The New York Times Book Review – 25 September 2022
Special powers, avian obsession and visions of the future fuel these transporting and entertaining tales. By ALIDA BECKER
Jonathan Coe’s novel “Mr. Wilder and Me” explores the late career of a legendary Hollywood director. By BENJAMIN MARKOVITS
Locust in Nashville is the most perfect restaurant for our time.
Locust is open three days a week, for five and a half hours a day. Two hours are dedicated to lunch; the remaining time is for dinner service. On average, there are about six dishes on the menu, plus the occasional special (or three). The wine list is just as short. It’s hard to define what exactly the restaurant is, but as of right now, the food mostly has a Japanese bent. And on any given night, there might be a heavy metal soundtrack blasting from the open kitchen, with a few chefs head-banging away as they prepare your next dish. Locust is fully, uncompromisingly, and unapologetically itself—which is exactly what makes it so playful and brilliant.
La Habana Vieja (Old Havana), declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982, is the historic center of the city of Havana. It is formed by a harbor and the official center, the Plaza de Armas. There you will find all kinds of picturesque monuments, fortresses, churches, palaces, etc. It is full of authentic architectural treasures from different periods and offers one of the most comprehensive collections of urban buildings in all America. This area of the city alone is home to more than a thousand buildings of historical importance with various examples of distinguished architecture ranging from Baroque to Art Deco.
Unlike typical colonial cities, Havana was developed on not one, but four main plazas: the Plaza de Armas, which was the military and defensive center as it had a fortress and a large courtyard used for military parades; the Plaza de la Catedral, which with its cathedral was used as the religious center; the Plaza Vieja, which was the commercial hub as it housed important markets; and the Plaza de San Francisco de Asís, which was the main point of exportation and importation as it had a port where Spanish ships docked.
Discover Aix, the ‘Little Paris’ of Provence, the historic region of Beaune, a land of wine and castles. Beautiful Bordeaux and Normandy. The stork villages of Alsace and the pickled-in-the-past, post-card pretty perched town of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. Breath-taking Lavender fields in Provence, castles in the air in Dordogne. Exquisite Villefranche-sur-Mer and Nice. Discover what’s new, the best tours, recipes, a language lesson, practical guides and much, much more…
The CIA museum is perhaps the most unusual – and exclusive – in the world. Located inside the US intelligence agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the museum has just been renovated to mark the agency’s 75th anniversary. Official visitors can see the gun found with Osama bin Laden when he was killed, next to Saddam Hussein’s leather jacket. Its doors are firmly shut to the public, but a small group of journalists, including the BBC, were given exclusive access inside.
Georgina Godwin, Charles Hecker and Simon Brooke unpack the weekend’s hottest topics. We hear from Monocle’s Ed Stocker to find out the latest developments in Italy and our editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, joins us live from Stockholm.
With the help of a consulting firm, the Providence hospital system trained staff to wring money out of patients, even those eligible for free care.
The economics of the housing market, and the local rules that shape it, have squeezed out entry-level homes.
Preventing the Pacific Northwest icon’s extinction calls for aggressive intervention, including killing another owl species. Will we act fast enough?
The novelist attained fame with gripping works of eco-fiction. How hard could it be to rewild his own backyard?
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How America’s “first politician” galvanized a colony—and helped set a revolution in motion. BY STACY SCHIFF
Water woes threaten America’s second largest reservoir—but leave new vistas in their wake. PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT BY PETE MCBRIDE
Haunted by the approach of another world war, the beloved fantasy author created a new story of Middle-earth that few people even knew about—until now. BY JOHN GARTH, PHOTOGRAPHS BY KIERAN DODDS
The giant fish faces threats from poachers, boat strikes and climate change. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEX MUSTARD, TEXT BY TERENCE MONMANEY
From the lab to the art gallery, the latest efforts to understand the fragrant, musky, stinky and utterly baffling world of your nose
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CAROLINE TOMPKINS
7 million liters of beer are drunk on average during Munich’s Oktoberfest . A tough job for the waiters who are serving the tables in the festival tents. Especially, if you’re an absolute beginner like Euromaxx reporter Brant Dennis. His challenge: to work as a server for one day, carrying 10 one-liter-mugs of beer at a time like the pros. Will he make it?
Boomers Daily 