As the city’s bakeries have grown increasingly culturally specific, representing far-flung cuisines and styles—see Librae, in the East Village, which deploys Danish techniques and Middle Eastern ingredients like za’atar and black lime—they have also leaned into the culinary identity of New York. Radio Bakery, a spinoff of a Ridgewood restaurant called Rolo’s, sells bacon-egg-and-cheese focaccia … Read more
On a recent Friday night, the indie-rock band Geese—which formed in New York City in 2016, when its members were still a couple of years short of the legal driving age—played the final date of its North American tour. The show, at the Brooklyn Paramount, a baroque nineteen-twenties movie house turned concert hall, was a … Read more
Last year, the Paris-based artist Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet did a residency at Villa Albertine, which gave him the opportunity to experience the bustling energy of the Big Apple. For the cover of the December 15, 2025, issue, he set out to playfully render the excitement of the holiday season. “During the evening rush, the traffic becomes … Read more
Tales of ancient incarceration, which might once have seemed the stuff of legend, turn out, again and again, to have an archeological foundation. Plutarch, the first-century Greek historian, described the misery of a prisoner in the Greek town of Messene; modern excavations have confirmed his account down to the details. A story by the Greco-Roman … Read more
Cursed Daughters, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday). Set in Lagos, this moody, engrossing novel braids together the stories of three women reared to believe that they are cursed because of a shared ancestor’s adultery. The novel opens with the suicide, by drowning, of one of the women, whose death is cast as the “inevitable consequence” of … Read more
As Sacks aged, he felt as if he were gazing at people from the outside. But he also noticed a new kind of affection for humans—“homo sap.” “They’re quite complex (little) creatures (I say to myself),” he wrote in his journal. “They suffer, authentically, a good deal. Gifted, too. Brave, resourceful, challenging.” Perhaps because love … Read more
I had to wait for the next generation—my older sister—to break through that uncertainty and introduce me to the political, social, and aesthetic significance of Harlem. In my sister’s company, I protested the construction of the State Office Building, at 125th and Seventh Avenue, in 1969, and I went to the Studio Museum in Harlem, … Read more
How did this book make its way to you? I was driving through New Mexico to the Telluride Film Festival, and that’s when Amblin [Steven Spielberg’s production company] called me about this project. The reception was in and out, and they were saying that it’s about Shakespeare’s wife and the death of their son. I … Read more
On my first visit to the original Babbo—God, it must have been twenty years ago—I remember being stunned at my first bite of the beef-cheek ravioli. (“Of all the pasta dishes—indeed, of all the dishes—on the menu, this is probably the one most associated with Babbo,” Batali writes of the recipe, in “The Babbo Cookbook,” … Read more
Aggie Wiggs, a famous Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, is living in a home that is far too big for her in Oyster Bay, a wealthy enclave on Long Island. The home is too big for her because the family she once had is gone. Her envy-inducing Victorian house, wrapped in floral wallpaper and outfitted with plush … Read more