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.
Once viewed as a safeguard against global injustice, international law has become increasingly politicised and dysfunctional in recent years. As Linda Kinstler writes in a fascinating essay for the cover story of this week’s Guardian Weekly magazine, the norms, institutions and good faith essential to the system functioning effectively have been badly eroded, and it’s hard to see how the problems can be reversed.
Institutions like the UN security council and international criminal court (ICC) are now often simply ignored or manipulated by powerful member states. The ICC in particular has struggled with legitimacy and enforcement, delivering only a few convictions, amid resistance from big powers such as the US and Russia. The unilateralism of Trump has further undermined the system, while China’s growing influence is shifting the international focus away from human rights.
Spotlight | How the rise of Zohran Mamdani is dividing Democrats Many believe the New York mayoral hopeful signals time for the national party to evolve but others say his brand of politics will not appeal in key battlegrounds. Lauren GambinoandAlaina Demopoulos report
Environment | Tipping points, doomerism and catastrophic risks Climate expert Genevieve Guenther talks to Jonathan Watts on the importance of correcting the false narrative that climate threat is under control – and why it is appropriate to be scared
Feature | The politics of breasts Breasts have always been political – and now they’re front and centre again. Is it yet another way in which Trump’s worldview is reshaping the culture? By Jess Cartner-Morley
Opinion | The global order is being dismantled by an ageing generation Just when the world desperately needs wise elders, its fate is in the hands of old and ruthless patriarchs, argues David Van Reybrouck
Culture | The Herds: The animal marathon stampeding to the Arctic Why is a huge pack of puppet animals, from tiny monkeys to towering elephants, making a 20,000km cross-planet odyssey? Kate Wyver spent a week as an antelope to find out
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
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
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’
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
Arts & antiques
Laura Dadswell believes her pair of 18th-century Venetian mirrors is the fairest of them all, as she tells Carlo Passino
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘The writer as thinker’ – On the novel of ideas; The age of misgovernment; Keeping up with the Camerons; Chaucer’s ambitions for English and Samuel Beckett and me…
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?
How we got to a situation where a President can reasonably claim that it is lawful, without congressional approval, to bomb a country that has not attacked the U.S. By Jeannie Suk Gersen
Anne Enright’s Literary Journeys to Australia and New Zealand
The Booker Prize-winning author recommends three works by writers who, thanks to geography, may have never received their due.
What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?
The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education. By Hua Hsu
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 6.29.25 Issue features C.J. Chivers on the hundreds of cheap, long-range drones Russia is launching at Ukranian civilians at night; Nikole Hannah-Jones on the Trump administration’s dismantling of civil rights protections within the federal government; Parul Sehgal on the state of the modern biography; David Marchese interviews Andrew Schulz; and more.
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