The New Criterion – April 2024 Arts/Culture Preview
Category Archives: Previews
The New York Times Book Review – March 17, 2024
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (March 16, 2024):
22 of the Funniest Novels Since ‘Catch-22’
Because we could all use a laugh.
By Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai
When it comes to fiction, humor is serious business. If tragedy appeals to the emotions, wit appeals to the mind. “You have to know where the funny is,” the writer Sheila Heti says, “and if you know where the funny is, you know everything.” Humor is a bulwark against complacency and conformity, mediocrity and predictability.
With all this in mind, we’ve put together a list of 22 of the funniest novels written in English since Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” (1961). That book presented a voice that was fresh, liberated, angry and also funny — about something American novels hadn’t been funny about before: war. Set during World War II and featuring Capt. John Yossarian, a B-25 bombardier, the novel presaged, in its black humor, its outraged intelligence, its blend of tragedy and farce, and its awareness of the corrupt values that got us into Vietnam, not just Bob Dylan but the counterculture writ large.
You’re Not Being Gaslit, Says a New Book. (Or Are You?)
“On Gaslighting,” by the philosophy professor Kate Abramson, explores the psychological phenomenon behind the hashtags.
ON GASLIGHTING, by Kate Abramson
Don’t be so sensitive.
You’re overreacting.
You’re imagining things.
These are things gaslighters say, writes Kate Abramson.
As she explains in “On Gaslighting,” the term originated in the 1944 film “Gaslight,” and after entering the therapeutic lexicon of the 1980s, steadily made its way into colloquial usage.
As a society we have become adept at classifying actions within interpersonal relationships using therapy-speak. From “attachment style” to “trauma-bonding,” personal judgments have become diagnoses — without the assistance of a licensed professional: Anyone with a social media account or a jokey T-shirt can get in on the action. (In 2021, the flippant phrase “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” became a popular, snide social-media shorthand for a certain kind of capitalist feminism.)
The New York Times Magazine – March 17, 2024
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (March 16, 2024):
The ‘Colorblindness’ Trap: How a Civil Rights Ideal Got Hijacked
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.
What Deathbed Visions Teach Us About Living
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.
Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – March 18, 2024
BARRON’S MAGAZINE – MARCH 18, 2024 ISSUE:
100 Top Women in Finance: Blazing New Trails in the Markets, the Economy, and Industry
Barron’s annual list of 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance honors established and emerging leaders in the field.
What’s Next for Social Security Depends On Who Wins the White House
Biden has vowed to protect the program, while Trump has floated benefit cuts. What it means for future retirees.3 min read
As Peltz Takes on Disney’s Bob Iger, Here’s a Scorecard for Their Battle
Trian Partners has secured control of more than $3 billion worth of Disney stock and is demanding two board seats.
How AI Is Sparking a Change in Power
Energy companies increasingly cite AI as a major driver of electricity demand. But the grid could hold everything back.
PayPal Stock Has Fallen Far Enough. It’s Time to Buy.
The once-highflying payments company now trades at a valuation more suitable for a midsize bank. The good news: The path to a comeback is simpler than the Street expects.
Commentary Magazine – April 2024 Opinion Preview
The Elite War on the American Middle Class—and How to End It
Being middle class in America used to mean something—something socially transformative, something even revolutionary. The American middle class represented a form of national social order never before seen on this earth—cultural domination not by the very rich and very educated, or the political domination either by tyrants or the mob, but by a mass of people, relatively well-to-do, who felt themselves fortunate in their circumstances. That was what made the American middle class different from the French or English bourgeoisie. Its members believed, and the country believed, that they were the nation’s backbone, its true governing class, and its moral compass.
The Four Questions of 2024
President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump squared off four years ago and are on track for the first major-party rematch since 1892. Biden and Trump are the oldest presidential candidates in history, and each man has an established political brand. Biden first won federal office in 1972, and it’s been over a decade since the GOP nominated someone other than Donald Trump. The 2024 election is like all the SIRIUS XM oldies stations—Classic Vinyl, Classic Rewind, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Radio—rolled into one.
The Hateful Candace Owens
If you had never heard of Candace Owens until recently, you aren’t alone. Less than a decade ago, she was an unknown college dropout working as a marketing professional in New York, writing pieces for her company’s website about the “bat-s—t crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party.” Then, suddenly, she claimed to have experienced a political conversion. She told the libertarian political commentator Dave Rubin in 2017, “I became a conservative overnight. . . . I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.”
