Gideon Lewis-Kraus

The complete archive

Published work since 2004, a hundred and thirty-eight pieces in all, juvenilia included. Each title opens a PDF.

arranged
newest first

2026nine

  1. The Pentagon Went to War with Anthropic. What’s Really at Stake? New Yorkerreported essay2026
  2. Our A.I. Problem New Yorkercomment2026
  3. How Project Maven Put A.I. Into the Kill Chain (on Katrina Manson’s Project Maven) New Yorkerreview2026
  4. How a Congressional Primary Became a Proxy Battle Over A.I. (on Alex Bores) New Yorkerreported feature2026
  5. What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn’t Know, Either New Yorkerreported feature2026
  6. Sam Altman Won in Court Against Elon Musk. But, Really, We All Lost New Yorkertrial dispatch2026
  7. Computer Chips Are the Most Magnificent Things We’ve Ever Made New Yorkerreported feature2026
  8. The Bear Minimum (on Alex Davies’s Kobuk the Destroyer) New Yorkerreview essay2026
  9. The Rise of the ‘Scenario’ (on Annie Jacobsen and existential-risk forecasting) New Yorkeressay2026

2025eight

  1. Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers? (on Caroline Fraser’s Murderland) New Yorkerreview2025
  2. Do Androids Dream of Anything at All? (profile of Martha Wells) New Yorkerprofile2025
  3. What Does “Capitalism” Really Mean, Anyway? (on Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History) New Yorkerreview2025
  4. On Rebecca West’s ‘The Crown Versus William Joyce’ New Yorkershort essay2025
  5. The End of Children New Yorkerreported feature2025
  6. The Finale of ‘The Rehearsal’ Is Outlandish and Sublime New Yorkertv criticism2025
  7. The Palantir Guide to Saving America’s Soul (on Alex Karp and Nicholas Zamiska’s The Technological Republic) New Yorkerreview2025
  8. Why Good Ideas Die Quietly and Bad Ideas Go Viral (on Nadia Asparouhova’s Antimemetics) New Yorkerreview2025

2024seven

  1. Are Flying Cars Finally Here? New Yorkerreported feature2024
  2. Has Bitcoin’s Elusive Creator Finally Been Unmasked? New Yorkeressay2024
  3. How a Scientific Dispute Spiralled Into a Defamation Lawsuit (on Francesca Gino’s lawsuit) New Yorkerfollow-up2024
  4. Jewish Identity with and Without Zionism New Yorkerreview essay2024
  5. The Angst and Sorrow of Jewish Currents New Yorkerreported feature2024
  6. Sovereignty for Sale (on Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s The Hidden Globe) New Yorkerreview2024
  7. You Say You Want a Revolution (on Fareed Zakaria and Nathan Perl-Rosenthal) New Yorkerreview2024

2023seven

  1. They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie? (on Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino) New Yorkerreported feature2023
  2. When Dying Patients Want Unproven Drugs (on Relyvrio and the F.D.A.) New Yorkerreported feature2023
  3. Did Starbucks Really Put Olive Oil in Coffee? New Yorkeressay2023
  4. Maybe We Already Have Runaway Machines New Yorkerreview essay2023
  5. Michael Lewis’s Big Contrarian Bet (on Going Infinite) New Yorkerreview2023
  6. Surveillance and the Loneliness of the Long-Distance Trucker (on Karen Levy’s Data Driven) New Yorkerreview essay2023
  7. The Trials of Sam Bankman-Fried New Yorkertrial dispatch2023

2022six

  1. An Extraordinary Account of a Hasidic Enclave New Yorkerreview2022
  2. Have Chinese Spies Infiltrated American Campuses? (on the China Initiative and Franklin Tao) New Yorkerreported feature2022
  3. The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism (profile of Will MacAskill) New Yorkerprofile2022
  4. We Know Less About Social Media Than We Think (on Jonathan Haidt) New Yorkerreported essay2022
  5. Sam Bankman-Fried, Effective Altruism, and the Question of Complicity New Yorkerreported essay2022
  6. The Man Who Explains Italy (profile of Francesco Costa) New Yorkerprofile2022

2021five

  1. Can Progressives Be Convinced That Genetics Matters? (profile of Kathryn Paige Harden) New Yorkerprofile2021
  2. Free for All (on David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything) New Yorkerreview2021
  3. Janet Malcolm, Remembered by Writers (group piece) New Yorkergroup tribute2021
  4. How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously New Yorkerreported feature2021
  5. The Unexplained Phenomena of the U.F.O. Report New Yorkercommentary2021

