Louis Menand
Louis Menand is a staff writer at The New Yorker . His books include “ The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War ,” released in 2021, and “ The Metaphysical Club ,” which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for history.
Read more on The New Yorker →20 picks · 1991–2024
Featured Picks
books ·
Louis Menand reviews “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism,” the new book by the former Justice, which touches on issues including abortion, gun laws, and gay marriage.
books ·
Louis Menand reviews “A Most Tolerant Little Town,” by Rachel Louise Martin, and explores a forgotten civil-rights episode.
books ·
He thought his success was just a matter of hard work and good luck. Other people had a different perspective. Louis Menand on “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir,” by Paul Newman.
books ·
Louis Menand on Andrew Kirtzman’s “Giuliani,” a lively new biography that explores how the man once celebrated as “America’s mayor” fell into disgrace.
a critic at large ·
The partisan redistricting tactics of cracking and packing aren’t merely flaws in the system—they are the system. Louis Menand on Eric Holder’s “Our Unfinished March,” Nick Seabrook’s “One Person, One Vote,” and Jacob Grumbach’s “Laboratories Against Democracy.”
books ·
Among the most masterful entertainers of his age, he had an unfailing sense of what the public wanted—almost. Louis Menand on Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s “The Turning Point: 1851—A Year That Changed Charles Dickens and the World.”
a critic at large ·
Should creative writing be taught?
books ·
Putting predictions to the test.
a critic at large ·
American art and the Cold War.
books ·
The strange liaison of Sartre and Beauvoir.
books ·
Louis Menand on the strange career of Eugene McCarthy.
life and letters ·
Louis Menand on J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” and on the persistent power of Holden Caulfield, fifty years after the book’s publication.
comment ·
Signed comment about traffic jams, overcrowding, and summer vacations... Writer comments that "Congestion is the expected condition of everything." …
comment ·
Signed Comment about the amusement value, civil rights implications, and potential financial repercussions from the Giuliani administration’s new …
comment ·
From 1994: In making a sexual-harassment charge against the President, Jones herself will be subjected to intense scrutiny.
comment ·
Comment about the nineties. There is an unavoidably pallid, anodyne quality to the triumphs of political pragmatism, something that's reflected even in…
books ·
Louis Menand on the novel that rewrote our understanding of race in America.
fiction ·
Black and white cartoon spread. Six panels describing other presidential candidates: e.g., Harvey "Rust" Perrault, Elvis Presley.
comment ·
Comment about the Senate Judiciary hearings on Clarence Thomas and their effects on the American psyche. Thomas, the federal judge nominated by President …