First Anthology: Thirty Years of the New York Reviews of Books

by Barbara Epstein (Editor), Rae S. Hederman (Editor), Robert B. Silvers (Editor)

Book by

345 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Linda Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among the highlights here: A Buddhist Poet in Vietnam/Thich Nhat Hanh, Last Christmas of the War(in Auschwitz)/Primo Levi, On Photography/Susan Sontag & Bruce Chatwin’s chilling portrait of novelist Ernst Junger=German officer>occ Paris; also quite good: A Day@the White House(’65 LBJ arts fest)/Dwight Macdonald, How I Came to Dissent/Sakharov, Love of Flying(& Amelia Earhart)/Gore Vidal, Oliver Sacks recalls how panic>broken leg@Norway mtn top, Eliz Hardwickt>’66 Watts riots(LA), Hannah Arendt/Reflections on Violence, Joan Didion/in El Salvador, Pierre Boulez>Mahler, Isaiah Berlin>Alexander Herzen & Jonathan Lieberson>Karl Popper, The Rise of Andy Warhol/Robt Hughes

[Dovofthegalilee · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are times when great magazines and periodicals are condensed as this one is to view thirty years of work. This is a mammoth task and at times it should be left undone. The NYRB is a stellar publication but like any versatile publication- Nature, Scientific America, National Geographic - there are in most issues stories that just don't grasp our interest. That's where this book falls for me. I enjoyed the piece on Balzac but the rest were marginal and some downright dull.

[Nicolas Shump · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive list of contributors. I think NYRB is still one of the best journals about literature and the arts around. Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Igor Stravinsky, W.H.Auden, Susan Sontag, Isaiah Berlin, Joseph Brodsky, Bruce Chatwin, and Joan Didion are just some of the authors anthologized here.