Masha Gessen's Russia, Edvard Munch's art, writing a memoir, what Trump revealed

New on nybooks.com: Masha Gessen’s portrait of Russia, the angst and joy of Edvard Munch, the costs of writing a memoir, a painter of snakes, lizards, spiders, and butterflies, Tove Jansson’s work beyond the Moomins, and four reflections on the Trump era so far. Sponsored by [MIT Press]( [Russia’s Gay Demons]( Robert Cottrell If, in the age-old anti-Semitic narrative, “they” were conspiring to steal the nation’s money, in Putin’s anti-gay narrative “they” are conspiring to steal the nation’s children. [Norwegian Woods]( Ingrid D. Rowland From the very beginning, Munch’s paintings excited both passion and controversy: his first solo exhibition in Berlin closed after a tumultuous week of fistfights between admirers and detractors. In the new issue: David Salle on Louise Bourgeois, Diane Ravitch on big money politics, Timothy Garton Ash on Germany’s alt-right, Madeleine Schwartz on Jenny Diski, Jerome Groopman on the deaf, Adam Hochschild on the KKK, and [more]( NYR Daily [The Afterlife of a Memoir]( Aminatta Forna Write a memoir, but only if you are sure you want to live with the consequences every day for the rest of your life. [Marseus in the Land of Snakes]( Christopher Carroll When Cosimo de Medici visited Amsterdam in 1667, Otto Marseus van Schrieck, not Rembrandt, was the first person he received. [Beyond the Moomins?]( Simon Willis For anyone familiar with Tove Jansson from the Moomins alone, the most surprising works in a new exhibition will be her early self-portraits and her wartime political cartoons. Reflections on a Year with Trump [Stress Testing the Constitution]( Elizabeth Joh Can a president pardon others to stop a criminal investigation? Could Trump preemptively pardon himself? A president’s authority to pardon himself was once hypothetical; it has now assumed the form of a real-life possibility. [Rhetoric & Responsibility]( Marilynne Robinson America at present is not a democracy. It does not use its politics to think through the questions that arise for it or even to acknowledge them and articulate them thoughtfully. [Trump’s Foreign Affairs]( Jonathan Freedland Trump has not just dismounted from America’s moral high horse. He has descended into the ditch to join those the United States once felt able to condemn. [When Black Women Lead]( Steven W. Thrasher The past year of political hell in America could have been avoided if the nation had listened to black women. The New York Review of Books 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](