Culture
The Many Uses (and Abuses) of Shame
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Its absence may be liberating or terrifying, relying on the place you sit. When he was president, Donald Trump was usually described as shameless, berating his opponents in essentially the most lurid phrases, gleefully signaling his imperviousness to decorous (and even democratic) opinion. His supporters nonetheless love him for this, excited by his willingness to say the entire obnoxious issues they was “allowed” to say however can’t anymore. You might name it reactionary shamelessness — a defiant refusal to just accept that the norms of the tradition have modified, and a nostalgia for a time when Trump’s supporters had been those doing the shaming. Over the past a number of a long time individuals who may need been on the receiving finish of such mockery have asserted their proper to not be shamed for his or her weight, for his or her gender, for his or her needs.
This assertion is a sort of shamelessness, too, however based on Cathy O’Neil’s new e-book, “The Disgrace Machine,” it’s of a special variety — not bitter and resentful however “wholesome and liberating.” O’Neil distinguishes between disgrace that “punches down” and disgrace that “punches up.” To punch down is to deride and shun individuals for issues that O’Neil says are largely formed by forces past their management; for her, these embrace habit, weight problems and poverty. To punch up is to carry the highly effective to account for his or her deeds — “police chiefs, governors, CEOs.”
Such distinctions are certain to be controversial — too categorical or doubtlessly condescending, portraying individuals as extra abject than they may see themselves to be. O’Neil’s earlier e-book, “Weapons of Math Destruction,” explored how algorithms encode and exacerbate inequality; the “disgrace machines” in her new e-book, which embrace the load loss and wellness industries, perform equally — fueling unhealthy feeling with a purpose to buoy income whereas sustaining an unfair established order.
However we shouldn’t ignore how disgrace has additionally been used as a pressure for constructive change, O’Neil says. She quotes what Frederick Douglass stated he hoped to do for America: to make use of “the general public exposition of the contaminating and degrading affect of Slavery” with a purpose to “disgrace her out of her adhesion to a system so abhorrent to Christianity and to her republican establishments.” At a time when slavery was nonetheless legally sanctioned, Douglass couldn’t enchantment to authorities authority, however he might enchantment to its ostensible beliefs.
“In some instances, shaming is all we’ve got,” Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental research, writes in “Is Disgrace Vital?” (2015). Disgrace is highly effective and in addition wildly imprecise, that means it have to be deployed “shrewdly,” she says, with “scrupulous implementation.” Overzealous deployment can backfire, making the goal really feel victimized and much more remoted. “As with antibiotics, if shaming is abused, we would all find yourself as victims,” she writes.
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Culture
The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
![The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/07/08/books/review/08100-81-Promo/08100-81-Promo-facebookJumbo.jpg)
As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of
The New York Times Book Review.
Many of us find joy in looking back and taking stock of our reading lives, which is why we here at The New York Times Book Review decided to mark the first 25 years of this century with an ambitious project: to take a first swing at determining the most important, influential books of the era. In collaboration with the Upshot, we sent a survey to hundreds of literary luminaries, asking them to name the 10 best books published since Jan. 1, 2000.
Stephen King took part. So did Bonnie Garmus, Claudia Rankine, James Patterson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Elin Hilderbrand, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Roxane Gay, Marlon James, Sarah MacLean, Min Jin Lee, Jonathan Lethem and Jenna Bush Hager, to name just a few.
As we publish the list over the course of this week, we hope you’ll discover a book you’ve always meant to read, or encounter a beloved favorite you’d like to pick up again. Above all, we hope you’re as inspired and dazzled as we are by the breadth of subjects, voices, opinions, experiences and imagination represented here.
![Book cover for Tree of Smoke](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-WIYI/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-WIYI-articleLarge.png)
100
Tree of Smoke
Like the project of the title — an intelligence report that the newly minted C.I.A. operative William “Skip” Sands comes to find both quixotic and useless — the Vietnam-era warfare of Johnson’s rueful, soulful novel lives in shadows, diversions and half-truths. There are no heroes here among the lawless colonels, assassinated priests and faith-stricken NGO nurses; only villainy and vast indifference.
![Book cover for How to Be Both](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-2ADW/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-2ADW-articleLarge.png)
99
How to Be Both
This elegant double helix of a novel entwines the stories of a fictional modern-day British girl and a real-life 15th-century Italian painter. A more conventional book might have explored the ways the past and present mirror each other, but Smith is after something much more radical. “How to Be Both” is a passionate, dialectical critique of the binaries that define and confine us. Not only male and female, but also real and imaginary, poetry and prose, living and dead. The way to be “both” is to recognize the extent to which everything already is. — A.O. Scott, critic at large for The Times
![Book cover for Bel Canto](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-N0L6/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-N0L6-articleLarge.png)
98
Bel Canto
A famed opera singer performs for a Japanese executive’s birthday at a luxe private home in South America; it’s that kind of party. But when a group of young guerrillas swoops in and takes everyone in the house hostage, Patchett’s exquisitely calibrated novel — inspired by a real incident — becomes a piano wire of tension, vibrating on high.
![Book cover for Men We Reaped](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-3D8A/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-3D8A-articleLarge.png)
97
Men We Reaped
Sandwiched between her two National Book Award-winning novels, Ward’s memoir carries more than fiction’s force in its aching elegy for five young Black men (a brother, a cousin, three friends) whose untimely exits from her life came violently and without warning. Their deaths — from suicide and homicide, addiction and accident — place the hidden contours of race, justice and cruel circumstance in stark relief.
![Book cover for Wayward Lives,<br /> Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/books-additional-skewsksk-slide-ATV5/books-additional-skewsksk-slide-ATV5-superJumbo.png)
96
Wayward Lives,
Beautiful Experiments
A beautiful, meticulously researched exploration of the lives of Black girls whom early-20th-century laws designated as “wayward” for such crimes as having serial lovers, or an excess of desire, or a style of comportment that was outside white norms. Hartman grapples with “the power and authority of the archive and the limits it sets on what can be known” about poor Black women, but from the few traces she uncovers in the historical record, she manages to sketch moving portraits, restoring joy and freedom and movement to what, in other hands, might have been mere statistics. — Laila Lalami, author of “The Other Americans”
![Book cover for Bring Up the Bodies](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-C6T4/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-C6T4-articleLarge.png)
95
Bring Up the Bodies
The title comes from an old English legal phrase for summoning men who have been accused of treason to trial; in the court’s eyes, effectively, they are already dead. But Mantel’s tour-de-force portrait of Thomas Cromwell, the second installment in her vaunted “Wolf Hall” series, thrums with thrilling, obstinate life: a lowborn statesman on the rise; a king in love (and out of love, and in love again); a mad roundelay of power plays, poisoned loyalties and fateful realignments. It’s only empires, after all.
![Book cover for On Beauty](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-TRSV/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-TRSV-articleLarge.png)
94
On Beauty
Consider it a bold reinvention of “Howards End,” or take Smith’s sprawling third novel as its own golden thing: a tale of two professors — one proudly liberal, the other staunchly right-wing — whose respective families’ rivalries and friendships unspool over nearly 450 provocative, subplot-mad pages.
![Book cover for Station Eleven](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-52GM/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-52GM-articleLarge.png)
93
Station Eleven
Increasingly, and for obvious reasons, end-times novels are not hard to find. But few have conjured the strange luck of surviving an apocalypse — civilization preserved via the ad hoc Shakespeare of a traveling theater troupe; entire human ecosystems contained in an abandoned airport — with as much spooky melancholic beauty as Mandel does in her beguiling fourth novel.
![Book cover for The Days of Abandonment](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-7shdko-01askew-slide-RZ3V/best-books-7shdko-01askew-slide-RZ3V-superJumbo.png)
92
The Days of Abandonment
There is something scandalous about this picture of a sensible, adult woman almost deranged by the breakup of her marriage, to the point of neglecting her children. The psychodrama is naked — sometimes hard to read, at other moments approaching farce. Just as Ferrante drew an indelible portrait of female friendship in her quartet of Neapolitan novels, here, she brings her all-seeing eye to female solitude.
![Book cover for The Human Stain](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-2220/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-2220-articleLarge.png)
91
The Human Stain
Set during the Clinton impeachment imbroglio, this is partly a furious indictment of what would later be called cancel culture, partly an inquiry into the paradoxes of class, sex and race in America. A college professor named Coleman Silk is persecuted for making supposedly racist remarks in class. Nathan Zuckerman, his neighbor (and Roth’s trusty alter ego), learns that Silk, a fellow son of Newark, is a Black man who has spent most of his adult life passing for white. Of all the Zuckerman novels, this one may be the most incendiary, and the most unsettling. — A.O. Scott
![Book cover for The Sympathizer](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-DP2S/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-DP2S-articleLarge.png)
90
The Sympathizer
Penned as a book-length confession from a nameless North Vietnamese spy as Saigon falls and new duties in America beckon, Nguyen’s richly faceted novel seems to swallow multiple genres whole, like a satisfied python: political thriller and personal history, cracked metafiction and tar-black comedy.
![Book cover for The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-2MOB/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-2MOB-articleLarge.png)
89
The Return
Though its Pulitzer Prize was bestowed in the category of biography, Matar’s account of searching for the father he lost to a 1990 kidnapping in Cairo functions equally as absorbing detective story, personal elegy and acute portrait of doomed geopolitics — all merged, somehow, with the discipline and cinematic verve of a novel.
![Book cover for The Collected Stories<br /> of Lydia Davis](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-R7P7/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-R7P7-articleLarge.png)
88
The Collected Stories
of Lydia Davis
Brevity, thy name is Lydia Davis. If her work has become a byword for short (nay, microdose) fiction, this collection proves why it is also hard to shake; a conflagration of odd little umami bombs — sometimes several pages, sometimes no more than a sentence — whose casual, almost careless wordsmithery defies their deadpan resonance.
![Book cover for Detransition, Baby](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-WLYN/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-WLYN-articleLarge.png)
87
Detransition, Baby
Love is lost, found and reconfigured in Peters’s penetrating, darkly humorous debut novel. But when the novel’s messy triangular romance — between two trans characters and a cis-gendered woman — becomes an unlikely story about parenthood, the plot deepens, and so does its emotional resonance: a poignant and gratifyingly cleareyed portrait of found family.
![Book cover for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/books-additional-skewsksk-slide-AR7D/books-additional-skewsksk-slide-AR7D-superJumbo.png)
86
Frederick Douglass
It is not hard to throw a rock and hit a Great Man biography; Blight’s earns its stripes by smartly and judiciously excavating the flesh-and-bone man beneath the myth. Though Douglass famously wrote three autobiographies of his own, there turned out to be much between the lines that is illuminated here with rigor, flair and refreshing candor.
![Book cover for Pastoralia](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-IUCI/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-IUCI-articleLarge.png)
85
Pastoralia
An ersatz caveman languishes at a theme park; a dead maiden aunt comes back to screaming, scatological life; a bachelor barber born with no toes dreams of true love, or at least of getting his toe-nubs licked. The stories in Saunders’s second collection are profane, unsettling and patently absurd. They’re also freighted with bittersweet humanity, and rendered in language so strange and wonderful, it sings.
![Book cover for The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-7shdko-01askew-slide-ZPT6/best-books-7shdko-01askew-slide-ZPT6-superJumbo.png)
84
The Emperor of All Maladies
The subtitle, “A Biography of Cancer,” provides some helpful context for what lies between the covers of Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, though it hardly conveys the extraordinary ambition and empathy of his telling, as the trained oncologist weaves together disparate strands of large-scale history, biology and devastating personal anecdote.
![Book cover for When We Cease to Understand the World](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-OQPJ/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-OQPJ-articleLarge.png)
83
When We Cease to Understand the World
You don’t have to know anything about quantum theory to start reading this book, a deeply researched, exquisitely imagined group portrait of tormented geniuses. By the end, you’ll know enough to be terrified. Labatut is interested in how the pursuit of scientific certainty can lead to, or arise from, states of extreme psychological and spiritual upheaval. His characters — Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, among others — discover a universe that defies rational comprehension. After them, “scientific method and its object could no longer be prised apart.” That may sound abstract, but in Labatut’s hands the story of quantum physics is violent, suspenseful and finally heartbreaking. — A.O. Scott
![Book cover for Hurricane Season](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-DYXY/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-DYXY-articleLarge.png)
82
Hurricane Season
Her sentences are sloping hills; her paragraphs, whole mountains. It’s no wonder that Melchor was dubbed a sort of south-of-the-border Faulkner for her baroque and often brutally harrowing tale of poverty, paranoia and murder (also: witches, or at least the idea of them) in a fictional Mexican village. When a young girl impregnated by her pedophile stepfather unwittingly lands there, her arrival is the spark that lights a tinderbox.
![Book cover for Pulphead](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/06/30/books/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-KY6H/best-books-jjksd01sj-flat-slide-KY6H-articleLarge.png)
81
Pulphead
When this book of essays came out, it bookended a fading genre: collected pieces written on deadline by “pulpheads,” or magazine writers. Whether it’s Sullivan’s visit to a Christian rock festival, his profile of Axl Rose or a tribute to an early American botanist, he brings to his subjects not just depth, but an open-hearted curiosity. Indeed, if this book feels as if it’s from a different time, perhaps that’s because of its generous receptivity to other ways of being, which offers both reader and subject a kind of grace.
My Tally
I haven’t read any of these books yet …
If you’ve read a book on the list, be sure to check the box under its entry, and your final
count will appear here. (We’ll save your progress day to day.)
… but I’m sure there’s something for me.
Keep track of the books you want to read by checking the box under their entries.
Methodology
In collaboration with the Upshot — the department at The Times focused on data and analytical journalism — the Book Review sent a survey to hundreds of novelists, nonfiction writers, academics, book editors, journalists, critics, publishers, poets, translators, booksellers, librarians and other literary luminaries, asking them to pick their 10 best books of the 21st century.
We let them each define “best” in their own way. For some, this simply meant “favorite.” For others, it meant books that would endure for generations.
The only rules: Any book chosen had to be published in the United States, in English, on or after Jan. 1, 2000. (Yes, translations counted!)
After casting their ballots, respondents were given the option to answer a series of prompts where they chose their preferred book between two randomly selected titles. We combined data from these prompts with the vote tallies to create the list of the top 100 books.
Culture
Stephen King, Sarah Jessica Parker and More Share Their Top Books of the 21st Century
![Stephen King, Sarah Jessica Parker and More Share Their Top Books of the 21st Century](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/07/09/books/review/09Ballot/09Ballot-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg)
Stephen King
Stephen King has written more than 60 books, many of which have been adapted for film and television. His latest is the story collection YOU LIKE IT DARKER.
“Atonement,” by Ian McEwan ● “Christine Falls,” by Benjamin Black ● “The Goldfinch,” by Donna Tartt ● “Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn ● “No Country for Old Men,” by Cormac McCarthy ● “Oryx and Crake,” by Margaret Atwood ● “The Paying Guests,” by Sarah Waters ● “The Plot Against America,” by Philip Roth ● “The Sympathizer,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen ● “Under the Dome,” by Stephen King
1 of these, so far, appears on the 100 Best list.
(This page will update throughout the
week.)
Min Jin Lee
Min Jin Lee has written two novels: FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES and PACHINKO, which was one of The Times’s 10 Best Books of 2017.
“All the Light We Cannot See,” by Anthony Doerr ● “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” by Katherine Boo ● “Brooklyn,” by Colm Tóibín ● “The Buddha in the Attic,” by Julie Otsuka ● “Educated,” by Tara Westover ● “Evicted,” by Matthew Desmond ● “Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson ● “The Known World,” by Edward P. Jones ● “Nickel and Dimed,” by Barbara Ehrenreich ● “Redeployment,” by Phil Klay
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian writer and essayist best known for MY STRUGGLE, a series of six autobiographical novels.
“2666,” by Roberto Bolaño ● “The Argonauts,” by Maggie Nelson ● “The Days of Abandonment,” by Elena Ferrante ● “The Flame Alphabet,” by Ben Marcus ● “The Kingdom,” by Emmanuel Carrère ● “Never Let Me Go,” by Kazuo Ishiguro ● “Small Things Like These,” by Claire Keegan ● “Storm Still,” by Peter Handke ● “Train Dreams,” by Denis Johnson ● “Voices from Chernobyl,” by Svetlana Alexievich
1 of these, so far, appears on the 100 Best list.
(This page will update throughout the
week.)
Bonnie Garmus
Bonnie Garmus is the author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY, which was named Barnes & Noble’s book of the year in 2022.
“Between the World and Me,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates ● “Demon Copperhead,” by Barbara Kingsolver ● “Educated,” by Tara Westover ● “Genome,” by Matt Ridley ● “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” by J.K. Rowling ● “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” by Dave Eggers ● “Henry David Thoreau,” by Laura Dassow Walls ● “Pobby and Dingan,” by Ben Rice ● “The Underground Railroad,” by Colson Whitehead ● “The Worst Hard Time,” by Timothy Egan
Nana Kwame Adjei‑Brenyah
Nana Kwame Adjei‑Brenyah’s debut novel, CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS, was one of The Times’s 10 Best Books of 2023.
“Drinking Coffee Elsewhere: Stories,” by ZZ Packer ● “Ghost Of,” by Diana Khoi Nguyen ● “Greenwood,” by Michael Christie ● “Look,” by Solmaz Sharif ● “Pachinko,” by Min Jin Lee ● “Pastoralia,” by George Saunders ● “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” by Jesmyn Ward ● “Stories of Your Life and Others,” by Ted Chiang ● “Tenth of December,” by George Saunders ● “The Underground Railroad,” by Colson Whitehead
1 of these, so far, appears on the 100 Best list.
(This page will update throughout the
week.)
Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz is an author whose books include THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
“Americanah,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ● “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” by Katherine Boo ● “Brother, I’m Dying,” by Edwidge Danticat ● “Kingdom Animalia,” by Aracelis Girmay ● “The Known World,” by Edward P. Jones ● “Out,” by Natsuo Kirino ● “The Savage Detectives,” by Roberto Bolaño ● “Say Her Name,” by Francisco Goldman ● “Stories of Your Life and Others,” by Ted Chiang ● “Tuff,” by Paul Beatty
Sarah Jessica Parker
Sarah Jessica Parker is an Emmy-winning actress and the founder of Zando’s literary imprint, SJP Lit.
“An American Marriage,” by Tayari Jones ● “The Bee Sting,” by Paul Murray ● “A Burning,” by Megha Majumdar ● “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” by Anthony Marra ● “The Corrections,” by Jonathan Franzen ● “The Goldfinch,” by Donna Tartt ● “A History of Burning,” by Janika Oza ● “The Nickel Boys,” by Colson Whitehead ● “Say Nothing,” by Patrick Radden Keefe ● “Wave,” by Sonali Deraniyagala
James Patterson
James Patterson has written more than 200 books across various genres, including collaborations with Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton. His latest books include CONFESSIONS OF THE DEAD, which he wrote with J.D. Barker, and TIGER, TIGER.
“11/22/63,” by Stephen King ● “The Book Thief,” by Markus Zusak ● “Educated,” by Tara Westover ● “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” by Stieg Larsson ● “Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn ● “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” by J.K. Rowling ● “Kitchen Confidential,” by Anthony Bourdain ● “Life,” by Keith Richards with James Fox ● “Mystic River,” by Dennis Lehane ● “Seabiscuit,” by Laura Hillenbrand
Elin Hilderbrand
Elin Hilderbrand, often referred to as the queen of beach reads, recently announced that SWAN SONG, released in June, would be the last of her Nantucket summer novels.
“Alice & Oliver,” by Charles Bock ● “American Wife,” by Curtis Sittenfeld ● “Dirt Music,” by Tim Winton ● “Euphoria,” by Lily King ● “Every Last One,” by Anna Quindlen ● “Fates and Furies,” by Lauren Groff ● “Hamnet,” by Maggie O’Farrell ● “Luster,” by Raven Leilani ● “May We Be Forgiven,” by A.M. Homes ● “The Night Circus,” by Erin Morgenstern
Annette Gordon‑Reed
Annette Gordon-Reed is a professor at Harvard University whose 2008 history, THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO, won both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award…
… and she also included it on her ballot, telling us,
“I couldn’t help it.”
“Between the World and Me,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates ● “The Emperor of All Maladies,” by Siddhartha Mukherjee ● “Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson ● “The Hemingses of Monticello,” by Annette Gordon-Reed ● “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” by Rebecca Skloot ● “The Metaphysical Club,” by Louis Menand ● “The Plot Against America,” by Philip Roth ● “The Underground Railroad,” by Colson Whitehead ● “The Warmth of Other Suns,” by Isabel Wilkerson ● “Wolf Hall,” by Hilary Mantel
1 of these, so far, appears on the 100 Best list.
(This page will update throughout the
week.)
Rebecca Roanhorse
Rebecca Roanhorse is a Hugo- and Nebula-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist whose works include BLACK SUN and TRAIL OF LIGHTNING.
“Ancillary Justice,” by Ann Leckie ● “Exhalation,” by Ted Chiang ● “The Fifth Season,” by N.K. Jemisin ● “The Ministry for the Future,” by Kim Stanley Robinson ● “The Only Good Indians,” by Stephen Graham Jones ● “The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories,” by Ken Liu ● “Ring Shout,” by P. Djèlí Clark ● “The Round House,” by Louise Erdrich ● “The Saint of Bright Doors,” by Vajra Chandrasekera ● “Selected Stories,” by Theodore Sturgeon
Marlon James
Marlon James is the author of five novels, including A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS, which won the 2015 Booker Prize.
“2666,” by Roberto Bolaño ● “As Meat Loves Salt,” by Maria McCann ● “Evicted,” by Matthew Desmond ● “The Fifth Season,” by N.K. Jemisin ● “The Good Lord Bird,” by James McBride ● “The Line of Beauty,” by Alan Hollinghurst ● “Pachinko,” by Min Jin Lee ● “Skippy Dies,” by Paul Murray ● “Wolf Hall,” by Hilary Mantel ● “The World Is What It Is,” by Patrick French
Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is an editor, essayist and author whose best-selling nonfiction includes BAD FEMINIST and HUNGER. She is also a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times.
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” by Michael Chabon ● “The Brutal Language of Love,” by Alicia Erian ● “Girl, Woman, Other,” by Bernardine Evaristo ● “Heavy,” by Kiese Laymon ● “Her Body and Other Parties,” by Carmen Maria Machado ● “NW,” by Zadie Smith ● “Pachinko,” by Min Jin Lee ● “Room,” by Emma Donoghue ● “Salvage the Bones,” by Jesmyn Ward ● “State of Wonder,” by Ann Patchett
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem is a writer best known for his 1999 novel MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN.
“Aurora,” by Kim Stanley Robinson ● “Dear Cyborgs,” by Eugene Lim ● “The Employees,” by Olga Ravn ● “Erasure,” by Percival Everett ● “Hawthorn & Child,” by Keith Ridgway ● “Houses of Ravicka,” by Renee Gladman ● “How the Dead Dream,” by Lydia Millet ● “The Last Samurai,” by Helen DeWitt ● “Pity the Beast,” by Robin McLean ● “Trance,” by Christopher Sorrentino
Sarah MacLean
Sarah MacLean is an award-winning romance writer whose most recent novel is KNOCKOUT.
“After Hours on Milagro Street,” by Angelina M. Lopez ● “Again the Magic,” by Lisa Kleypas ● “Bet Me,” by Jennifer Crusie ● “Circe,” by Madeline Miller ● “Dark Needs at Night’s Edge,” by Kresley Cole ● “Forbidden,” by Beverly Jenkins ● “Georgie, All Along,” by Kate Clayborn ● “Hana Khan Carries On,” by Uzma Jalaluddin ● “A Heart of Blood and Ashes,” by Milla Vane ● “Ravishing the Heiress,” by Sherry Thomas
Ed Yong
Ed Yong is a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist and the author of AN IMMENSE WORLD and I CONTAIN MULTITUDES.
