The Economist Magazine (March 21, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Israel Alone’ – At a moment of military might, Israel looks deeply; ‘How To Trade An Election’ – It is getting harder for investors to ignore politics; China, Iran and Russia versus The West – Assessing the economic threat posed by the anti-Western axis…
There is still a narrow path out of the hellscape of Gaza. A temporary ceasefire and hostage release could cause a change of Israel’s government; the rump of Hamas fighters in south Gaza could be contained or fade away; and from the rubble, talks on a two-state solution could begin, underwritten by America and its Gulf allies. It is just as likely, however, that ceasefire talks will fail. That could leave Israel locked in the bleakest trajectory of its 75-year existence, featuring endless occupation, hard-right politics and isolation. Today many Israelis are in denial about this, but a political reckoning will come eventually. It will determine not only the fate of Palestinians, but also whether Israel thrives in the next 75 years.
It is becoming harder for investors to ignore politics
Investors differ in their approach to elections. Some see politics as an edge to exploit; others as noise to block out. Even for those without a financial interest, markets offer a brutally frank perspective on the economic stakes. As elections approach in America and Britain, as well as plenty of other countries, that is especially valuable.
Times Literary Supplement (March 22, 2024): The latest issue features ‘All the Lonely People’ – Charles Foster on a modern-day epidemic; Shakespeare and Bloomsbury; D.H. Lawrence, cuckhold; Marilynne Robinson’s god; Paul Theroux’s Orwell…
This week’s @TheTLS, featuring @tweedpipe on loneliness; Andrew Holter on Helen Keller; Gabriel Josipovici on Shakespeare, Bloombsbury and Beckett; @rwilliamsparis on Annie Ernaux and photography; @JollyAlice on Paul Theroux; Simone Gubler on fatphobia – and much more pic.twitter.com/nlzNR1MW0B
James Alexander-Sinclair hails the remarkable revival of the gardens at Dowdeswell Court, Gloucestershire, the charming Cotswolds home of Jade Holland Cooper and Julian Dunkerton
The cutting-garden diaries
In the second of a series of articles, Oxfordshire flower grower Anna Brown shares her tips on creating a floral spring spectacular
Great nurseries
Growing sweet violets has been a family passion since 1866 at Groves Nursery in Bridport, Dorset, as Tilly Ware discovers
‘After everything they do, we owe them’
Service dogs and horses risk life and limb to keep us safe. Katy Birchall salutes the work of a charity supporting these animal heroes in retirement
Mark Cocker’s favourite painting
The Nature writer lauds a work by a masterful wildlife painter
Where traffic stops for sacred cows
Dairy farmer Jamie Blackett is heartened to witness cattle worship on a trip to Rajasthan
New series: The legacy
In the third instalment of this new series, Kate Green celebrates the Revd John Russell’s role in the emergence of the terrier
The very nature of Middle-earth
James Clarke visits the magical Malvern Hills to explore a land-scape that so inspired Tolkien
Planters punch
Amelia Thorpe picks garden pots that make a sizeable statement
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell ushers in spring with a selection of floral favourites
Interiors
Soak up the style with an array of elegant bathroom fittings and furnishings from Amelia Thorpe
Kitchen garden cook
Fresh spring onions steal the show, says Melanie Johnson
Grandeur in granite
The restored Cluny Castle in Aberdeenshire is equipped for a future as prosperous as its colourful past, finds John Goodall
It’s a kind of dark magic
Whitby jet and mourning go hand in hand, but is it time to reassess this beautiful heritage gemstone, asks Harry Pearson
How to revive a classic
Michael Billington puts himself in the director’s chair as he ponders spectacular remakes of plays by Ibsen and Chekhov
Back to square one
What is it about cryptic crosswords that has kept us racking our brains for the past 100 years? Rob Crossan has all the answers
Fly west across the United Arab Emirates from Fujairah, a tanker-filled port on the Gulf of Oman, towards the Persian Gulf and you get a sense of the vulnerability arid lands have to climate change. The farms around Dhaid provide a splash of green, but homegrown food is scarce, homegrown staples next to non-existent. Drinkable water comes mostly from desalination plants. The heat is growing inhumane; outside work is banned during the hottest hours of summer afternoons.
