Category Archives: Magazines

Previews: History Today Magazine-September 2023

August 24, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

HISTORY TODAY MAGAZINE (SEPTEMBER 2023) – This issue features Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore story, conquistador Hernán Cortés’ on trial, the fascist plot to kill the king, the fascinating fusion of Old English names, and sharpshooter Marjorie Foster’s battle with the War Office. Plus: reviews, opinion, crossword and much more!

‘Homer and His Iliad’ by Robin Lane Fox review

Achilles tending Patroclus wounded by an arrow, identified by inscriptions on the upper part of the vase.

Homer and His Iliad by Robin Lane Fox is a masterly survey of the Iliad, its majesty, its pathos and its unparalleled progression from wrath to pity.

By David Stuttard

Faced with a jumble of bewildering ruins, modern visitors to Hisarlik in northwest Turkey, the site of ancient Troy, may find themselves perplexed and sometimes disappointed. The wide bay where the Greeks so famously beached 1,000 ships is gone, buried in silt from a local river, while beyond the fine sloping walls, a palimpsest of settlements spanning 4,000 years lies scarred and disfigured by the deep trench gouged by Heinrich Schliemann, its first archaeologist, during two decades of digging in the 19th century. Schliemann had been drawn to Hisarlik, and also to mainland Greece, by his passion for the Homeric poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and his conviction that they described or reflected real societies and events, not least the decade-long Trojan War.

Nationalism in Nepal: On the Right Side of History

Adipurush, a controversial Bollywood film, has sparked anger in Nepal. For small states with big neighbours, details matter.

By Amish Raj Mulmi

An illustration showing the Hindu mythological figure Sita.

Balen Shah, the 33-year-old rapper and mayor of Kathmandu, is a man on various missions. Since his unlikely victory in 2022, he has waged war on government ministries, landlords, Nepal’s civil aviation authority, roadside hawkers and landless slum dwellers. Now he is taking on Bollywood because of a supposed historical slight.

Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore Story

Lee Kuan Yew speaks in Fullerton Square, Singapore, 18 December 1984.

One man more than any other is associated with Singapore’s remarkable success. On his centenary: who was Lee Kuan Yew and how did he do it?

Economics, Financial, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews

Previews: The Economist Magazine – August 26, 2023

August 24, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The Economist Magazine (August 26, 2023): This week’s issue features Xi’s failing model: Why he won’t fix China’s economy; Biden’s Asian alliance-building; Prigozhin’s death shows that Russia is a mafia state and more….

Why China’s economy won’t be fixed

An increasingly autocratic government is making bad decisions

Whatever has gone wrong? After China rejoined the world economy in 1978, it became the most spectacular growth story in history. Farm reform, industrialisation and rising incomes lifted nearly 800m people out of extreme poverty. Having produced just a tenth as much as America in 1980, China’s economy is now about three-quarters the size. Yet instead of roaring back after the government abandoned its “zero-covid” policy at the end of 2022, it is lurching from one ditch to the next.

Prigozhin’s death shows that Russia is a mafia state

A healthy country uses justice to restore order. Mr Putin uses violence instead

Yevgeny Prigozhin gives an address in camouflage and with a weapon in his hands in a desert area

As we published this editorial, it was not certain that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private jet was shot down by Russian air-defences, or that the mutineer and mercenary boss was on board. But everyone believes that it was and that his death was a punishment of spectacular ruthlessness ordered by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. And that is the way Mr Putin likes it.

Magazines, Podcasts, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – August 24, 2023

August 23, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

nature Magazine – August 24, 2023 issue: In this week’s issue, Jedediah Brodie and his colleagues examine protected areas in mega-diverse southeast Asia to assess their effects on tropical biodiversity.

Want a sustainable future? Then look to the world’s cities

In a rapidly urbanizing world, what happens in cities matters — and sustainability success stories show what can be achieved when researchers and policymakers work together.

A person rides a bicycle as heat waves shimmer, causing visual distortion, as people walk in the 'The Zone', Phoenix'.

