Ben Tarnoff is a writer and technologist based in Massachusetts. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the New Republic, among other publications. His next book is Muskism, co-authored with Quinn Slobodian, which will be published by Harper in March 2026. He worked at Lapham’s Quarterly as an assistant editor from 2007 to 2008.
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward presented a twentieth century that was free of nineteenth-century... More
How a simple story of a man and his talented frog made Mark Twain a national celebrity. More
Roundtable
At first glance, Ambrose Bierce didn’t look like a coldblooded verbal killer. He was tall and handsome and scrupulously groomed, with a cherubic mop of golden hair. He excelled as a conversationalist and womanizer. He was also was nineteenth-century America’s greatest insult artist. More
Roundtable
Everyday is doomsday if you ask certain people about the future of publishing. But the history of bookselling proves it is more adaptive than its critics give it credit for. More
