The New York Review of Books

With the end of the year approaching we thought it would be appropriate to look back at some of the pieces published in our pages in 2011, including a few you might have overlooked. Thanks for your continued interest in the Review.

Lives

James Salter
on Ernest Hemingway

Julian Barnes
on Joyce Carol Oates

G.W. Bowersock
on Richard Bentley

History

Brent Staples: Escape into Whiteness

Ian Frazier on Crazy Horse

Robert Gottlieb on John Wilkes Booth

Robert Darnton on The Beast of the Gévaudan

Education

Diane Ravitch: School ‘Reform’: A Failing Grade

Nature

Tim Flannery: Tigers, Humans, and Snails

Chess

Garry Kasparov: The Bobby Fischer Defense

Film and Television

Daniel Mendelsohn on Mad Men

Zadie Smith on The Clock

Nicholas Lehman: The New New Orleans

Poetry

Mark Ford
on W.H. Auden

Robert Harrison
on Giacomo Leopardi

Frederick Seidel:
Midwinter

John Ashbery:
After the Flood

Kabir:
Except That It Robs You of Who You Are

The Economy

Paul Krugman & Robin Wells on The Age of Greed

Ezra Klein: Obama’s ‘Confidence Men’

John Lanchester: How We Were All Misled

Reportage

Alma Guillermoprieto: In the New Gangland of El Salvador

Michael Greenberg: In Zuccotti Park

Music

Stephen Greenblatt
on Wagner and Milton

Charles Rosen
on Music and the Cold War

Geoffrey O’Brien
on Frank Sinatra

Art

Sanford Schwartz
on George Ault

Julian Bell
on Édouard Manet

Richard Holmes
on Thomas Lawrence

Fiction

Tim Parks: Stieg Larsson, Moralist

Jonathan Raban on David Foster Wallace

Deborah Eisenberg: Recalculating: A Story

Elaine Blair: Coming Attractions

Archaeology Colin Thubron on The Secrets of the Mummies

Classics Mary Beard: How Great was Alexander?

Law Ronald Dworkin: The Court’s Embarrassingly Bad Decisions

Philosophy John Banville on William James

Psychology Marcia Angell: The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?

Technology Christian Caryl: Predators and Robots at War