Tarpley Hitt

This piece is adapted from Barbieland: The Unauthorized History by Tarpley Hitt. Copyright © 2025 by the author and reprinted with permission of Atria/One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

“Ken was to be the first new character in the Barbie universe, and so his design raised questions about the norms of that world.”

For years, Gagosian's heads of security, Anthony Johnson and Andre Headley have protected masterpieces, welcomed billionaires, and become legends in their own right.

Almost exactly 64 years after Barbie's first Toy Fair, I flew to Berlin. It was March 4, 2023.

It was easy for toy magnate Louis Marx to picture Barbie's downfall. He'd orchestrated many a toy's obsolescence. How many times had he seen a solid product, remade it in cheaper plastic, using cheaper labor, and sold his own for less? “He was the big bully on the block,” Hot Wheels designer Fred Adickes once said. “He'd go to a toy fair, see what was there, and he'd knock it off quickly.” There was a reason all his friends were generals and baseball players and not designers or inventors. “He made very few friends in the toy industry,” a British toy executive remembered. “He always believed that if he got friendly with his competitors he couldn't knock off their products.”

April 2, 2026 – New books by Roland Betancourt, Ananda Devi, Patrick Radden Keefe, Ben Lerner, Jay McInerney, Chelsey Minnis, and Francesc Tosquelles.

May 7, 2026 – New books by César Aira, Dylan Gottlieb, Xiao Hai, Maïa Hruska, and Missouri Williams.

June 1, 2026 – New books by César Aira, Osamu Dazai, Claire Fuller, Kevin Hartnett, Édouard Louis, and Teddy Wayne.

August 3, 2026 – “Let me be clear: I don’t ever want to see this story again.”

August 18, 2026 – Some favorite passages from the many new releases that wound up on our desks this July and August.