2020four

  1. Jonathan Rothberg’s Race to Invent the Ultimate Rapid At-Home COVID-19 Test (profile of Jonathan Rothberg) New Yorkerreported feature2020
  2. Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media New Yorkerreported essay2020
  3. Bad Algorithms Didn’t Break Democracy (polarization) Wiredessay2020
  4. How to Make Government Trustworthy Again Wiredessay2020

2019three

  1. Is Ancient DNA Research Revealing New Truths — or Falling Into Old Traps? NYT Magazinereported feature2019
  2. Does Who You Are at 7 Determine Who You Are at 63? (profile of Michael Apted) NYT Magazineprofile2019
  3. The Rise of the WeWorking Class NYT Magazinereported essay2019

2018four

  1. Facebook and the ‘Dead Body’ Problem NYT Magazineessay2018
  2. One of Them Is in the City. The Other Can’t Be. (travel ban) NYT Magazinereported piece2018
  3. Selling Airborne Opulence to the Upper Upper Upper Class NYT Magazinereported feature2018
  4. Inside the Crypto World’s Biggest Scandal (on Tezos) Wiredreported feature2018

2017three

  1. How the ‘Resistance’ Helped Democrats Dominate Virginia NYT Magazinereported feature2017
  2. Inside the Birth of a Trump-Inspired Intellectual Magazine The Nationreported essay2017
  3. Interview with Joshua Cohen Viceinterview2017

2016eleven

  1. Oh, the Humanities (on Mark Greif’s Against Everything) Bookforumreview essay2016
  2. Surviving San Francisco: Race, Money, and the Neoliberal Tech-Bro (Tony Tulathimutte interview) LitHubinterview2016
  3. Bubble Indemnity (venture capital) NYT Magazinecolumn2016
  4. Could Hillary Clinton Become the Champion of the 99 Percent? (Roosevelt Institute) NYT Magazinereported feature2016
  5. Peter Thiel’s Heroic Political Fantasies NYT Magazineessay2016
  6. The Great A.I. Awakening (on Google Brain) NYT Magazinereported feature2016
  7. The Trials of Alice Goffman (on Alice Goffman) NYT Magazinereported feature2016
  8. What We See When We Look at Travel Photography NYT Magazineessay2016
  9. Check In With the Velociraptor at the World’s First Robot Hotel Wiredreported feature2016
  10. How to Build a Civil Rights Movement for the Digital Age (profile of Rashad Robinson) Wiredprofile2016
  11. Inside the Battle to Bring Broadband to New York’s Projects Wiredreported feature2016

2015ten

  1. Negative Capability (on Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island) Bookforumreview essay2015
  2. The Walker (Paulo Nazareth) Friezeart essay2015
  3. A Grand Juror Speaks Harper’sfirst-person essay2015
  4. Is Translation an Art or a Math Problem? NYT Magazinereported essay2015
  5. Welcome to Liberland, the World’s Newest Country (Maybe) NYT Magazinereported feature2015
  6. ZPM Espresso and the Rage of the Jilted Crowdfunder NYT Magazinereported feature2015
  7. It’s Time That Writing Took Something Back From the Internet (Joshua Cohen interview) New Republicgchat interview2015
  8. A Very Quiet Triumph (on Colm Tóibín’s Nora Webster) NYRBreview2015
  9. 100 Miles, 10 Days, Three Countries and a Lot of Cheese (Tour du Mont Blanc) T Magazinetravel essay2015
  10. Can Politico Make Brussels Sexy? The Guardianreported feature2015

2014ten

  1. Story A, Story B (on Japanese hole-digging) Harper’sreported essay2014
  2. Georgian wedding toasts Lucky Peachreported essay2014
  3. Janet Malcolm’s Cut-Up Books NYRB Onlineart essay2014
  4. The Exacting, Expansive Mind of Christopher Nolan (profile of Christopher Nolan) NYT Magazineprofile2014
  5. All Aboard the Orient Local NYT Traveltravel essay2014
  6. Dragooned into Solidarity (on Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief) NYRBreview2014
  7. The Last Place on Earth (Stromboli) T Magazinereported essay2014
  8. Who Is Elena Ferrante? (with Meghan O’Rourke and Emily Gould) T Magazineconversation2014
  9. No Exit Wiredreported feature2014
  10. The Fasinatng... Fascinating History of Autocorrect Wiredreported essay2014

