Category Archives: History

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS – JULY 24, 2025

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THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Joyce Carol Oates on serial killers and toxic metals, Fintan O’Toole on Trump’s domestic army, David Shulman on the second Nakba, Regina Marler on the Brothers Grimm, Michelle Nijhuis on what we save, Peter Canby on the murder of a priest, Ruth Bernard Yeazell on Albert Barnes’s art sense, Ian Johnson on Xi père, Lola Seaton on Sheila Heti’s deceptive ease, James Gleick on AI nonsense, poems by Milan Děžinský and Devon Walker-Figueroa, and much more.

‘I Am the Heir to Delacroix’

Jack Whitten’s brilliantly restless innovation is a rigorous interrogation and a surging expansion of what painting can do.

Jack Whitten: The Messenger an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, March 23–August 2, 2025

Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed, Second Edition edited by Katy Siegel

The Parrot in the Machine

The artificial intelligence industry depends on plagiarism, mimicry, and exploited labor, not intelligence.

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood by James Boyle

Locked Up by Erdogan

For his work as an activist and philanthropist, Osman Kavala has been unjustly imprisoned in Turkey for seven and a half years.

COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE – JULY 2, 2025 PREVIEW

Country Life Cover 2 July 2025

COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features “Take The Plunge’… –

Come on in, the water’s lovely

The seaside lido is enjoying a fresh wave of popularity a century and more after its first appearance on the British coast. Kathryn Ferry dives in

Spreads from Country Life 2 July 2025

Winging it

Watch out, watch out, there’s a thief about! Mark Cocker warns that no undergarment is safe from the resurgent red kite, a bird soaring back from near extinction

Travel

• Christopher Wallace checks in to a new opening in Marrakech, Morocco’s Mecca for luxury hotels

• Teresa Levonian Cole blazes a trail in the Spanish Pyrenees

• Pamela Goodman gets on her bike to explore the Welsh border country

Spreads from Country Life 2 July 2025

Life’s a pretty picnic

Deborah Nicholls-Lee shares a hamper-full of tasty morsels from the long and varied history of alfresco dining on canvas

Ricardo Afonso’s favourite painting

The musical-theatre actor chooses an ‘otherworldly’ work that stirs complex emotions

The legacy

Amie Elizabeth White salutes Sir James Clark Ross, the vastly experienced naval officer who discovered Antarctica in 1841

In God’s acre we trust

Laura Parker learns how the absence of interference over centuries enabled our wildlife-rich graveyards to become a ‘Noah’s Ark of species’

Spreads from Country Life 2 July 2025

Keeping a low profile

The countryside is littered with storm-damaged trees that simply refuse to die. Jack Watkins celebrates great arboreal survivors

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell puts her best foot forward with a selection of sandals

Interiors

Arabella Youens commends an elegant townhouse kitchen and Amelia Thorpe picks out rhubarb accessories to brighten the home

London Life

• Will Hosie assesses the cost of our partying in the parks

• How the style set are reaffirming that west is best

Lost, but not forgotten

George Plumptre applauds the masterful restoration of the Arts-and-Crafts garden at Knowle House in East Sussex

Spreads from Country Life 2 July 2025

Arts & antiques

Laura Dadswell believes her pair of 18th-century Venetian mirrors is the fairest of them all, as she tells Carlo Passino

LITERARY REVIEW – JULY 2025

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LITERARY REVIEW (July 1, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Will Wiles on the Art of Purism…

Hung, Drawn & Courted – Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers By Jean Strouse

John Singer Sargent: The Charcoal Portraits By Richard Ormond

No Sketching! – Monsieur Ozenfant’s Academy By Charles Darwent

Artists on Tour – Art on the Move in Renaissance Italy By David Landau

Literary Lives

FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE – SUMMER 2025 PREVIEW

FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE (06.30.25): The latest issue features ‘The Historical Presidency’ – Nine essays on what the global past reveals about our confounding present…

The End of Modernity

A crisis is unfolding before our eyes—and also in our heads. By Christopher Clark

Why Compare the Present to the Past?

Thinking via historical analogy has become the preferred way to confront our anxieties. Ivan KrastevLeonard Benardo

Is This an American Cultural Revolution?

Liberal critics charge Trump with creating a cult of personality not unlike Mao Zedong’s. Julia LovellNicholas Guyatt

Russia Has Started Losing the War in Ukraine

The military tide may have turned against Putin. Michael Kimmage

APOLLO MAGAZINE – JULY/AUGUST 2025

July/August 2025 | Apollo Magazine

APOLLO MAGAZINE (06.30.25): The latest issue features ‘Queen Sonja pops to the Factory’…

In this issue

The Queen of Norway’s very modern art collection

The Gilded Age – is greed good again?

