Category Archives: Previews

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

Previews: Country Life Magazine – March 20, 2024

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Country Life Magazine – March 20, 2024: The latest issue features:

Riding to the rescue

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

Arts & Literature, Journals, Literature, Poetry, Previews, Reviews

Literary Previews: The Paris Review – Spring 2024

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The Paris Review No. 247, Spring 2024—Subscriber Cover

Paris Review Spring 2024 — The new issue features interviews with Jhumpa Lahiri and Alice Notley, prose by Joy Williams and Eliot Weinberger, poetry by Mary Ruefle and Jessica Laser, art by Chris Oh and Farah Al Qasimi, two covers by Nicolas Party, and more…

Jhumpa Lahiri on the Art of Fiction: “My question is, What makes a language yours, or mine?”

Alice Notley on the Art of Poetry: “Writing is not therapy. That’s the last thing it is. I still have my grief.”

Prose by Elijah Bailey, Julien Columeau, Joanna Kavenna, Samanta Schweblin, Eliot Weinberger, and Joy Williams.

Poetry by Gbenga Adesina, Elisa Gabbert, Jessica Laser, Maureen N. McLane, Mary Ruefle, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, and Matthew Zapruder.

Art by Farah Al Qasimi and Chris Oh.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Culture, Essays, Magazines, Media, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – April 2024

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE – APRIL 2024:

Crime and Punishment

Can American policing be fixed?

by Ras Baraka, Rosa Brooks, Barry Friedman, Christy E. Lopez, Tracey L. Meares, Brian O’Hara, Patrick Sharkey

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’s Dream

MAGA meets the Age of Aquarius

by Frederick Kaufman

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.

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

The New Criterion – April 2024 Arts/Culture Preview

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The New Criterion – The April 2024 issue features:

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

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review – March 17, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (March 16, 2024): 

22 of the Funniest Novels Since ‘Catch-22’

Catch-22 eBook by Joseph Heller, Christopher Buckley | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster

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.

A still from a black-and-white movie portrays a couple in Victorian dress. The man, in a dark suit, looks down disdainfully at a woman in a gown and pompadour as she gazes into the distance.

By Dodai Stewart

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.)

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews, Society

The New York Times Magazine – March 17, 2024

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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

A photo illustration of two peoples’ silhouettes.

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.

Financial, Investing, Magazines, Previews, Retirement, Reviews

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – March 18, 2024

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Magazine - Latest Issue - Barron's

BARRON’S MAGAZINE – MARCH 18, 2024 ISSUE:

100 Top Women in Finance: Blazing New Trails in the Markets, the Economy, and Industry

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

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

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

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.

Foreign Affairs, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews

Commentary Magazine – April 2024 Opinion Preview

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Commentary Magazine (March 15, 2024) – The latest issue features ‘The Elite War On The American Middle Class…And How To End It’; The Big Lies about Israel’s Big Bombs…

The Elite War on the American Middle Class—and How to End It

by Christine Rosen

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

by Matthew Continetti

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

by Christine Rosen

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.”

Magazines, Podcasts, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Science Magazine – March 15, 2024

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Science Magazine – March 15, 2024: The new issue features ‘Fast Moving Magma’ – A large diking event preceded Iceland’s recent eruptive episodes…

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

Magazines, Podcasts, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – March 14, 2024

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Volume 627 Issue 8003

Nature Magazine – March 13, 2024: The latest issue cover features ‘Burning Question’ – How drought conditions are driving overnight fires in North America…

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.