In May 2020, the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd sparked the largest wave of civil unrest in U.S. history. An estimated twenty-three million people took to the streets, calling for the reformation, defunding, disarming, or even abolition of police departments. Protesters pointed to policing’s disproportionate targeting of black and brown communities, its role in creating the world’s largest carceral state, and its increasing reliance on military weapons and tactics. Defenders of law enforcement countered that a militarized police force is necessary to regulating the most heavily armed civilian population on earth. These defenders claimed that racism…
Jacob Angeli-Chansley, the man the media has dubbed the QAnon Shaman, had been released from federal custody six weeks before when we met for lunch at a place called Picazzo’s, winner of the Phoenix New Times Best Gluten-Free Restaurant award in 2015. Despite a protracted hunger strike and 317 days isolated in a cell, Jacob’s prison sentence of forty-one months for obstruction of an official proceeding on January 6, 2021, had been shortened owing to good behavior, and he was let out about a year early on supervised release.
The New Yorker (March 18, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Klaas Verplancke’s “On the Grid” – The artist blends the preferred pastimes and stylish attire of New York’s commuters. By Françoise Mouly with Art by Klaas Verplancke.
As the art market cools, Julien’s Auctions earns millions selling celebrity ephemera—and used its connections to help Kim Kardashian borrow Marilyn Monroe’s J.F.K.-birthday dress.
The sidewalks of Lower Broadway in downtown Nashville are filled with people moving among neon-lit venues owned by celebrity musicians: Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk & Rock ‘n’ Roll Steakhouse, Jason Aldean’s Kitchen & Rooftop Bar, Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa. The Hard Rock Café, which opened in 1994, when the neighborhood could still reasonably be called eclectic, sits at the far edge of the strip, overlooking the Cumberland River. One evening last November, Julien’s Auctions took over a private room at the restaurant for a three-day sale in honor of the company’s twentieth anniversary. There was a spotlighted stage full of objects that musicians had worn or touched or played: a scratched amber ring that Janis Joplin wore onstage at the Monterey Pop Festival, in 1967; Prince’s gold snakeskin-print suit, small enough to fit on an adolescent-size mannequin; ripped jeans that had belonged to Kurt Cobain.
The Capitol Hill Club, in a white brick town house a few blocks from the House of Representatives, is a social institution exclusively for Republicans. One evening in October, Representative Mike Garcia was eating there alone when Representative Mike Johnson stopped to chat. Garcia is a first-generation immigrant and a retired Navy pilot from a Democratic-leaning district in Southern California. His predecessor, a Democrat, resigned after a scandal four years ago, and Garcia highlighted disagreements with his party to win reëlection in 2022. He was also a loyalist to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a fellow-Californian who had just been ousted by a small band of hard-line conservative rebels annoyed at his willingness to compromise on budget disputes. Garcia had formally nominated McCarthy as Speaker at the beginning of 2023, and his removal deprived Garcia of a patron.
Poetry a special section Black poetry by William Logan Shakespeare’s words by Amit Majmudar Bachmann: the unspeakable spoken by Peter Filkins The new & the old by Katie Hartsock The answer to Lord Chandos by Pascal Quignard
New translations by Ryan Choi, Frederick Amrine, Patrick Whalen & Beverley Bie Brahic
The fall of affirmative action is part of a 50-year campaign to roll back racial progress.
By Nikole Hannah
Anthony K. Wutoh, the provost of Howard University, was sitting at his desk last July when his phone rang. It was the new dean of the College of Medicine, and she was worried. She had received a letter from a conservative law group called the Liberty Justice Center. The letter warned that in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions, the school “must cease” any practices or policies that included a “racial component” and said it was notifying medical schools across the country that they must eliminate “racial discrimination” in their admissions. If Howard refused to comply, the letter threatened, the organization would sue.
Researchers are documenting a phenomenon that seems to help the dying, as well as those they leave behind.
By Phoebe Zerwick
Chris Kerr was 12 when he first observed a deathbed vision. His memory of that summer in 1974 is blurred, but not the sense of mystery he felt at the bedside of his dying father. Throughout Kerr’s childhood in Toronto, his father, a surgeon, was too busy to spend much time with his son, except for an annual fishing trip they took, just the two of them, to the Canadian wilderness. Gaunt and weakened by cancer at 42, his father reached for the buttons on Kerr’s shirt, fiddled with them and said something about getting ready to catch the plane to their cabin in the woods. “I knew intuitively, I knew wherever he was, must be a good place because we were going fishing,” Kerr told me.
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