Emily Kam Kngwarray lights up Tate Modern

An interview with Erin Shirreff

Plus: Cinecittà in focus, Wangechi Mutu at the Galleria Borghese, the light touch of Antoine Watteau, Egypt’s new home for antiquities, how polenta caused a stir in Venice, the Aspen art scene continues to snowball, and the revival of London’s art market; in reviews: Amy Sherald’s portraits, King James VI and I’s cultural legacy, and what is a Jewish country house?

Queen Sonja pops to the Factory

The rocky history of Lismore Castle

TRAVEL & HISTORY: MARTIN LUTHER IN WITTENBERG

DW TRAVEL (June 29, 2025): Ever heard of Wittenberg? This small, German city is where the theologian Martin Luther sparked a revolution against the Catholic Church in the late Middle Ages.

Video Timeline: 00:00 Intro 00:30 Where is Wittenberg? 00:44 Wittenberg and Martin Luther, meet Pastor Bridget Gautieri from ELCA Wittenberg Center 01:00 Wittenberg Castle Church, Luther’s 95 theses 03:58 Wittenberg360 05:36 The Luther House, meet tour guide Oliver Friedrich van der Linde 07:45 The Bugenhagen House 08:50 The Cranach House 11:26 Martin Luther’s grave in the Castle Church

We’ll take you to the place where Luther is said to have nailed up his famous 95 theses that led to the Reformation movement.

#wittenberg #lutheran #martinluther

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE – JULY/AUGUST 2025

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE (June 27, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Hemingway in Pamplona’….

A Search for the World’s Best Durian, the Divisive Fruit That’s Prized—and Reviled

Devotees of the crop journey to a Malaysian island to find the most fragrant and tasty specimens

Tom Downey Photographs by Annice Lyn

Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of ‘Jaws’ With 15 Shark Snapshots

Archaeologists Say They’ve Pieced Together the Ancient Fragments of the ‘World’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle’

THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW – SUMMER 2025 PREVIEW

Book Review: Creative Destruction: An Introduction, John T. Dalton and  Andrew J. Logan

THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW (June 26, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Corporate America’s Ideological Tilt’….

Corporate America’s Ideological Tilt: An Introduction

Rosolino A. Candela, Caleb S. Fuller

Beyond Interest: What May Motivate DEI

Douglas J. Den Uyl

Philosophy, Law and Culture of Liberal Democracy and the Authoritarian Challenge

By Suri Ratnapala

Reviewed by  Paul Dragos Aligica

Martin Van Buren: America’s First Politician

By James M. Bradley

Reviewed by  Garion Frankel

Capitalism: The Story Behind the Word

By Michael Sonenscher

Reviewed by Richard M. Salsman

COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE – JUNE 25, 2025 PREVIEW

Cover of Country Life 25 June 2025

COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Hearts of Stone’ – Why we love our ancient sites…

We’re still standing

Tom Howells explores the mystery and magnetism of the thousands of ancient British monoliths and monuments, from Cornwall to the Orkneys

Country Life magazine spread

Going down in a blazer of glory

It is a favourite of royalty and rowers, worn from Augusta to the Oscars — can there be a more versatile jacket than the blazer, asks Harry Pearson

Country Life International

• Russell Higham uncovers the secret society of Cascais
• Holly Kirkwood finds the age of chivalry alive and well in Valletta
• Matthew Dennison searches for traces of the Venetian Empire in Greece
• Tom Parker Bowles savours superb Spanish dishes
• Eileen Reid tracks the influence of two intellectual giants of Avignon

Winging it

Mark Cocker welcomes the renaissance of the peregrine falcon, a raptor that stoops to conquer at up to 240mph

New series: Scale model

Overfishing threatens the very existence of the cod, but Gadus morhua remains a monster of the deep for David Profumo

Dick Bird’s favourite painting

The stage designer chooses a monumental example of early-19th-century political art

The virtues of history

John Goodall celebrates 100 years of the headquarters of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, one of London’s Great Twelve City Livery Companies

Country Life magazine spread

The legacy

Leslie Hore-Belisha created a beacon of hope for road users everywhere, finds Kate Green

Luxury

Anniversary jewels and Art Deco delights with Hetty Lintell, plus Willow Crossley’s favourite things

Interiors

Arabella Youens admires the kitchen of a house in the Scottish Borders and considers the earthly pleasures of terracotta

Laying ghosts to rest

A spectacular garden now graces the grounds of the old Somerset-shire Coal Canal Company HQ, as Caroline Donald discovers

Country Life magazine spreads

Water, water everywhere

John Lewis-Stempel delves into the depths of a field pond, mesmerised by the seemingly endless variety of aquatic life

Arts & antiques

A quartet of journeys with The King raised the profile of plein-air artist Warwick Fuller, who talks Royal Tours with Carla Passino

Making an impression

French Impressionism was a slow burner in Britain as Monet and Pissarro gradually influenced our art scene, reveals Caroline Bugler

And much more