1939-1945 Archives

1939-1945

Grand Illusion

by Paul Fussell,

I’ve given the Second World War a uniformly bad press, rejecting all attempts to depict it as a sensible proceeding or to mitigate its cruelty and swinishness. I have rubbed…

“Put on the Diamonds”

by Vivian Gornick,

Notes on humiliation

Prayer for a Just War

by Greg Jackson,

Finding meaning in the climate fight

Shelter in Place

by Samanth Subramanian,

The democratic designs of J.B.S. Haldane

Two Germanys

by Sigrid MacRae,

The East, the West, and the meaning of home

Rumination

by Lucienne S. Bloch,

From “Inside Stories,” an essay published in the Winter 2021 issue of Five Points. I used to visit an elderly woman who lived in a single room in an apartment…

Fathers, Sons, Screaming Eagles

by Joan Didion,

From Let Me Tell You What I Mean, a collection of essays that will be published next month by Knopf. The essay originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in…

Abstract Expression

by Jacob Mikanowski,

The former Yugoslavia’s enigmatic memorial architecture

Things to Come

by Kevin Baker,

On March 30, during one of the daily briefings on the COVID-19 outbreak that had so captured the hearts and minds of New Yorkers, Governor Andrew Cuomo uttered a sentence…

Survive and Advance

by Albert Camus,Translated by Madison Mainwaring,

A letter written in 1943 in response to a request from the Committee of National Liberation in Algiers to outline the mood in France, which was under Nazi occupation at…

Killing Time

by Jean Giono,Translated by Jody Gladding,

From Occupation Journal, a diary that Giono kept during the Nazi occupation of France, which was published last month by Archipelago Books. Translated from the French by Jody Gladding. tuesday,…