Verlyn Klinkenborg

Nov 13, 2024 | nybooks.com | Anne Enright |Thomas Powers |Verlyn Klinkenborg |Coco Fusco

Astra Taylor • Michael Greenberg • Coco Fusco • Verlyn Klinkenborg • Thomas Powers • Anne Enright* On election night, before Harris’s loss set in, some exit polls showed that “democracy” was a top concern for voters. Many liberals took the result as an auspicious sign. But what is democracy? That was the title of a documentary I made during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Oct 26, 2024 | nybooks.com | Eve Bowen |Verlyn Klinkenborg

In our October 17 issue, Verlyn Klinkenborg writes about the ocean: “a complex overlapping and interweaving of structures, systems, forces, internal waves, and feedback loops, many of them defined by tiny variations in the salinity, temperature, or density of seawater”; the largest part of the Earth’s surface area; a metaphor for depth, mystery, and the infinite; and the origin of all life.

Sep 26, 2024 | nybooks.com | Verlyn Klinkenborg

Near the close of her superb recent book, The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works, Helen Czerski writes, “I wish so much that I could have written an ocean book that ended with pure celebration…with nothing but a positive, exciting ocean future to look forward to.” That plaintive sentence introduces a chapter filled with alarming news. Here’s an overview.

Feb 29, 2024 | nybooks.com | Verlyn Klinkenborg

Before we get to dust itself—and to Jay Owens’s marvelous Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles—it’s worth thinking about how the word is used. “Dust” in the English language seems almost as elemental and variable as dust is in the physical world—a universal metonym of sorts. In the Bible, it stands for many things: earth, a human, the grave, death itself.

May 10, 2023 | theatlantic.com | Verlyn Klinkenborg

In his sweeping new history, Peter Frankopan looks at how the climate has shaped human society—and how we have shaped the climate. May 10, 2023, 9:36 AM ETDoes climate change directly influence the weather we experience? Until recently—for the past 40 years or so—that question has followed nearly every major hurricane or flood, every record snowfall or heat wave. In some people, it provokes instant denial, often political or economic, often rooted in prideful ignorance.