2013eight

  1. Numerical Madness: Critiques of a life online (Morozov and Tao Lin) Harper’sreview essay2013
  2. Sleeping Together (on Japanese co-sleeping) Harper’sreported essay2013
  3. Go and Get Killed, Comrade (Spanish Civil War) LRBreview essay2013
  4. Philip Roth: ‘The Full Arc’? (on Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Roth Unbound) NYRBreview essay2013
  5. Su Casa Es Mi Casa (Airbnb) T Magazinetravel essay2013
  6. Janet Malcolm TLSessay2013
  7. In Heroin’s White Thrall (Michael Clune) New Yorkerreview2013
  8. Yelp and the Wisdom of ‘The Lonely Crowd’ New Yorkeressay2013

2012seven

  1. Viewer Discretion (on David Foster Wallace’s Both Flesh and Not and D. T. Max’s biography) Bookforumreview essay2012
  2. Dance Dance Revolution (Electric Daisy Carnival) GQreported feature2012
  3. It’s Good to Be Alive LRBreview essay2012
  4. The Fact-Checker Versus the Fabulist NYT Magazinereview essay2012
  5. Booking It to Africa (Kalahari) Papertravel essay2012
  6. In Search of the Heart of the Online Cat-Industrial Complex Wiredreported feature2012
  7. Pay to Play: Dispatches From the Cat Cafés of Tokyo Wiredcompanion piece2012

2011five

  1. Examining Pop Culture’s Heroes, and Himself (John Jeremiah Sullivan) NYT Book Reviewreview2011
  2. Over and Over (on David Levine’s Habit) Threepenny Reviewtheater review2011
  3. Epilogue to a Moment (Javier Cercas) n+1review essay2011
  4. Heroes of Retreat (Javier Cercas, print version) n+1review essay2011
  5. You Know Nothing of My Work: On Reading Bernhard in New York (Thomas Bernhard) n+1essay2011

2010one

  1. The Marketplace of Ideas (on Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas) Slatereview2010

2009six

  1. Death Trips (on David Grann’s The Lost City of Z, and James Palmer) Bookforumreview2009
  2. The Last Book Party (at the Frankfurt Book Fair) Harper’sreported essay2009
  3. Tokeville (on marijuana cultivation) Harper’sreported feature2009
  4. Walking Is What Pilgrims Do (Camino) The Nautilustravel narrative2009
  5. Head of the Class (on Neil Gross’s Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher) n+1review essay2009
  6. Shop Right (on Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft) n+1review essay2009

2008five

  1. How Fiction Works (on James Wood’s How Fiction Works) LA Timesreview2008
  2. Master of the Orgasm (Wilhelm Reich) Tabletreview essay2008
  3. The Reanimator (profile of Omer Fast) Tabletprofile2008
  4. The Village (Kevin Vennemann) Tabletreview2008
  5. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (on Rimini Protokoll’s Call Cutta in a Box) Threepenny Reviewtheater review2008

2007five

  1. A World in Three Aisles (Prelinger Library) Harper’sreported essay2007
  2. The Uncertainty Principle of Beauty (Alexander Nehamas) New York Sunreview2007
  3. A Survivor Mourns Life Lost to Gulag (Martin Amis, House of Meetings) SF Chroniclereview2007
  4. Christine Falls (Benjamin Black, John Banville) Slatereview2007
  5. Repetition Compulsion (Thomas Bernhard) Threepenny Reviewreview2007

2006seven

  1. The Water Rush Oxford Americanreported feature2006
  2. Talk of the World (David Remnick) SF Chroniclereview2006
  3. Pawn of the Neocons? The debate over Reading Lolita in Tehran Slateessay2006
  4. Death in the Family (Daniel Mendelsohn) The Nationreview2006
  5. Disentangled from Redemption (Amos Oz) Threepenny Reviewreview2006
  6. Lots of Tiny Searches (Geoff Dyer) Threepenny Reviewreview2006
  7. Name That Town (Colson Whitehead) Washington Postreview2006

2005five

  1. The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) LA Timesreview2005
  2. A Mad, Mad World (Adam Phillips) NYT Book Reviewreview2005
  3. The Dark Ages (A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close) NYT Book Reviewreview2005
  4. Convergence of Separate Odysseys (Murakami, Kafka on the Shore) SF Chroniclereview2005
  5. Against Ponies, Against Airplanes (Dean Young) Threepenny Reviewreview2005

2004two

  1. In the Penthouse of the Ivory Tower (on the MLA convention) The Believerreported essay2004
  2. Richard Rorty interview The Believerq&a2004