Best New Yorker Articles of 2022

Peter Hessler writes that the students he taught in the nineteen-nineties grew up in rural poverty. Now they’re in their forties, and their country is unrecognizable.

When COVID sidelined cast and crew of “American Utopia,” Byrne offered ticket holders a refund or the option to attend a reimagined performance with whatever cast members could cook up in a few days, Rich Benjamin writes.

Bill Bradley, a staid member of the rarefied (the Rhodes Scholarship), the very rarefied (the U.S. Senate), and the super-rarefied (the Knicks’ two championship teams), premières his autobiographical one-man Broadway show, “Rolling Along.”

Jane Mayer writes that, behind closed doors, Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife is working with many groups directly involved in controversial cases before the Court.

Personal History by John McPhee: A project meant not to end.

Jonathan Blitzer writes about how the musician’s political persecution pushed him into a career he was never sure he wanted.

Sixty years after renouncing modernity, the writer is still contemplating a better way forward, Dorothy Wickenden writes.

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.”

Nathan Heller writes about the legendarily competitive Lowell High School, and about the new challenges—and new opportunities—that arose when it dropped selective admissions.

Joshua Yaffa writes that, after thwarting a quick victory for Russia, Ukrainians are galvanized—and facing a punitive assault.

Calvin Tomkins writes that recognition for the American sculptor, who is representing the U.S. at the Venice Biennale, may have come late but it seems foreordained.

Two urban Shackletons braved the elements for a clandestine, moonlit canoe excursion down each of the Park’s waterways, from the Harlem Meer in the north to the Pond in the south, dodging the police and “Star Wars” reënactors along the way, Ben McGrath writes.

The second season of Lyonne’s Netflix series explores inherited trauma with a riff on “Back to the Future,” Rachel Syme writes.

Masha Gessen writes that, after eighty years, the site of a mass execution of Jews was about to be commemorated. Then Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Matthew Hutson writes about whether gravity, pressure, and other elemental forces can save us from becoming a battery-powered civilization.

The star of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Mad Men”—who is also a director, a rom-com fan, and a Scientologist—likes to swim in the weird, Michael Schulman writes.

Peter Hessler writes about how the country experienced so much social, economic, and educational change while its politics remained stagnant.

Patrick Radden Keefe on a new documentary, “We Feed People,” and how the chef’s World Central Kitchen has served twenty million hot meals to displaced Ukrainians since February.

From the velocipede to the ten-speed, biking innovations brought riders freedom. But in a world built for cars, life behind handlebars is both charmed and dangerous. Jill Lepore on Jody Rosen’s “Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle.”

The city bid farewell to its “last pay phone” with much hoopla, Zach Helfand writes. Days later, one sleuth reported on several remaining phone booths—by making calls from said phone booths.

A hot-headed coder is accused of exposing the agency’s hacking arsenal. Did he betray his country because he was pissed off at his colleagues? Patrick Radden Keefe reports on the investigation.

After making “The Good Wife,” Robert and Michelle King went rogue, creating wildly experimental series that capture the vertigo of post-Trump America, Emily Nussbaum writes.

Inna fled the war with her two young girls—but what would happen to her husband, her mother, and her other relatives? Ed Caesar reports.

Jia Tolentino writes about the overturning of Roe v. Wade after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization, the future for abortion rights, and the importance of reproductive justice.

France’s renowned author, known for his penetrating portraits of murderers and disaster victims, trains his eye on his own emotional collapse, Ian Parker writes.

Luxury ships attract outrage and political scrutiny, but the ultra-rich are buying them in record numbers, Evan Osnos writes.

Dan Kaufman writes about the activists who are combining voter suppression with election conspiracies to capture the state in 2022 and beyond.

E.V.s are virtually silent, so acoustic designers are creating alerts for them. A symphony—or a cacophony—of car noise could be coming to city streets, John Seabrook writes.

Jane Mayer writes about how gerrymandering has let unchecked Republicans pass extremist laws, even in moderate places like Ohio, that could never make it through Congress.

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.”

Postscript for J. J. Sempé: a salute to the French cartoonist and longtime cover contributor to the magazine, who died on August 11th.

Fiction by Ben Lerner: “I started to narrate my choking to myself, as if transforming it into a story would keep me connected to a future in which I might tell it.”

Lifeguards and cops, lap swimmers and splashing teen-agers, swim diapers and Speedos all converge at a public swimming spot in Brooklyn, as observed by Leanne Shapton.

Leslie Jamison describes her childhood obsession with the Choose Your Own Adventure book series; charts the history of what remains the fourth-best-selling children’s-book series of all time; talks with the writer, Edward Packard, who came up with the idea; and discusses the implications of open-ended narrative for a developing sense of self in young readers.

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.

Jon Lee Anderson on Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, who was heralded as a unifier after ending a decades-long border conflict. Now critics accuse him of tearing the country apart.

David Kortava on civilians being snatched from their homes and sent away for ideological screening, prolonged detention, and, in some cases, starvation and torture. Is there a larger plan at work?

Stephania Taladrid writes about the multigenerational network of activists getting abortion pills across the Mexican border to Americans.

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.

He’s in his eighties. How does he keep it fresh? David Remnick reports.

At a dangerous moment in Iran, the filmmaker stands accused by one of his former students, Rachel Aviv writes.

John Lahr on the actress and screenwriter—who has appeared in such movies as “Love Actually,” “Sense and Sensibility,” and “Nanny McPhee”—taking on a musical adaptation of the latter.

An American undergoes a gruelling apprenticeship to a Japanese master, Robert Moor writes.

For low-lying islands like Kivalina, climate change poses an existential threat, Emily Witt writes.

It began as a visionary notion—that patients could die with dignity at home. Now it’s a twenty-two-billion-dollar industry plagued by exploitation, Ava Kofman writes.

The first ten days were soccer as it is, rather than as you want it to be, Sam Knight writes.

Adam Iscoe on New York’s municipalities selling twenty-five-foot fire hoses, a pair of Nikes given to Mayor Bloomberg as a gift, and a school bus without working brakes.

The Republican leader’s ambition has always been his defining characteristic. Attempting to placate both Trumpists and moderates may lead to his downfall, Jonathan Blitzer writes.