Banality of Evil
Daphne Merkin on a brilliant new film presenting Hannah Arendt in the midst of the Eichmann trial and the 'banality of evil.'
Daphne Merkin was a staff writer for The New Yorker and is currently a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and Elle. She is the author of a novel, Enchantment, and a collection of essays, Dreaming of Hitler.
Review
Not even a mediocre film can erase the allure of the great romance of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Daphne Merkin on Lindsay Lohan’s star turn as ‘Liz.’
Liz and Dick
The great celebrity romance of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton is intimately captured in his diaries.
A new collection, Fragments, of the actress’ diaries reveals her dark, tortured soul, but there’s also a happier, more normal side that emerges here, says Daphne Merkin.
In time for the High Holidays, Daphne Merkin examines the hot air rhetoric in Norman Podhoretz’s new polemic, Why Are Jews Liberal?, and comes away unconvinced.
Masters and Johnson wrote the book on sex, and now a definitive biography of the duo reveals everything you wanted to know—and more— about their secret personal affair.
Steve Gaines’ Fool’s Paradise delivers a full diet of South Beach lore and other Miami vices.
Whether he was writing about sex, golf, or life in a small town, the fecund mind who gave the world Rabbit was never at rest. But why did readers seem to fall out of love with America’s everyman of letters?
An excerpt from Daphne Merkin’s novel, Enchantment.
Men like Bernie Madoff understand wealth. They understand power. And they prefer to keep women away from both.