Readers’ Choice

The Genius of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus

JASON M. BAXTER

Gilligan’s special talent as a filmmaker is that he can borrow the most lavish and experimental cinematography from auteur directors—which in their hands seems conceited, precious, and boring—and redeploy it in ways that enlarge our capacity for emotion.

Caravaggio and Us

JASPREET SINGH BOPARAI

From the January issue: When Caravaggio arrived in Rome in the early 1590s, he was surrounded by repetitive mannerism and stale classicism. Art seemed to have stagnated in the Eternal City since the death of Michelangelo in 1564.

Our Year in Books—2025

VARIOUS

At present, The Intellectual Life is on my nightstand. Written by a French Dominican, this guide is at once detailed and practical and sweeping and inspirational. This is my third or fourth time reading it, which I’m doing as slowly as possible, the better to read, mark, and inwardly digest.

Dark Phantoms

MARK BAUERLEIN

From the January issue: Freud described how hard it is to discuss recurring visions when they reach traumatic levels: The patient “is obliged rather to repeat as a current experience what is repressed, instead of, as the physician would prefer to see him do, recollecting it as a fragment of the past.”

Governor Hochul Must Veto MAiD in New York

AUDREY POLLNOW

“Even one suicide is one too many,” New York’s Governor has said. Given this, it’s deeply unsettling that she has announced her intention to sign a bill that would legalize physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill New Yorkers.