The New Yorker March 21, 2022

Gideon Lewis-Kraus (“Dangerous Minds,” p. 42) became a staff writer in 2020. He is the author of the memoir “A Sense of Direction.” Marie Howe (Poem, p. 59) has published four books of poems, including “Magdalene” and “The Kingdom of Ordinary Time.” She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Rafał Milach (Portfolio, p. 32) is a cofounder of both Sputnik Photos and the Archive of Public Protests. His books include “Strike,” “The Winners,” “7 Rooms,” and “I Am Warning You.” Katia Savchuk (The Talk of the Town, p. 12), a freelance journalist, lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Zach Williams (Fiction, p. 56) is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He is working on a story collection. Ana Juan (Cover) has contributed more than twenty covers to The New Yorker. She is…

PRECEDENTIAL DEBATE I appreciated Margaret Talbot’s article about Amy Coney Barrett, and her discussion of stare decisis, the legal principle that guides judges to defer to precedents set by courts (“Amy Coney Barrett’s Long Game,” February 14th & 21st). In the context of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an abortion-rights case that currently sits before the Supreme Court, adherence to stare decisis would lead the Court to reaffirm Roe v. Wade. Talbot notes that Barrett described stare decisis as “not an inexorable command,” while Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor voiced concern about the ramifications of overturning prior rulings. Though I share their wariness, ignoring precedent is not always a bad thing. Qualified immunity, a doctrine that was established by the Supreme Court in 1967, shields public officials accused…

MARCH 16 – 22, 2022 Since Dionne Warwick arrived at Scepter Records, in the mid-nineteen-sixties, the soul singer has become one of the most accomplished performers of the rock era—a Grammy Hall of Famer who’s sold more than a hundred million records, breaking barriers in the process. On such standards as “Walk On By” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” her flawless voice exudes composure, and it has only grown richer and more robust with time. On March 22, the eighty-one-year-old brings more than three decades’ worth of hits to City Winery. As ever, it’s advisable to confirm engagements in advance and to check the requirements for in-person attendance. THE THEATRE English In this new play by Sanaz Toossi (a Roundabout and Atlantic Theatre Company co-production, directed by Knud Adams)—set in the Iranian city…

Does New York City need another steak house? Furthermore, would its gastronomic horizons be brightened by the addition of an English steak house? No and definitely not, a food-aficionado friend said, brow arched, when I raised the question. Perhaps it was in anticipation of such skepticism that Hawksmoor, an upscale U.K. steakhouse group, pulled out all the stops when it opened its ninth outlet (of ten), in Gramercy Park, last year. Housed in the former assembly hall of the United Charities Building, Hawksmoor, all stained-glass windows and vaulted, ornate ceilings, recalls a Victorian library or a palatial aristocratic home. “I love the fact that basically anyone who’s ever walked through these doors has never seen this room before, because it’s been closed to the public for more than a century,” Will…

“HIGHEST GAS PRICES IN HISTORY!” Donald Trump said in a statement that he issued last Tuesday. “DO YOU MISS ME YET?” The answer is no. The world could hardly be at a more dangerous juncture, with a catastrophe in Ukraine that could spiral into a wider war—perhaps even a nuclear one. One of the few blessings of the moment is that our own nuclear arsenal is not in the hands of a Twitter-happy tantrum-thrower beholden to his own vanity. At a speech in New Orleans this month, according to the Washington Post, Trump mooted the idea of putting China’s flag on American planes and sending them to bomb Russia: “Then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.” During Trump’s time in the White House, he…

Five days after Russia invaded Ukraine, as missiles pummelled Kyiv and a forty-mile-long military convoy menaced the city, a vlogger there named Volodymyr Zolkin phoned a stranger across the border in Russia to deliver some news: “Roman Gavrilovich has been captured.” The young man on the line had already heard that Ukrainian soldiers had detained his friend, and said he was still in shock that his friend had been in combat. “I served with him. I quit in January,” he told Zolkin, who was streaming the call live on his YouTube channel. “I don’t understand at all how they threw them over there. They’re not ready for war. We just dug and painted; most didn’t even know how to shoot.” “Are you thinking of doing anything to fight this in your country?”…