the nature of power in
America - who had it, who
was
affected
feeling of intense admiration
for wonderful writers
[10]
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:
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.
[5]
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
,
Dwight
Macdonald
,
Norman
Mailer
,
Mary
McCarthy
,
Norman
Podhoretz
,
Philip
Rahv
,
Susan
Sontag
,
William
Styron
,
Gore
Vidal
,
Robert Penn
Warren
and
Edmund
Wilson
. The
Review
pointedly
published interviews with
political dissidents
,
including
Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
,
Andrei Sakharov
and
Václav
Havel
.
[10]
During the year-long lock-out
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.
[11]
[
edit
]
Description
The
Review
has
been
described
as
a
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.
[12]
Each
issue
includes
a
broad
range
of
subject
matter, including
[13]
literature.
In
2012,
editor
Bob
Silvers
told
The
New
York
Times
,
great political issues of
power and its abuses have always been natural
questions for
us.
[13]
Silvers asserted in
2004:
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
[Bush]
Administration,
in
a
fearful
atmosphere,
had
the
effect
of
muffling
dissent.
[14]
The
Nation
gave
a
brief
historical
overview of the
New York Review of Books
in
2004, writing:
the Review took a vocal
role in contesting the
Vietnam
War
. ...
Around 1970, a
sturdy liberalism began to supplant left-wing
radicalism
at
the
paper.
As
Philip
Nobile
observed
in
...
1974 ...
the
Review
returned to its roots and became
on the
British nineteenth-century model, which would mix
politics
and literature in a tough but
gentlemanly fashion.
publication has
always been erudite and authoritative
–
and
because of
its analytical rigor and seriousness, frequently
essential
–
but
it hasn't always been lively, pungent and
readable.
...
But
the
election
of
George
W.
Bush
,
combined
with
the
furies
of 9/11, jolted the editors. Since 2001, the
Review's
temperature
has
risen
and
its
political
outlook
has
sharpened.
...
Prominent
[writers
for]
the
Review
...
charged
into
battle
not
only
against the White House but against the
lethargic press corps and
the
hawk
intellectuals.
...
In
stark
contrast
to
The
New
Yorker
... or
The New York Times Magazine
... the
Review
opposed
the Iraq war in a voice that was
remarkably consistent and
unified.
[15]
Over the years, the
Review
has featured reviews
and articles by such
writers
and
thinkers
as
Timothy
Garton
Ash
,
Margaret
Atwood
,
Russell
Baker
,
Saul
Bellow
,
Isaiah
Berlin
,
Harold
Bloom
,
Joseph
Brodsky
,
Noam
Chomsky
,