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and that proportion is set to grow. By 2050, another two billion people will be urban dwellers, the United Nations estimates. Cities lie at the nexus of all aspects of human development, from building thriving economies to coping with climate change.

Earth’s hottest month: these charts show what happened in July and what comes next

A damaged saguaro cactus stands with a recently fallen arm resting on the sidewalk in Mesa, Arizona.

The planet has warmed 1.2 ºC on average, but that’s enough to produce big extremes.

From wilting saguaros in Arizona and hot-tub-like temperatures off the coast of Florida to increased heat-related hospitalizations in Europe and agricultural losses in China, last month felt unusually hot. It was: several teams have now confirmed that July 2023 was the hottest month in recorded history. And there’s more to come.

July is typically the hottest month of the year, and this July shattered records going back as far as 1850 by around 0.25 °C. Overall, the average global temperature was 1.54 °C above the preindustrial average for July, according to Berkeley Earth, a non-profit group in California that is one of several organizations tracking global warming. It’s a seemingly small increase, but what many people across the world actually experienced was a bout of long and often brutal heat waves.

Aging, Health, Magazines, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research: New Scientist Magazine – August 26, 2023

August 23, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

New Scientist Magazine (August 26, 2023): This issue features ‘Reclaim your Privacy’ – The alarming new ways you’re being tracked online and more…

Environment – How we broke the water cycle and can no longer rely on rain to fall

Health – Unravelling the secrets of the vagus nerve will revolutionize medicine

Technology – Nowhere to hide: Data harvesters came for your privacy – and found it

Space – Aliens on low-oxygen worlds may never discover fire Read the latest issue

Arts & Literature, Culture, History, Magazines, Science, Society

Culture: The American Scholar – Autumn 2023

August 23, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR – AUTUMN 2023:

Will the Real Vergil Please Stand Up?

Making sense of the life of a poet about whom we know so little

by Sarah Ruden

Great works of literature are sly and powerful beasts that pounce on their readers, grabbing them by the neck and shaking them back and forth. The young Augustine looks like a typical victim of Vergil’s Aeneid. The schoolboy being brought up as a Christian in fourth-century CE North Africa found the first-century BCE epic poem of pagan Rome the most impressive thing in his cultural life to date. Tellingly, his reaction shows no interest in the poem’s theme of individual sacrifice in the name of imperial destiny; rather, into middle age, the great theologian and founder of institutional Catholic monasticism remembered weeping for Dido, who commits suicide after her lover, Aeneas, abandons her at the end of Book IV.

A Room for the Ages

Oglethorpe University’s time capsule was meant to last thousands of years, but will it?

by Colin Dickey

Culture, Magazines, Politics, Previews, Reviews, Society

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – August 25, 2023

August 23, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The Guardian Weekly (August 25, 2023) – The issue features ‘Fever Pitch’ – The unstoppable rise of women’s football; ‘Trust me, I’m a nurse’ – How a British child serial killer went undetected, and Art, where you least expect it…

The conviction and sentencing of Lucy Letby, who murdered seven babies while working as a hospital nurse, shocked Britain this week. As she becomes only the country’s fourth woman to receive a whole-life imprisonment term, Josh Halliday recounts her dreadful crimes and why she was not investigated for so long, despite several colleagues’ suspicions.

Sports writer Paul MacInnes reports from Jeddah on Saudi Arabia’s bid to buy up chunks of world sport using its $600bn public investment fund, a makeover project that is particularly pertinent in the light of allegations in a Human Rights Watch report this week.

Culture catches up with Devo, the new wave band from Akron, Ohio, who are hanging up their curious “energy dome” hats after 50 years. And there’s a lovely feature by Claire Armitstead about hidden art, from underwater sculpture parks to pinhole dioramas concealed inside traffic bollards.

