In praise of ... New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books is a misleading title. It is edited in New York and does, indeed, review books. But anyone who has picked up a copy will know that it is far more than that. Under the joint editorship of its founders, Robert Silver and Barbara Epstein, it built up a formidable reputation for a publication - not quite magazine, not quite newspaper - which ranges far beyond New York and far beyond books. The fortnightly magazine that Silvers and Epstein created in 1963 managed at once to be scholarly without being pedantic, scrupulous without being dry. It publishes long pieces of argument, reportage and criticism, some of them with the slenderest connection, if any, to books. After 9/11 - and, in particular, during and after the second war in Iraq - it became a cauldron for the fiercest and most informed criticism of American foreign policy. It has published searing indictments of the Bush administration; the most learned analysis of the Supreme Court and the most penetrating criticism of the defects of the American press in the run-up to Iraq. It has published Auden, Updike, Sontag, Roth, Arendt, Mailer, Vidal, Bellow, Lowell, Capote and - oh well, everyone. Silvers has edited the magazine alone since the death of Epstein in 2006. At the age of 78 he shows no signs of slowing up. From today the Guardian will be publishing a monthly selection of its writing. Those readers previously unfamiliar with the New York Review of Books are in for a treat.