Review

Richard Holbrooke was a symbol of his country’s promise as a superpower—and its decline.

David Shulman’s diaries of resisting the Israeli occupation show the limits of activism in the face of rampant dispossession and despair.

Hotel Mumbai is a tale of courage. It is also a worrying reminder of India’s security flaws.

A glitz and glam song competition turns political.

Jia Zhangke’s "Ash Is Purest White," socially critical yet officially sanctioned, strikes a middle path for Chinese cinema.

A slate of new releases reexamine gender in conflict.

La perturbadora elegancia del blanco y negro

Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece may be Oscar worthy, but it fails to address the problems of Latin American households.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has tried to keep the Islamist group in check, but the situation in Gaza is as unstable as ever.

In Capernaum, Nadine Labaki finds a new way for film to deal with poverty.

A new video game captures the anxiety of Chinese parenting.

1,200 newly translated poems from Bertolt Brecht offer an unexpected survival guide for difficult times.

Will the return of the European far-right be the undoing of the West?

A new diplomatic history argues that the United States, Egypt, and Israel prevented a Palestinian state from emerging. But leaders such as Yasser Arafat bear much of the blame.

A review of Prudence Bushnell’s new book on the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings.

Brussels’s new European history museum could put anyone to sleep.

The country’s far-right wants to revive ethnic nationalism. The left must come up with its own alternative.

There’s nothing wrong with today’s EU that France’s legendary 20th-century leader didn’t see coming—and didn’t try to fix when he had the chance.

Two French best-sellers draw warnings for the present from the stories of Hitler’s henchmen.

Meet the American philosopher who showed that Western politics could only move forward by first taking a step backward.