Research Preview: Science Magazine – March 15, 2024
Efforts to screen kids for type 1 diabetes multiply
Blood tests can detect the disease process early, avoiding complications and aiding treatment
‘Damning’ FDA inspection report undermines Alzheimer’s drug
Inspectors faulted analyses of clinical trial samples by Hoau-Yan Wang for drug developer Cassava Sciences
Seafloor fiber-optic cables become sensor stations
“Smart cables” will detect earthquakes, tsunamis, and global warming
‘I’m not Tony’: Anthony Fauci’s heir vows new direction at NIAID
Jeanne Marrazzo, an HIV prevention researcher, sees need for more “holistic” approach to community health problems
Research Preview: Nature Magazine – March 14, 2024
A better way to charge a quantum battery
Batteries that store photons in atoms or molecules could retain their efficiency with wireless charging.
Geologists reject the Anthropocene as Earth’s new epoch — after 15 years of debate
But some are now challenging the vote, saying there were ‘procedural irregularities’.
Will these reprogrammed elephant cells ever make a mammoth?
The de-extinction company Colossal is the first to convert elephant cells to an embryonic state, but using them to make mammoths won’t be easy, say researchers.
The New York Times Magazine – March 10, 2024
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (March 9, 2024):
Kate Winslet Pushes Her Characters, and Herself, to the Edge
As a young star, she endured Hollywood’s brutal treatment of women. Now she’s putting her resilience and grit on full display.
Kate Winslet was standing in front of a microphone, breathing hard. Sometimes she did it fast; sometimes she slowed it down. Sometimes the breathing sounded anxious; other times, it was clearly the gasping of someone who was winded. Before beginning a new take, Winslet stood stock still, hands opening and closing at her sides; she looked like a gymnast about to bound into a floor routine. Every breath seemed high-stakes, even though she was well into a long day of recording in a dim, windowless studio in London.
Why Power Eludes the French Left
France has often been the vanguard of leftist politics — but support in the streets doesn’t always translate to votes at the ballot box.
By Elisabeth Zerofsky
The signs that a protest is happening in Paris are nearly always the same: the quiet of blocked-off streets; the neat rows of police vans containing the gendarmerie stretching down the boulevard; the sound of drumbeats and whistles and the neon red flares that spit smoke into the sky. For six months last year, those signs were constant and ubiquitous, as furious, sometimes violent marches and general strikes protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms brought Paris to a standstill. Students and activists, public-transit operators, custodial staff, medics, mechanics, teachers, oil-rig workers, writers and celebrities all gathered to rail against Macron’s plan to raise the national retirement age by two years, to 64.
Preview; Literary Review Of Canada – April 2024
Literary Review of Canada -April 2024: The latest issue features:
In Left Field – Ed Broadbent and the future of the NDP
Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality by Ed Broadbent, with Frances Abele, Jonathan Sas, and Luke Savage
On July 6, 1975, Ed Broadbent, then a thirty-nine-year-old member of Parliament from Oshawa, Ontario, delivered a speech at the New Democratic Party convention in Winnipeg, capping off his campaign to become just the third leader in the young party’s history. It was a tumultuous time. Across the rich world, the social democratic settlement that had been brought about by the twin catastrophes of the Great Depression and the Second World War was beginning to unravel with the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system, the oil shock precipitated by the Arab-Israeli conflict, the beginning of industrial decline, and the emergence of persistent inflation. The year before, the NDP had suffered a significant electoral setback when, after supporting the minority Trudeau government in Parliament since 1972, it lost almost half its seats despite seeing its vote share decline by only 2.4 percent.
Motor City Meltdown – Catherine Leroux’s alternative history
The Future by Catherine Leroux; Translated by Susan Ouriou
In The Future’s reimagined history, the French never ceded Fort Détroit to the British in 1760, and the British never ceded it to the United States as part of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Instead, the community has remained proudly French Canadian for centuries. (“Never forget we were two shakes away from becomin’ American,” a current resident proclaims.) But while the Motor City was once “full of people, full of music, full of words,” it now struggles in economic ruin — ravaged by pollution, poverty, and crime. It is “a place devoid of faith or law,” with poison in the river and pictures of missing children posted everywhere.
Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – March 11, 2024
BARRON’S MAGAZINE – MARCH 11, 2024 ISSUE
Will the Stock Market Keep Going Up? What to Know as the S&P 500 Hits New Highs.
Hope for rate cuts has been replaced by stronger economic growth as fuel for stocks.
The Best Financial Advisor for You Might Not Be Local
Our annual ranking of the country’s Top 1,200 Financial Advisors finds a broader embrace of digital tools among advisors and clients alike. The result: more flexibility, potentially lower fees, and greater access to specialists.
Here Are the Top 1,200 Financial Advisors of 2024
Our annual ranking, now in its 16th year, finds an industry that has changed with the times. Here’s what investors need to know about the selection process.
Planning for Long-Term Care Is a Challenge. Here Are Some Key Considerations.
Long-term care insurance generally makes the most sense for seniors with between $500,000 to $2 million in assets, advisors say.
Boomers Daily 