What Drives Patrick Radden Keefe?

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/style/patrick-radden-keefe-london-falling-new-yorker.html

"Over the course of a distinguished #journalistic career, #NicholasLemann has #written #books on American meritocracy (“The Big Test,” 1999), capitalism (“Transaction Man,” 2019), the black migration to the industrial North (“The Promised Land,” 1991) and the racial terrorism that plagued Reconstruction (“Redemption,” 2006).

“Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries” is a more personal project. Here the #NewYorker staff #writer and emeritus dean at #ColumbiaJournalismSchool turns his lens on himself and his prosperous #Louisiana-based family of merchants, plantation owners and lawyers, embedding them in the #history of the #American #South and of #German #Jewish #immigration and #assimilation. The panoramic view and shifting of perspectives broaden the #book’s interest but detract from its focus.

The search for identity and community does give this sprawling, ruminative memoir a thematic unity."

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/returning-review-jewish-roots-in-the-south-294d4c34

When Do We Become Adults, Really?

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/when-do-we-become-adults-really

#HackerNews #WhenDoWeBecomeAdults #Really #Adulting #LifeTransitions #GrowingUp #NewYorker

The ICEBlock App Has Helped People Avoid Immigration Agents. Is It Legal?

https://ibbit.at/post/213381

“I knew almost nothing about the #Jewish aspect, as opposed to the #Southern aspect, of my family’s history,” #Lemann, a staff #writer at the #NewYorker and #professor and dean emeritus at #Columbia #Journalism School, #writes in Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries. Jewish was more the way others thought of the family than how they viewed themselves. Or so he thought.

Lemann’s #book is his fifth and his most personal, reaching back in time to uncover how his aristocratic, well-established life in #Louisiana was a relatively modern development following decades of #assimilation.

It is a family portrait in a unique milieu — #Faulkner and #RobertPennWarren meets #IrvingHowe’s World of Our Fathers — that follows the rough contours of the #Torah: the original sins of slavery, #Exodus and the conflicted push towards a promised land with political #Zionism and a codification of life as Lemann reclaims tradition. It’s a compelling read..."

https://forward.com/culture/books/813970/returning-a-search-for-home-across-three-centuries-nicholas-lemann-new-orleans-jewish-history/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub