Jennifer Szalai

@jenszalai.bsky.social

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https://www.nytimes.com/by/jennifer-szalai

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Jennifer Szalai·Jul 18

I wrote about something that's contested nowadays: empathy.

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Jennifer Szalai·Mar 14

WaPo's Ron Charles, in his Book Club newsletter, on Meta's repeated questions about his plans to review Sarah Wynn-Williams's "Careless People": "In my 27 years of reviewing and editing newspaper books sections, no company has ever done this with me."

Last Friday afternoon, I got my first message from Ryan Daniels, public affairs manager of strategic response at Meta. When I declined his invitation to talk by phone, he wrote back again: “I was wondering if the Washington Post was going to write a review about a book that’s coming out this upcoming week on Meta. Do you have a couple minutes to chat?”

So, I called. Daniels said, “We don’t have the book,” but the company had prepared “preliminary statements” about it. Although he didn’t share those with me, he wrote to me again on Saturday and again on Monday trying to get information about our review plans. (In my 27 years of reviewing and editing newspaper books sections, no company has ever done this with me.)
Yesterday, when I reached out to Daniels for a response from Meta, he wrote back: “Do you plan to write something about it, or are you just curious how we’re responding?” 

It’s always about controlling the narrative. But apparently, that’s not going so well. This morning, “Careless People” is No. 3 on Amazon. 

I know this is a long item, the longest I’ve ever written for the Book Club newsletter. But when one of the world’s most powerful media companies tries to snuff out a book — amid other alarming attacks on free speech in America like this — it’s time to pull out all the stops.
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Jennifer Szalai·Jun 19

In the basement of LAX:

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Jennifer Szalai·Feb 1

Recent book that’s worth reading: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

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Jennifer Szalai·Oct 17

Sometimes a bare recitation of the facts yields a devastating parenthetical: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/u...

At the center of his bet is that the currency of Argentina — a debt-ridden country whose economy has required more than 20 bailouts — is undervalued.
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Jennifer Szalai·Oct 15

An insightful essay. A few years ago I wrote about the literature of shame, including questions about shamelessness, salutary kinds of shame and what shaming can (and cannot) be for: www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/b...

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Jennifer Szalai·Oct 9

And one more thing: It’s good to see a Hungarian who isn’t Orbán make international news.

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Jennifer Szalai·Oct 9

I said this when Krasznahorkai won a National Book Award for translation several years ago, and I’ll say it again: This can only encourage Americans to learn how to pronounce the “sz“ sound, and I am here for it!

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Jennifer Szalai·Oct 9

László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel! Here’s an essay I wrote about him in 2012: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...

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Jennifer Szalai·Oct 8

I was struck by that line too. I reviewed Walter’s book “How Civil Wars Start” when it was published way back in 2022. her analysis was incisive; I was hoping it wouldn’t be prescient: www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/b...

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Jennifer Szalai·Oct 5

Philippe Sands‘s excellent new book traces the links between the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and an old Nazi named Walter Rauff — two men who embraced the deployment of state power to torture and murder human beings.

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Jennifer Szalai·Oct 3

I highly recommend Philippe Sands’s absorbing new book about Pinochet, a Nazi hiding out in Patagonia, and impunity: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b...

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Jennifer Szalai·Oct 1

Took a break from writing about political memoirs to review a big new biography of Bruce Lee [gift link] www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/b...

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Jennifer Szalai·Sep 30

“But the right did not learn cancel culture from the left; the modern right in America emerged as a censorious movement. It took decades for its free-speech faction to develop, and even then, it has only ever been a minority part of the coalition.” — Nicole Hemmer www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/o...

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