THE NEW CRITERION: The latest issue features…
On George Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796. by Roger Kimball
On revolution and counterrevolution in America. by Myron Magnet
On the Gordon riots of 1780. by Dominic Green
On the causes of the American Revolution. by Andrew Roberts
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features ‘Will the AI Bubble burst?’
The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant by Tae Kim
Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination by Karen Hao
Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race that Will Change the World by Parmy Olson
Claremont Review of Books: The latest issue features ‘Special Anniversary Double Issue’….
Imagine sitting near the apex of power in an empire and then being shown the door. You might want to write a tell-all book about it. If so, however, you would be advised to proceed with caution. Now, imagine what would barely be conceivable today: that you undertook to write your exposé while you were still in office. You would need all the finesse of a tightrope walker.
This essay is adapted from remarks delivered at the Claremont Review of Books 25th anniversary gala, held at the Metropolitan Club in New York City on November 6, 2025.
In the early hours of March 11, 1874, word spread around Washington that Charles Sumner was on the brink of death. The 63-year-old senator from Massachusetts had suffered a massive heart attack the previous evening. By 9 a.m., a crowd of several hundred had gathered in front of his home on Lafayette Square. “Colored men and women mingled with white in knots about his home,” wrote The New-York Tribune. Government workers, merchants, shopmen, waiters, and even “old colored women with baskets and bundles on their arms” stood together. Many were crying and begging to be let inside. They were stopped by one of Sumner’s friends and two policemen standing guard at the front door.
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘A Snail’s Tale – An unpublished story by Sylvia Townsend Warner…
Tactful notes from a literary self-promoter By Nicola Shulman
Marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth By Devoney Looser
Irritating professors for the ages By Peter Thonemann
An unpublished story by Sylvia Townsend Warner, with a commentary by Peter Swaab By Sylvia Townsend Warner
THE PARIS REVIEW : The latest issue features Art of Criticism, Art of Poetry, Prose, Poetry and Art…
Hélène Cixous on the Art of Criticism: “There’s a feminist discourse that women can’t do it all. This is what many women experience, and it’s very difficult. But I am not like that.”
Alice Oswald on the Art of Poetry: “You come at poetry with the momentum of having failed. It’s only when other communication is absolutely impossible that a poem has to exist.”
Prose by Eve Babitz, Marlene Morgan, Alec Niedenthal, Gwendoline Riley, and Elias Rodriques.
Poetry by Millicent Borges Accardi, Monzer Masri, Alice Oswald, Jana Prikryl, and Ed Roberson.
Art by Ali Banisadr, Pippa Garner, Joan Jonas, and Mieko Meguro; cover by Adebunmi Gbadebo.
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue of LARB features ‘Security’…
Alexandre Lefebvre reads “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right” by Laura K. Field.
Nevin Kallepalli investigates political resentment in rural California, in an essay from LARB Quarterly no. 47: “Security.”
Leah Litman prosecutes Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s new legal memoir, “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.”
Zoe Adams considers “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America” by Brian Goldstone.
It’s an irony to savour: the man who invented the Tudors was a German. If Henry VIII, his wives and courtiers exercise a stronger hold on the public imagination than their Plantagenet precursors or Stuart successors, it is because we can all picture them so clearly. That, in turn, is due to an extraordinary sequence of portraits and drawings produced between the late 1520s and early 1540s by Hans Holbein of Augsburg (c 1497–1543), many of which have become instantly recognisable.
Orwell: 2+2=5 By Raoul Peck (dir)
George Orwell: Life and Legacy By Robert Colls
Nobody under the age of seventy-five has heard George Orwell’s voice. The only extant video footage is in a silent movie of the Eton Wall Game. None of his many wartime recordings for the BBC Eastern Service has survived. By all accounts his voice, damaged by a bullet to the throat during the Spanish Civil War, was thin, flat and weak. In fact, the controller of the BBC Overseas Service complained that putting on ‘so wholly unsuitable a voice’ made the BBC appear ‘ignorant of the essential needs of the microphone and of the audience’.
by Joseph Torigian
In this prodigiously researched epic, Torigian details the life of Xi Zhongxun—the father of China’s current leader, Xi Jinping—to explain the history of the Chinese Communist Party. Along the way, readers gain a sense of how the younger Xi became the man he is today.
by Edward Luce
Luce, a gifted storyteller, chronicles the personal life and intellectual journey of former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who played a significant but underappreciated role in opening the United States to China, bringing the Cold War to an end, and shaping the world that came after. In writing this gem of a book, Luce has rendered a genuine service to history.
by Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov
Soldatov and Borogon, two Russian journalists, tell the story of their one-time group of friends and colleagues—young Russians who, over the course of the Putin years, steadily drift toward nationalist and illiberal ideas and end up as supporters of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
by George Varouxakis
In this masterful study, Varouxakis tracks the meanings of “the West” from the late eighteenth century to the present—and argues that the modern notion of the term emerged in the 1830s as a way to distinguish western Europe from Russia. Today, for beleaguered countries such as Ukraine, “the West” is still a powerful idea.
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features ‘Robert Frost’s ugly feelings’….
THE NEW CRITERION: The latest issue features…
My Grandma Moses by Jane Kallir
America beautiful by James Panero
Leiden lights by Karen Wilkin
Behind the scenes by Michele H. Bogart
The consonant Cushing by Alexandra Cushing Howard
A bull with his own china shop by Eric Gibson
Mittel march by Peter Pennoyer
The unsentimental builder by Michael J. Lewis
The mage of Torino by Philip Rylands
“Architecture unshackled” by Harry Adams
Foreign Affairs Magazine: The very best of the hundreds of books on international politics, economics, and history that were featured in the magazine this year, selected by Foreign Affairs’ editors and book reviewers.
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