Best New Yorker Articles of 2020
Explore 48 featured picks from The New Yorker's 2020 issues.
48 picks · 48 issues · Top author: Anthony Lane (4)
Most featured section: A Reporter at Large
Featured Picks
Personal History by John McPhee: A project meant not to end.
Stranger than fiction! One of Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers represented a man who, in 1993, kidnapped another Harvey Weinstein and kept him captive for twelve days in a pit next to the West Side Highway, Bruce Handy writes.
Ben Taub on Omar Ameen, who came to the U.S. to escape violence in Iraq and was subsequently accused of being a member of an ISIS hit squad.
Casey Cep on how activists and preservationists are changing the kinds of places that are protected, and what it means to preserve them.
Paige Williams reports on the people struggling with addiction who share a lethal dose of drugs and are then prosecuted as killers.
Underground Railroad simulations have ignited controversy about whether they confront the country’s darkest history or trivialize its gravest traumas, Julian Lucas writes.
Fly-fishing in Great Kills Harbor, the Reagan-era hit machine talks about his childhood with the Beats in the Bay Area, and the challenge of making music while losing his hearing.
Vinson Cunningham on whether programs that help low-income students of color get into selective private schools obscure the system’s deeper inequalities.
The agency has always been viewed as removed from political spats. But the timing of the U.S.’s decision seems suspicious, Peter Hessler writes.
Jon Lee Anderson reports on whether the controversial socialist leader Evo Morales was deposed or escaped justice.
Peter Hessler on forty-five days of avoiding the coronavirus.
Rachel Aviv on Sharon Stern, who devoted herself to Butoh and whose mentor may have led her down a dangerous path.
Illustrators around the world, from Brooklyn to Guangzhou, share scenes from their eerily empty cities.
Michael Specter reports on the infectious-disease expert’s long crusade against some of humanity’s most virulent threats.
Many Syrians thought that the U.S. cared about them. Now they know better, Luke Mogelson writes.
Fiction by Allan Gurganus: “The doctor was soon the only person brave or fool enough to duck under the orange quarantine ropes, ignoring warning signs he himself had nailed to the doors of those farmhouses worst hit.”
The beguilements of the sleeper car have never seemed sharper than on the eve of a global lockdown, Anthony Lane writes.
Alex Ross on Igor Levit, who, during Germany’s shutdown, streamed more than fifty performances from home and is questioning what a concert can be.
Her new album, “Punisher,” was crafted with foresight and intention, but the absurdity of the world in which it’s being released requires a certain amount of disengagement, Amanda Petrusich writes.
Henry Alford writes about a Florida attorney who, as a protest against newly opened beaches, patrols the sand, warning heedless sunbathers with the words “See you soon!”
Pandemic or not, the artist’s masterly paintings explore conditions of aloneness as proof of belonging, Peter Schjeldahl writes.
Rachel Aviv on a penitentiary with one of the U.S.’s largest coronavirus outbreaks, where prison terms become death sentences.
Anthony Lane reviews Agnieszka Holland’s dramatization of Ukraine’s deadly Holodomor famine, “Mr. Jones,” and Olivier Assayas’s “Wasp Network,” starring Penélope Cruz and Gael García Bernal.
Once a distant outpost of the British Empire, the islands have become a global crossroads. In the season of the coronavirus, the intimate communities may evolve yet again, Larissa MacFarquhar writes.
Anthony Lane reviews Max Barbakow’s “Palm Springs” and Natalie Erika James’s matrilineal drama, “Relic.”
Elizabeth Kolbert on how a scientist known as the “father of global warming” watched his dire predictions for the planet come true.
When J.F.K. ran for President, a team of data scientists with powerful computers set out to model and manipulate American voters, Jill Lepore writes.
Peter Hessler on teaching and learning in Sichuan during the pandemic.
Jeremy Burge isn’t like other tech C.E.O.s. He has never raised money, he has no employees, and his official title is Chief Emoji Officer. But he still deals with controversy, such as demands for a Kurdish-flag emoji and for more emoji skin tones, Leo Mirani reports.
Jennifer Gonnerman writes about Terence Layne’s driving a New York City bus during a pandemic and an uprising.
Rachel Syme writes about Kim Kardashian West’s makeup artist, Mario Dedivanovic, who is known for his Masterclass series and is launching his own cosmetics line.
Jiayang Fan reflects on the separation from her mother, who suffers from A.L.S., during the pandemic, and on the online sensation her story became for Chinese nationalists.
The F.B.I. tried to recruit an Iranian scientist as an informant. When he balked, the payback was brutal, Laura Secor reports.
In a new video series, the members of the orchestra play together for the first time since lockdown began, Alex Ross writes.
The desire to protect children may put their long-term well-being at stake, Alec MacGillis writes.
There’s no other country where the pandemic’s effects have been so concentrated in a single city, Peter Hessler writes.
“You’re Wrong About” debunks the stories of the past. But its real subject isn’t so much facts as the process by which we absorb them, Rachel Syme writes.
Rachel Monroe writes about why so many people create false stories about military service, the tools detectives use in their investigations, and what happens after the truth is exposed.
Biden’s challenge was that the President lies in a manner that is so unanchored to reality that it becomes disorienting for anyone watching, Amy Davidson Sorkin writes.
The President has survived one impeachment, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. What happens when his Presidential immunity is gone?
Two metal-detector enthusiasts discovered a Viking hoard. It was worth a fortune—but it became a nightmare, Rebecca Mead writes.
Jill Lepore on how the President could endanger the official records of one of the most consequential periods in American history.
Jared Kushner wanted a “James Baker-like” figure, but he ended up with a ragtag bunch of lawyers led by a raving Rudolph Giuliani, who made his first appearance in federal court in this century, Lizzie Widdicombe writes.
As the pandemic makes an already terrible housing crisis worse, a new version of house-sitting signals a broken real-estate market, Francesca Mari writes.
Sarah Larson reviews the “Office Ladies” and “An Oral History of ‘The Office’” podcasts to explore why the show remains hugely popular.
José Feliciano looks back on the nineteen-word Christmas song, which he wrote in ten minutes and recorded in a single take, Michael Schulman writes.
Sketchpad by Jeremy Nguyen: Knitting, reading, arguing, and royal-watching while waiting for the swab.