Plus: Georgi Gospodinov; Democrazia; Cicero
| Today in The New York Review of Books: Paisley Currah shows how the anti-trans crusade is coming for feminism, too; Francine Prose reviews Georgi Gospodinov’s novel about the death of a parent; Alexander Stille studies the contradictions of postwar Italian democracy; and, from the archives, Mary Beard on Cicero. The current crusade against trans people imperils not just their rights but the survival of the legal doctrine built to protect all women from discrimination. The world, Georgi Gospodinov seems to say in his novel Death and the Gardener, will always remain split into two parts: before and after the catastrophe of losing a parent. Alcide De Gasperi and the Christian Democrats constructed the foundations of postwar Italian politics, in which what looked like one-party rule was in fact a complex interaction between the left and the right. Free from the ArchivesCicero was assassinated 2,067 years ago today, having been declared an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate. As Mary Beard wrote in the Review’s March 15, 2007, issue, “his tongue and hands were pinned to the rostra in Rome. the story goes that Fulvia, [Mark] Antony’s wife, took the final vengeance, stabbing the tongue repeatedly with her long gold hairpins.” This morbid detail is but one of many fascinating asides in Beard’s essay, a review of Robert Harris’s fictional biography of Cicero, Imperium. “In the end, the rhetorical skill that had underpinned his rise to power brought about his downfall and murder. For after the assassination of Caesar, Cicero delivered a series of blistering tirades, some of the cleverest exercises in invective in the history of the West, against Mark Antony, Caesar’s principal lieutenant. It was a brave and simultaneously self-destructive gesture. As soon as Antony had a chance, in 43 BCE, he had Cicero put to death.” “Although the histories of Italian and German fascism continue to be in the foreground, there is far less discussion of Spanish fascism, which endured much longer and is more openly venerated.” “Steely Dan rethought already established studio techniques such as overlaying tracks, mechanically looping rhythms, and playing with the placement of microphones. By harnessing the apparently infinite possibilities of studio recording they were able to conjure up an orderly, pristine realism, staged as carefully as the water splashing out of a David Hockney swimming pool.” A New York Review Online Event The State of the Left
Fintan O’Toole in Conversation with Congresswoman Pramila JayapalDecember 8, 2025, 5:00 PM EST Join Fintan O’Toole and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal for a wide-ranging discussion on the state of progressive politics. This online event is pay-what-you-wish (with a suggested fee of ten dollars) and open to the public. Registration is required. The event will last for approximately ninety minutes, including a question-and-answer period. Special Offer
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