The New York Review of Books, Volume 61, Number 20 (18 December 2014)

Michael Tomasky
Now We Face 2016!
Jed Perl
You Can’t Catch Picasso
Picasso’s Masterpieces: The Musée Picasso Paris Collection edited by Anne Baldassari
Picasso and Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style an exhibition at the Pace Gallery, New York City an exhibition at the Pace Gallery, New York City, October 31, 2014–January 10, 2015
Picasso and the Camera an exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, New York City, October 28, 2014–January 3, 2015
Edwin Frank
In the Dark (poem)
Anne Applebaum
How He and His Cronies Stole Russia
Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? by Karen Dawisha
Hilton Als
The Good-bye Girl
Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty by Diane Keaton
James Gleick
Today’s Dead End Kids
Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman
Anka Muhlstein,
Antony Shugaar
Did Patrick Modiano Deserve It?
Joseph Lelyveld
The Prodigal Fall of Nelson Rockefeller
On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller by Richard Norton Smith
Colm Tóibín
The Dark & Light of Francisco Goya
Goya: Order and Disorder an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 12, 2014–January 19, 2015
Alan S. Blinder
What’s the Matter with Economics?
Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World by Jeff Madrick
Michael Dirda
The Cool and Funny Words of Frank B.
Let Me Be Frank With You: A Frank Bascombe Book by Richard Ford
Richard Holmes
A Quest for the Real Coleridge
Louis Begley
The Good Place in Vicious France
Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorhead
Rachel Donadio
Italy’s Great, Mysterious Storyteller
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
Ian Johnson
China’s Brave Underground Journal—II
Remembrance an online journal published in Tiantongyuan, China
Charles Baxter
The Hideous Unknown of H.P. Lovecraft
The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft edited with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, and with an introduction by Alan Moore
Patricia Storace
Seduced by the Food on Your Plate
The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity by Sandra M. Gilbert
Giles Harvey
Future Man
10:04 by Ben Lerner
Robert Brustein
Fiddle Shtick
Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof by Alisa Solomon
Tradition! The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, the World’s Most Beloved Musical by Barbara Isenberg
Peter Brown
The Purple Stone of Emperors
Porphyry: Red Imperial Porphyry: Power and Religion by Dario Del Bufalo, translated from the Italian by David Graham and Lara Cox
Porphyre: La Pierre Pourpre des Ptolémées à Bonaparte [Porphyry: The Purple Stone from the Ptolemies to Bonaparte] by Philippe Malgouyres and Clément Blanc-Riehl
Byzantine Matters by Averil Cameron
Dialoguing in Late Antiquity by Averil Cameron
Helen Epstein
Ebola in Liberia: An Epidemic of Rumors
Robert Swartz,
Michael M. Baylson,
Jed S. Rakoff
Plea Bargains & Prosecutors: An Exchange

LETTERS

Orayb Najjar
When Israel Backed Islam
Paul Taylor,
Andrew Hacker
Keeping Faith with the Old
Luciano Floridi,
John R. Searle
At the Information Desk

Contributors

Hilton Als is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of White Girls.

Anne Applebaum is a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and runs the Transitions Forum at the Legatum Institute. 
Her most recent book is Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern ­Europe, 1944–1956.

 (December 2014)

Charles Baxter is the Edelstein-Keller Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota. His new book is There’s Something I Want You to Do: Stories, to be published in February 2015. (December 2014)

Louis Begley’s books include Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters and the novel Wartime Lies. His eleventh novel, Killer Come Hither, will be published in 2015.

Alan S. Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial ­Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton. He was Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve between 1994 and 1996. His most recent book is After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead.
 (December 2014)

Peter Brown is Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton. His most recent book is Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD.
 (December 2014)

Robert Brustein is a playwright, director, critic, teacher, founder of the Yale Repertory and American Repertory Theatres, and currently Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Suffolk University. His latest book is Winter Passages.
 (December 2014)

Michael Dirda, a weekly book columnist for The Washington Post, received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He is the author of the memoir An Open Book and of four collections of essays: Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book, and Classics for Pleasure. His most recent book, On Conan Doyle, received a 2012 Edgar Award for best critical/biographical work of the year.
 Dirda graduated with Highest Honors in English from Oberlin College and earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature (medieval studies and European romanticism) from Cornell University. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, the online Barnes & Noble Review, and several other periodicals, as well as a frequent lecturer and an occasional college teacher. His new book, ­Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books, will be out next summer.

Helen Epstein is a writer specializing in public health and an adjunct professor at Bard College. She has advised numerous organizations, including the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, Human Rights Watch, and UNICEF. She is the author of The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa and has contributed articles to many publications, including The New York Review of Books and The New York Times Magazine. Research for her article in the December 18, 2014 issue was supported by a grant from the Investigative Fund at 
the Nation Institute.

Edwin Frank is the editor of NYRB Classics. His Snake Train: Poems 1984–2013 will be published in early 2015.

James Gleick’s latest book is The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. He is working on a history of time travel.

Giles Harvey, a former member of The New York Review’s ­editorial staff, is a Senior Editor at Harper’s. (December 2014)

Richard Holmes is the author of Shelley: The Pursuit (published by NYRB Classics), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1974; Coleridge: Early Visions, winner of the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year award; Dr Johnson & Mr Savage, which won the 1993 James Tait Black Prize; and Coleridge: Darker Reflections, which won the 1990 Duff Cooper Prize and Heinemann Award. His new book, Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air, was published in October 2013. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1992. He is also a professor of biographical studies at the University of East Anglia. He lives in London and Norwich with the novelist Rose Tremain. The article in the December 18, 2014 issue draws on the seventh Leon Levy Biography Lecture, which he gave in 2014 on “The Two Sides of the Biographer’s Notebook.”

Ian Johnson is a correspondent for The New York Times in ­Beijing. He is writing a book on China’s beliefs and values. (December 2014)

Joseph Lelyveld is a former correspondent and editor of 
The New York Times. His latest book is Great Soul: Mahatma ­Gandhi and His Struggle with India. (December 2014)

Anka Muhlstein was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1996 for her biography of Astolphe de Custine, and has twice received the History Prize of the French Academy. Her books include 
Balzac’s Omelette and, most recently, Monsieur Proust’s Library.

Jed Perl is the art critic for The New Republic. A twenty-fifth ­anniversary edition of his first book, Paris Without End, has just been published.
 (December 2014)

Jed S. Rakoff is a United States District Judge for the ­Southern District of New York. (November 2014)

Antony Shugaar is a translator and the author of Coast to Coast: Vintage Travel in North America. (December 2014)

Patricia Storace is the author of Heredity, a book of poems, Dinner with Persephone, a travel memoir about Greece, and Sugar Cane, a children’s book. Her new novel,A Book of Heaven, was published in February 2014. She lives in New York.

Michael Tomasky is a Special Correspondent for The Daily Beast and Editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

 (December 2014)

Colm Tóibín is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia. His most recent novel is Nora Webster.