Neal Ascherson | The New York Review of Books

Ordinary Germans

We know who the Nazis were and what they did. In Hitler’s People, the distinguished historian Richard J. Evans seeks to explain what made them capable of doing it.

Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich

by Richard J. Evans

March 27, 2025 issue

Becoming European

Timothy Garton Ash’s Homelands traces the development of his passionate identification with Europe and the continent’s unsteady experiments with unity.

Homelands: A Personal History of Europe

by Timothy Garton Ash

December 21, 2023 issue

Sonnets for the State

A new book recounts the history of the Circle of Writing Chekists, a group of officials in the East German Ministry of State Security who wrote poetry as a weapon in the class struggle.

The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class That Tried to Win the Cold War

by Philip Oltermann

February 9, 2023 issue

Hugging the Shores

Colin Thubron’s latest travelogue takes him down the Amur River and through the borderlands between Russia and China.

The Amur River: Between Russia and China

by Colin Thubron

October 20, 2022 issue

Declarations of Independence

“I saw how the British Empire could transform decent white people into puffed-up petty tyrants. Even if the Communist insurgents were not the ‘right side,’ I realized I was on the wrong side.”

November 20, 2021

Grand Illusion

Armed with only a Ouija board, two British officers attempted an eccentric and devious escape from a Turkish prisoner of war camp.

The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History

by Margalit Fox

December 2, 2021 issue

Into the Wrecks

What do sunken ships reveal about the history of war at sea?

War at Sea: A Shipwrecked History from Antiquity to the Cold War

by James P. Delgado

July 22, 2021 issue

A Mess of Tiny Principalities

Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe’s Lost Country

by Simon Winder

December 19, 2019 issue

Catalonian Complexities

October 24, 2019 issue

The Value of Independence

Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion

by J.H. Elliott

April 18, 2019 issue

Letter

Gabriel Tortella

Catalonian Complexities

October 24, 2019 issue

In Search of Britannia

The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland and England

by Graham Robb

November 22, 2018 issue

A Letter from Contributors

October 25, 2018 issue

By the Skin of Our Teeth

The Cold War: A World History

by Odd Arne Westad

The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War

by Benn Steil

May 24, 2018 issue

Death in Trieste

Blameless

by Claudio Magris, translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel

February 8, 2018 issue

Corrective Affinities

Tumult

by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, translated from the German by Mike Mitchell

New Selected Poems

by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, translated from the German by David Constantine, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Michael Hamburger, and Esther Kinsky

Mr Zed’s Reflections: or Breadcrumbs He Dropped, Gathered Up by His Listeners

by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, translated from the German by Wieland Hoban

Writing with the Words of Others: Essays on the Poetry of Hans Magnus Enzensberger

by Alan J. Clayton

October 26, 2017 issue

Referendums: Yes or No?

When is it a referendum, and when is it a plebiscite?

October 5, 2017

Which John le Carré?

John le Carré: The Biography

by Adam Sisman

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life

by John le Carré

October 13, 2016 issue

Letter

Irving U. Ojalvo

The Sign of John Le Carré

February 23, 2017 issue

Jews: Ambivalent and Admirable

Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War

by Ian Buruma

February 25, 2016 issue

Love, Lies, and War

The Illuminations

by Andrew O’Hagan

July 9, 2015 issue

In Love with the Judge

The Children Act

by Ian McEwan

November 20, 2014 issue