THE MYSTERIOUS MR. NAKAMOTO: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto, by Benjamin Wallace A few years ago, I met up for coffee in Miami Beach with a person named Keith Rabois. Along with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, Rabois is a member of the so-called PayPal Mafia — the group that … Read more
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | How to Listen The novel “We Do Not Part,” by the Nobel laureate Han Kang, involves a pet-sitting quest gone surreal: It follows a writer and documentarian whose hospitalized friend beseeches her to take care of her stranded pet parakeet on an island hundreds of miles away. When she … Read more
In 1938, when the American Library Association introduced the world’s first award for children’s book art, it named its prize the Randolph Caldecott Medal, for one of Victorian England’s most celebrated illustrators, and stipulated that only a U.S. citizen or resident could win. The point was made. America’s illustrators owed Mother England gratitude for the … Read more
by Allison Epstein You might be surprised to learn that Oliver Twist has nothing more than a walk-on part in FAGIN THE THIEF (Doubleday, 321 pp., $28). And even more surprised to learn that Dickens’s notorious villain emerges from this reimagining of his origins as somewhat less villainous — still a sinister master criminal, but … Read more
People have been telling fantastical tales about the past since, well … most likely long before our ancestors began painting caves with wild beasts that danced in the firelight. A ragtag collection of Bronze Age skirmishes is transformed into the Trojan War, where gods meddle and great heroes are dispatched on quests we’re still retelling. … Read more
In 1984, the artist and editor (and John Baldessari protégée) Kim Hastreiter co-founded Paper Magazine with her friend David Hershkovits, to document the cultural explosion in downtown New York City at the time. What began as a D.I.Y. operation in her TriBeCa loft would run for 33 years as one of the most respected independent … Read more
An LED screen more than 16 feet tall. Four smaller ones drifting like clouds. Another that has a kind of walk-on cameo. Five camera operators with their electronic burdens. Nine people dashing every which way with wardrobe, wigs and whatnot. Three million pixels, in case you’re counting. Sixteen million colors. Two cellphones, at least on … Read more
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel turns 100 this year. What does its hero tell us about how we see ourselves? A collage of photos and videos including the actors Robert Redford and Leonard DiCaprio as Gatsby, scenes from “Seinfeld” and “Family Guy,” and an image of the first edition of the book. By A.O. Scott … Read more
Tenuous but necessary social bonds are at the heart of this week’s recommended fiction: There’s Binnie Kirshenbaum’s novel about a wife turned reluctant caregiver, Colum McCann’s seafaring tale of the crews who repair underwater cables and Annika Norlin’s group portrait of a Swedish commune whose members have little in common besides their dark pasts. (Also … Read more
One ill-fated night in December 1924, F. Scott Fitzgerald got into a drunken brawl that ended up in a Rome police station, where he punched an officer and was severely beaten by some others. In a letter to a friend ten years later, Fitzgerald described it as “the rottenest thing that ever happened in my … Read more