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With a worldwide circulation of more than one hundred thirty-five thousand, the New York Review of Books offers its readers a variety of featured articles, book reviews, literary commentary, and other discussions and insights about books, publishing, and the writing life.
The New York Review of Books (or NYREV or NYRB) is a semi-monthly magazine[2] with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of important books is an indispensable literary activity. Esquire called it "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language."[3] In 1970, writer Tom Wolfe described it as "the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic".[4]
The Review publishes long-form reviews and essays, often by well-known writers, original poetry, and has letters and personals advertising sections that had attracted critical comment. In 1979 the magazine founded the London Review of Books, which soon became independent. In 1990 it founded an Italian edition, la Rivista dei Libri, published until 2010. The Review has a book publishing division, established in 1999, called New York Review Books, which publishes reprints of classics, as well as collections and children's books. Since 2010, the journal has hosted a blog written by its contributors. The Review celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013. A Martin Scorsese film called The 50 Year Argument documents the history and influence of the paper over its first half century.
Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein edited the paper together from its founding in 1963 until Epstein's death in 2006. From then until his death in 2017, Silvers was the sole editor. Ian Buruma became editor in September 2017 and left the post in September 2018. Gabriel Winslow-Yost and Emily Greenhouse became co-editors in February 2019; in February 2021 Greenhouse was made editor.
The New York Review was founded by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein, together with publisher A. Whitney Ellsworth[5] and writer Elizabeth Hardwick. They 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. In 1959 Hardwick had published an essay, "The Decline of Book Reviewing", in Harper's,[6] where Silvers was then an editor, in a special issue that he edited called "Writing in America".[7][8] Her essay was an indictment of American book reviews of the time, "light, little article[s]" that she decried as "lobotomized", passionless praise and denounced as "blandly, respectfully denying whatever vivacious interest there might be in books or in literary matters generally."[9] The group was inspired to found a new magazine to publish thoughtful, probing, lively reviews[10] featuring what Hardwick called "the unusual, the difficult, the lengthy, the intransigent, and above all, the interesting".[6][11]
Salon later commented that the list of contributors in the first issue "represented a 'shock and awe' demonstration of the intellectual firepower available for deployment in mid-century America, and, almost equally impressive, of the art of editorial networking and jawboning. This was the party everyone who was anyone wanted to attend, the Black and White Ball of the critical elite."[17] The Review "announced the arrival of a particular sensibility ... the engaged, literary, post-war progressive intellectual, who was concerned with civil rights and feminism as well as fiction and poetry and theater.[18] The first issue projected "a confidence in the unquestioned rightness of the liberal consensus, in the centrality of literature and its power to convey meaning, in the solubility of our problems through the application of intelligence and good will, and in the coherence and clear hierarchy of the intellectual world".[17] After the success of the first issue, the editors assembled a second issue to demonstrate that "the Review was not a one-shot affair".[8] The founders then collected investments from a circle of friends and acquaintances, and Ellsworth joined as publisher.[8][19] The Review began regular biweekly publication in November 1963.[20]
The New York Review does not pretend to cover all the books of the season or even all the important ones. Neither time nor space, however, have been spent on books which are trivial in their intentions or venal in their effects, except occasionally to reduce a temporarily inflated reputation or to call attention to a fraud. ... The hope of the editors is to suggest, however imperfectly, some of the qualities which a responsible literary journal should have and to discover whether there is, in America, not only the need for such a review but the demand for one.
During the year-long lockout 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.[24][25] In 1990 the Review founded an Italian edition, la Rivista dei Libri. It was published for two decades until May 2010.[26]
For over 40 years, Silvers and Epstein edited the Review together.[3] In 1984, Silvers, Epstein and their partners sold the Review to publisher Rea S. Hederman,[27] who still owns the paper,[28] but the two continued as its editors.[14] In 2006, Epstein died of cancer at the age of 77.[29] In awarding to Epstein and Silvers its 2006 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, the National Book Foundation stated: "With The New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein raised book reviewing to an art and made the discussion of books a lively, provocative and intellectual activity."[30]
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