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Nick Hornby is best known for comic novels like HIGH FIDELITY and ABOUT A BOY.
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Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a poet and professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. Her debut novel, THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B. DU BOIS, was one of The Times’s 10 Best Books of 2021.
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Anand Giridharadas is a writer and former foreign correspondent whose books include THE PERSUADERS and WINNERS TAKE ALL.
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Culture
Euro 2024 day 23: England's 'cheat code' water bottle and can the Dutch go all the way?
![Euro 2024 day 23: England's 'cheat code' water bottle and can the Dutch go all the way?](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/07/06161817/GettyImages-2160910473-scaled-e1720297119678.jpg)
The semi-finals line-up for Euro 2024 is complete.
With France and Spain having assured themselves of places in the last four yesterday, England and the Netherlands followed them with victories today.
Both quarter-finals were tight and dramatic, in different ways. England once again looked laboured and devoid of imagination for much of their meeting with Switzerland, only to squeeze through thanks to Bukayo Saka’s brilliant individual goal — which cancelled out Breel Embolo’s opener — and then some heroics in the penalty shootout.
The Dutch, meanwhile, came from behind against Turkey to reach their first European Championship semi-final in 20 years, setting up a meeting with England in Dortmund on Wednesday.
Our writers dissect the major talking points.
England’s penalty secret? It’s all about the bottle
There didn’t seem to be much in it at first.
Cole Palmer had just scored England’s first penalty in their shootout with Switzerland and Manuel Akanji was sauntering forward to make his response. Jordan Pickford, the England goalkeeper, began to trot over too, before suddenly doubling back.
Pickford had forgotten something — his water bottle, which was rather oddly wrapped in a towel. Having picked it up, he moved back to his goal and placed the bottle, still wearing its towel, next to the side netting.
Having made Akanji wait a bit longer by moving forward to inspect the penalty spot, Pickford settled back on his goal line. Akanji had a short run-up and struck the ball with his right foot, but Pickford was one step ahead. He plunged to his left, parried the penalty away and England had an advantage they were never to relinquish.
Good fortune? Not so much. This was actually a triumph of subterfuge for England and their team of analysts who had studied the penalties of all Switzerland’s players, noted where they tended to place them and printed out their findings for Pickford to stick on his water bottle.
The analysis was captured by a photographer at the ground but Pickford was taking no chances in the moments before Akanji’s penalty — hence his decision to wrap the bottle in that towel.
And England’s backroom staff had clearly done their homework well. They had deciphered that Akanji was likely to shoot to his right, so the best way for Pickford to play the percentages was to dive left — which he duly did.
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/07/06155207/GettyImages-2160911722-1.jpg)
Pickford’s water bottle with the instruction for Akanji’s penalty (we have circled it here)
Having got it right first time, it was surprising Pickford did not follow his bottle’s advice on all the penalties.
Fabian Schar took their second one but rather than pretending to dive right before actually diving to his left — as his bottle instructed — Pickford did the reverse, faking left and jumping right. Schar’s penalty unfolded as the bottle had predicted, to his right, where the net was vacant.
Pickford did follow his bottle for the final two Swiss penalties: Xherdan Shaqiri struck his to the right, but it was too well placed and his shot just evaded Pickford’s fingertips.
The only penalty where the bottle was proved wrong was for Zeki Amdouni on the fourth kick. Pickford held his ground and dived low to his left, as he had been briefed, but Amdouni outwitted him by going to his right.
Thankfully for England, that one save was enough. And if their semi-final against the Netherlands on Wednesday also goes the distance, do not be surprised to see Pickford’s bottle and towel make another appearance.
Andrew Fifield
Saka stars — but where is Kane?
When Saka starts well, England start well. He was their best player in the first half against Serbia in their opening match of Euro 2024, when he repeatedly had the beating of marker Andrija Zivkovic, and today he was again.
It was no coincidence that the first half today was England’s best since they started the tournament nearly three weeks ago. Pushed high and wide in possession, in a formation that almost looked like a 3-4-3, Saka was up against left wing-back Michel Aebischer. And he easily had the beating of him.
