Zadie Smith’s essay collections have an uncanny habit of arriving precisely when the culture shifts. Changing My Mind (2009) appeared as the iPhone began transforming daily life; Feel Free (2018) followed Donald Trump’s first inauguration; Intimations (2020) captured the disorientation of the pandemic’s early months; and now Dead and Alive appears in the wake of Trump’s return to office. Comprising essays written between 2016 and 2025, most of them first published elsewhere, the collection gains an unexpected coherence in retrospect.