Adam Gopnik

Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafes, breathtaking facades around every corner-in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans.In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. For Gopnik this was above all a personal pilgrimage to...

On a memorable day in human history, February 12, 1809, two babies were born an ocean apart: Abraham Lincoln in a one-room Kentucky log cabin; Charles Darwin on an English country estate. It was a time of backward-seeming notions, when almost everyone still accepted the biblical account of creation as the literal truth and authoritarianism as the most natural and viable social order. But by the time both men died, the world had changed: ordinary people...

The children's gate is an entrance to Central Park that leads to the playground. Gopnik explores that entrance in metaphor and experience as he recounts his family's return from Paris to New Yorka seemingly secure, almost oddly child-friendly New Yorkin the fall of 2000. Gopnik describes not a city but an extended urban family, and a home charmed by the civilization of childhood. It's a charm that is simultaneously protect from, challenged by, and...

Cinq fenêtres grand ouvertes sur la plus austère des saisons, comme autant de façons d'en proposer une histoire sociale et culturelle. Cet essai, poétique et abondamment documenté, puise dans l'art, le sport, l'urbanisme et l'histoire pour décrire les mille facettes de l'hiver: le chauffage au charbon, le patin, l'art romantique, les grandes explorations polaires, les fêtes de fin d'année, la littérature russe, l'art pictural japonais, le...

Longtime New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik investigates a foundational human question: How do we learn―and master―a new skill? For decades, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a fundamental matter: How did the people he was writing about learn their outlandish skill, whether it was drawing a nude or baking a sourdough loaf? In The...

From New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik, a slim, elegant volume presenting a radical alternative to our culture of relentless striving. Our society is obsessed with achievement. Young people are pushed toward the next test or the "best" grammar school, high school, or college they can get into. Adults push themselves toward the highest-paying, most prestigious jobs, seeking promotions and public recognition. As Adam Gopnik points out, the result...

Virtuoso conductor and composer Lydia Tár becomes the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Set in the international world of classical music, the film centers on Lydia Tár, widely considered one of the greatest living composer/conductors and first-ever female chief conductor of a major German orchestra.