Alessandra Stanley

New York

Co-Founder and Editor at AIR MAIL

A critic and historian of Television. But not the band Television.

Articles

Who Really Saved New York? "Drop Dead City" Tells the Untold Story

1 month ago | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

WATCH Drop Dead City With time, the story of New York’s 1975 fiscal crisis has narrowed into a tale of the Three Wise Men: Felix Rohatyn, the banker; Richard Ravitch, the real-estate developer; and Governor Hugh Carey—all rich, powerful, and civic-minded figures who teamed up to rescue the profligate Gotham from bankruptcy. Certainly, those three did a lot.
Catherine Deneuve Commands the Élysée in "The President’s Wife"

1 month ago | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

WATCH The President’s Wife Pretty much every wife of a French president over the last 20 years deserves a saucy biopic: before Brigitte Macron, who met Emmanuel when he was her high-school student, there was Carla Bruni, the smoldering model turned chanteuse who married Nicolas Sarkozy.
"A Hole in the Story" Explores The #MeToo Era Like Never Before

1 month ago | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

READ A Hole in the Story It seems impossible—and also a little foolhardy—to write a novel set in the #MeToo movement as it reached its fulminating peak in 2017 with the toppling of Harvey Weinstein. There are so many trip wires blocking the way. Ken Kalfus has written a novel that proves it can be done: A Hole in the Story is nuanced, sure-footed, dryly funny, and unpredictable. If there were such a thing as a social-mores thriller, this would be it.
"Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media" Documentary: Arts Intel Report - Air Mail

2 months ago | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

WATCH Can’t Look Away After decades of immunity from liability, social-media platforms such as Meta and Snapchat may be vulnerable to a new bipartisan bill that seeks to curb damaging content on the Internet. But even if it passes, the law wouldn’t take effect until January 1, 2027, giving Big Tech plenty of time to bury Congress in lobbying money and political pressure. That’s why a new documentary, Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media, matters now more than ever.
There's a Reason Everyone's Binge-Watching “Douglas Is Cancelled”

2 months ago | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

WATCH Douglas Is Cancelled A middle-aged British news anchor tells a sexist joke at a boozy wedding and suddenly finds himself pilloried on social media and on a fast train to career suicide. That’s the premise of Douglas Is Cancelled, a cruelly funny 2024 BBC sitcom that seems very much in sync with satiric comedies such as The Office and W1A and Yes Minister. Until it isn’t.
The Anti-Defamation League Should Be Wary of Trump's Anti-Zionist Crackdown

2 months ago | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

An open letter to Jonathan Greenblattc/o the Anti-Defamation LeagueDear Mr. Greenblatt,You could be next. And, respectfully, it might be partly your own fault. Right now, Trump may be targeting people who are viewed by even reasonable people as dangerous and un-American, but his definition of who is undesirable isn’t bound by any norms, laws, or standards of common decency.
Trump Enablers Are Grappling With MAGA-Brand Affirmative Action

Feb 28, 2025 | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

Trump’s total war on decency, constitutional law, and Western civilization is bad enough. Almost as galling are the billionaires, academics, columnists, and political hacks who so demonized D.E.I. that they helped rationalize voting for Donald Trump: the useful idiots of the MAGA movement. Niall Ferguson, the columnist and historian, isn’t the only anti-woke warrior who argued that Kamala Harris was a greater threat than her Republican rival, but he stood out.
Lionel Barber’s Latest Book Takes on SoftBank C.E.O. Masayoshi Son

Jan 31, 2025 | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

READ Gambling Man Masayoshi Son, the Japanese billionaire investor and SoftBank mogul, likens himself to Napoleon, but a closer analogy might be Houdini. Son is as known for losing spectacular amounts of money—his Vision Fund lost more than $14 billion on WeWork—as he is for making it. Gambling Man, a new biography of Son by Lionel Barber, a former editor at the Financial Times, chronicles the investor’s triumphs and daring escapes from disaster.
Hannah Arendt's Real-Life Nazi Interrogation is Made Into a Play

Dec 27, 2024 | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

watch Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library Hannah Arendt fled Germany in 1933 shortly after she was released from a Nazi interrogation that lasted days. Little is known about what happened when she was held—or why she was set free. In a television interview in 1964, Arendt merely said she was lucky because her interrogator was young, new to the job, and humane. Mrs.
John Le Carré Meets Alexei Navalny in Michael Idov’s New Thriller

Nov 22, 2024 | airmail.news | Alessandra Stanley

READ The Collaborators The Collaborators is a clever espionage thriller that is steeped in the memory of opposition leader Alexei Navalny: Russian security goons hunt down dissident bloggers who mock and expose Kremlin corruption online; Novichok is their preferred poison. This is Cold War espionage Putin-style, pitting Russian intelligence officers, apparatchiks, and propagandists against C.I.A. agents and their sources.