So many times in the first half, Saka took advantage of the fact that England were getting the ball to him far faster than they had been against Slovakia in the previous round. Saka got into good positions, put crosses in and forced corners. The only frustration was that England were never able to turn any of those crosses into serious shots on goal.
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/07/06161209/GettyImages-2160906991-scaled.jpg)
Bukayo Saka was a star for England (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
Striker Harry Kane, who was prone to dropping deep throughout the match, ending up playing in defence at points in the second half, was unable to get on the end of any of Saka’s deliveries. Kane was substituted in extra time after an accidental touchline collision with England’s manager, Gareth Southgate.
Without the ball, Saka had to run back and cover Ruben Vargas, but he did that diligently. And when England needed him most, Saka delivered with the crucial equaliser, just when his team looked completely out of ideas.
Jack Pitt-Brooke
Can the Netherlands go all the way?
An unconvincing run, a manager who not many are convinced by, a couple of come-from-behind wins and a feeling that being in the good half of the draw is the only reason they are in the semi-finals… for England, read the Netherlands.
But here they are, in the final four of the Euros for the first time since 2004. So, how good are their prospects of winning just a second major tournament in their history?
Well, Turkey preyed on their weaknesses in today’s quarter-final, especially via set pieces and crosses, while Austria also took advantage of a badly organised defence when consigning them to third in the group stage. But the Dutch have got plenty going for them too.
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/07/06170822/GettyImages-2160925153-scaled.jpg)
The Netherlands celebrate beating Turkey (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Again like England, when they’re confident and in full flow, showing composure and intensity, they can be great to watch, as was the case when beating Romania 3-0 in the round of 16.
Tonight, they had to show resolve, spirit… and some tactical acumen from manager Ronald Koeman with his second-half changes.
Three-goal Cody Gakpo is an obvious threat (who Turkey dealt with well until he crept in at the back post to take advantage of some dozy defending and help score the winner, via Mert Muldur’s own goal), while if Jerdy Schouten, Tijjani Reijnders and Xavi Simons are given time and space in midfield they can play — and then some.
Denzel Dumfries is always a pacy danger from full-back and then there’s big Wout Weghorst to throw into the mix off the bench for some aerial carnage.
England will have plenty to think about.
On current form, Wednesday’s semi-final in Dortmund looks too close to call.
Tim Spiers
Guler departs… as a star
While a Barcelona teenager — Spain’s Lamine Yamal — has rightly been garnering attention throughout the tournament for his sparkling performances, one from their arch-rivals Real Madrid has emerged as someone equally thrilling.
Arda Guler of Turkey may not have played too often for Madrid last season, mostly owing to injury, but he ended his debut year at the Bernabeu in fabulous form (five goals in five games) and brought that momentum to Euro 2024.
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/07/06165244/GettyImages-2160285936-scaled.jpg)
Arda Guler has been a star at Euro 2024 (Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images)
His second assist of the tournament against the Netherlands today was a beauty. Turkey and Guler, after a slow start, had come into the game via a series of threatening set pieces which the Dutch struggled to cope with, and the opening goal was an extension of that.
Picking up a cleared corner on the right of the box, Guler was itching to try to work the ball onto his favoured left foot and whip it into the box.
With no angle to do that, the 19-year-old, who also hit the post with a free kick in the second half, reluctantly took a swish with his right… and delivered a picture-perfect outswinging cross that completely befuddled goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen, who resembled someone who had half-crossed a road only to recoil and hesitate when seeing a speeding motorbike careering their way.
Verbruggen neither jumped to claim the ball nor reversed to his goal line. He was helpless. Step forward Samet Akaydin at the back post, only playing because of Merih Demiral’s suspension, and he planted an easy header into the net.
Guler’s tournament may be over now, but you sense that this is just the start of a glittering career, for club and country.
Tim Spiers
What’s next?
- Spain vs France (Tuesday, 8pm BST; 3pm ET)
- Netherlands vs England (Wednesday. 8pm BST; 3pm ET)
(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
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