Analysis, Foreign Affairs, Government, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Preview: Foreign Affairs Magazine- SEPT/OCT 2023

August 22, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Foreign Affairs – September/October 2023: The issue features ‘The Desperation of the Dictators’; Why America and China Will Be Enduring Rivals; What It Will Take to Break Putinism’s Grip; Xi’s Age of Stagnation – The Great Walling-Off of China, and more…

Delusions of Détente

Why America and China Will Be Enduring Rivals

By Michael Beckley

With U.S.-Chinese relations worse than they have been in over 50 years, an old fairy tale has resurfaced: if only the United States would talk more to China and accommodate its rise, the two countries could live in peace. The story goes that with ample summitry, Washington could recognize Beijing’s redlines and restore crisis hotlines and cultural exchanges. Over time and through myriad points of face-to-face contact—in other words, reengagement—the two countries could settle into peaceful, if still competitive, coexistence.

The End of the Russian Idea

What It Will Take to Break Putinism’s Grip

By Andrei Kolesnikov

In June 17, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin staged a special ceremony on the St. Petersburg waterfront to mark the anniversary of three flags: the flag of the Russian Federation, otherwise known as Peter the Great’s tricolor, formally unfurled in 1693; the imperial Russian flag, introduced by Tsar Alexander II in 1858; and the Red Banner, the Soviet Union’s hammer and sickle, adopted by the Soviet state 100 years ago and later used by Joseph Stalin. Putin watched the event from a boat as the National Philharmonic and the St. Petersburg State Choir performed the national anthem, which, thanks to a law Putin enacted in 2000, has the same melody as its Stalin-era counterpart.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Homes, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Previews: Country Life Magazine – August 23, 2023

August 22, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Country Life Magazine – August 23, 2023: This week’s issue features the ‘Scotland special’, filled with castles, nature and 43 pages of magical dream property.

In the swim

Christopher Woodward dives into the pools that keep the golden age of swimming alive

Holding fast

Brooding on its island cliff top, Dunvegan Castle, Isle of Skye, has been splendidly restored to glory, finds John Goodall

Hoop, stock and barrel

Vital to the water of life, whisky barrels require ancient skills. Joe Gibbs visits Speyside Cooperage to witness the magic

It’s all in the genes

Small details put the finishing touch on Backhouse Rossie in Fife. Caroline Donald visits a garden redolent with history

Innovations, Magazines, Previews, Research, Reviews, Technology

Preview: MIT Technology Review – September 2023

August 21, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

MIT Technology Review – September/October 2023: ‘The Ethics issue’ features Experimental Drugs – Who should get them?; Eric Schmidt on transforming science; When AI goes to war, and more…

Who gets to decide who receives experimental medical treatments?

a bottle of pills with a "fast forward" icon on the label

For many patients, pushing for access to unproven treatments is their best chance of survival. And that’s worth the risk.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – August 28, 2023

August 21, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The New Yorker – August 28, 2023 issue: This week’s cover features Olimpia Zagnoli’s “Cocomero”, the vibrant throes of summertime.

Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule

Elon Musk holding the earth between his fingers.

How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.

By Ronan Farrow

Last October, Colin Kahl, then the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon, sat in a hotel in Paris and prepared to make a call to avert disaster in Ukraine. A staffer handed him an iPhone—in part to avoid inviting an onslaught of late-night texts and colorful emojis on Kahl’s own phone. Kahl had returned to his room, with its heavy drapery and distant view of the Eiffel Tower, after a day of meetings with officials from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. A senior defense official told me that Kahl was surprised by whom he was about to contact: “He was, like, ‘Why am I calling Elon Musk?’ ”

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Herzog in an attic with industrial chimneys behind.

I was searching for truth. Instead, I found a family.

By Werner Herzog

By the time I was twenty-one, I had made two short films and was dead set on making a feature. I had gone to a distinguished school in Munich, where I had few friends, and which I hated so passionately that I imagined setting it on fire. There is such a thing as academic intelligence, and I didn’t have it. Intelligence is always a bundle of qualities: logical thought, articulacy, originality, memory, musicality, sensitivity, speed of association, and so on. In my case, the bundle seemed to be differently composed. I remember asking a fellow-student to write a term paper for me, which he did quite easily. In jest, he asked me what I would do for him in return, and I promised that I would make him immortal. His name was Hauke Stroszek. I gave his last name to the main character in my first film, “Signs of Life.” I called another film “Stroszek.”