The Mistakes and Struggles Behind America’s Coronavirus Tragedy

Plus: Jenna Lyons’s J. Crew afterlife, our year in poetry, and the case for cancelling New Year’s Eve forever. View in browser | Update your preferences A Reporter at Large The Plague Year The U.S. has only four per cent of the world’s population, yet it accounts for twenty per cent of all covid deaths. How did we go so wrong? By Lawrence Wright The New Yorker Interview Jenna Lyons’s J. Crew Afterlife The designer discusses her departure from the fashion company and her sometimes messy reëmergence. By Carrie Battan Cultural Comment Cancel New Year’s Eve Forever Not just the parties. Our acknowledgment of a new year must become strictly clerical. By Sarah Miller 2020 in Review A Year of Historical Turning Points in New Yorker Fiction It’s hardly surprising that some of the anxiety of this unmooring year trickled into fiction. By Deborah Treisman 2020 in Review The New Yorker’s Year in Poetry The poetry we published reflects a year of unprecedented challenges and calls for long-overdue societal change. By Hannah Aizenman Culture Desk “Moonstruck” Knows That the Best Things in Life Aren’t Chosen If the movie has a clear through line, it is about things that are wrong getting made right, a winding process that often involves committing some new wrongs along the way. By B. D. McClay Atlanta Postcard Toppling the Statues, Virtually The Invisible Hate Web site lets users digitally tag about seven hundred symbols of white supremacy around the nation. How about “Shame on You” or “Tear It Down”? By Charles Bethea Humor and Puzzles Crossword The Holiday Crossword: 2020 in Movies Time-jumping Christopher Nolan feature (September, 2020): five letters. By Kameron Austin Collins Daily Shouts Song Lyrics About My Teen-Age Years if I Were Taylor Swift Bagels at Panera, hazelnut coffee at Panera. Wishing I was a grownup. Caffeine makes me feel. By Molly Devane Daily Cartoon Monday, December 28th By Brooke Bourgeois This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker. To insure delivery, we recommend adding newyorker@newsletters.newyorker.com, to your contacts, while noting that it is a no-reply address. Please send all newsletter feedback to tnyinbox@newyorker.com. For more from The New Yorker, sign up for our newsletters, shop the store, and sign in to newyorker.com, where subscribers always have unlimited access. Contact us with questions. View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2020. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.