Becca Rothfeld

Washington, D.C.

Book critic

Education: Dartmouth College, BA in philosophy and German; University of Cambridge, MPhil in history and philosophy of science; Harvard University, ABD, PhD in philosophy

Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic at Book World. Before joining The Washington Post, she served as assistant literary editor of the New Republic and worked toward her PhD in philosophy at Harvard, where she focused on aesthetics and the history of philosophy. Her debut essay collection is forthcoming from Henry Holt in 2024.
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Latest from Becca Rothfeld

‘Fire Weather’ is a gripping narrative and a loud wake-up call

John Vaillant’s new book recounts a Canadian wildfire in 2016 that was nicknamed ‘the beast.'

June 7, 2023

‘Flawless’ dives deep into the booming Korean beauty industry

Elise Hu's book presents the most cosmetically advanced country on Earth as an object lesson in more familiar cruelties.

June 1, 2023

‘On Women’ collects Susan Sontag’s crisp, cutting work about feminism

In these essays and interviews, Sontag was concerned with both limiting and expanding the scope of the battle against sexism.

May 25, 2023

How to be a man? Josh Hawley has the (incoherent) answers.

In “Manhood,” the senator joins a long tradition of those who bemoan masculinity’s endangerment and offer advice for saving it.

May 18, 2023

‘Fatherland’ weighs a family member’s guilt as a Nazi

New Yorker staff writer Burkhard Bilger’s new book is about his grandfather, a complicated official in 1940s France.

May 4, 2023

In defense of the childless

Two new books provide unusually sane explanations for declining birth rates.

April 27, 2023

‘Affinities’ opens our eyes to the ‘mundane miracle of looking’

In "Affinities," the critic Brian Dillon illustrates the hold that images have on us.

April 20, 2023

‘An Innocent Fashion,’ by R.J. Hernández: The millennial fairy tale

A recent Yale graduate lands an internship at New York’s top fashion magazine.

July 7, 2016

‘The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft’

Twenty-two tales from the master of horror.

October 27, 2014