Category Archives: Previews

The New York Times Magazine – Dec 31, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 30, 2023):

Rosalynn Carter Was a Political Genius

Rosalynn Carter, the first lady, traveling in Texas in September 1978.

She fell in love with a future president at 17. Marriage never waylaid her dreams.

By MICHAEL PATERNITI

Three miles lie between this life and another, between their two houses, hers in downtown Plains, Ga., and his family farm in the country surrounded by peanuts planted in red clay. Three miles between the ordinary and extraordinary.

When Sinead O’Connor Unleashed Her Ghosts

Sinead O’Connor in 1990.

Uncovering the unlikely story behind the singer’s first album.

By JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

To say that Sinead O’Connor never quite regained the musical heights of her 1987 debut album, “The Lion and the Cobra,” is not to slight the rest of her output, which contained jewels. There is no getting back to a record like that first one. It was in some sense literally scary: The label had to change the original cover art, which showed a bald O’Connor hissing like a banshee cat, for the American release. In the version we saw, she looks down, arms crossed, mouth closed, vulnerable. The music had both sides of her in it.

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – January 1, 2024

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BARRON’S MAGAZINE – JANUARY 1, 2024 ISSUE:

Inside Saudi Arabia’s $3 Trillion Plan to Move Past Oil

Inside Saudi Arabia’s $3 Trillion Plan to Move Past Oil

The world’s largest oil exporter has a plan to transform its economy into a high-tech hub for global business. How investors can ride along.

The Best Income Investments for 2024

The Best Income Investments for 2024

Stocks with dividends lead our annual listing. Energy pipelines and utilities also look like good bets.

Changes Could Be Coming to Your 401(k) in 2024

Changes Could Be Coming to Your 401(k) in 2024

Secure 2.0 included new benefits for savers—but many employers have been slow to add them.

Preview: Foreign Policy Magazine – Winter 2024

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Foreign Policy Magazine – December 28, 2023: The new issue features ‘The Year The World Votes’ – Elections have consequences. What will happen when nearly half of the global population heads to the polls?

The Promise and Peril of Geopolitics

The world’s most dismal science could make Eurasia safe for illiberalism and predation—or protect it from those forces.

By Hal Brands, a professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

An illustration shows a stylized globe with a crack through it. A hand with a wrench tightens the screw atop the globe.

Alexander Dugin is a bit of a madman. The Russian intellectual made headlines in the West in 2022, when his daughter was killed, apparently by Ukrainian operatives, in a Moscow car bombing likely meant for Dugin himself. Dugin would have been targeted because of his unapologetic, yearslong advocacy for a genocidal war of conquest in Ukraine. “Kill! Kill! Kill!” he screeched after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first invasion of that country in 2014, adding: “This is my opinion as a professor.” Even at his daughter’s funeral, Dugin stayed on message. Among her first words as an infant, he claimed, were “our empire.”

Previews: The Top Five Stories To Watch In 2024

The Economist (December 28, 2023) – What are the stories set to shape 2024? From the biggest election year in history, to how to control AI and even taxis that fly, The Economist offers its annual look at the world ahead.

Video timeline: 00:00 – The World Ahead 2024 00:33 – Vital votes 03:34 – Taxis take off 07:10 – AI rules 10:19 – Industry cleans up? 13:48 – BRICS build

The New York Review Of Books – January 18, 2024

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The New York Review of Books (December 28, 2023)The latest issue features Ben Tarnoff on Elon Musk, Julian Bell on Peter Paul Rubens, Fintan O’Toole on the American gerontocracy, Anjum Hasan on recent Sri Lankan fiction, Matthew Desmond on America’s Covid-era experiment with a social safety net, Francine Prose on a vampiric celluloid Pinochet, James Gleick on the science of free will, Frances Wilson on Tove Jansson and the Moomintrolls, Álvaro Enrique on indigenous Americans in Europe, Katie Trumpener on Alexander Kluge, two poems by Jack Underwood, and more.

The Fate of Free Will

By James Gleick

In Free Agents, Kevin Mitchell makes a scientific case for the existence of human agency.

Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J. Mitchell

Nobody was holding a gun to your head when you started reading this. You made a choice. Surely it felt that way, at least. A sense of agency—of control over our actions, of continual decision-making—is part of the experience of being human, moment by moment and day by day. True, we sometimes just drift, like robots or zombies, but at other times we gird our loins and exert our will. David Hume defined will nearly three centuries ago as “the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind.” The feeling was universal then and it’s universal now.

Tools to End the Poverty Pandemic

Why have Americans not fought to sustain the unprecedented Covid-era expansion of aid to children, renters, and gig workers?

By Matthew Desmond

The Pandemic Paradox: How the Covid Crisis Made Americans More Financially Secure by Scott Fulford

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from Covid-19 by Zachary Parolin

Previews: Country Life Magazine – Dec 27, 2023

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Country Life Magazine – December 27, 2023: The latest issue features ‘This Splendid Land’ – Landscapes, Landmarks, Houses and Gardens; The Art of Knot Tying; Winston Churchill’s interior-design tips; A unicorn in the garden – fantastic beasts tamed…

Figs, wisteria, and the roses that ‘are ridiculously easy to grow’

Country Life’s 10 best gardens stories of 2023

By Toby Keel

The rose variety that’s ridiculously easy to grow: ‘Stuff some cuttings into the soil and two years later, they’ll be flourishing’

Long-standing Country Life contributor Charles Quest-Ritson is literally the man who wrote the book on roses — specifically The RHS encyclopedia of Roses — and back in June, he shared some tips on sharing and planting cuttings which proved enormously popular.

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – Dec 25, 2023

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BARRON’S MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 25, 2023 ISSUE:

Apple’s Search for Growth

Apple’s Search for Growth

Apple trades near record highs, with a market value no other company has ever attained. Now it has to justify the gains

Why Emerging Markets Could Have a Strong Run Next Year

Why Emerging Markets Could Have a Strong Run Next Year

Mexico and Brazil are heading into a favorable interest rate backdrop already in a strong position.Long read

This Stock Is a Better Electric-Vehicle Bet Than Tesla. Buy It Now.

This Stock Is a Better Electric-Vehicle Bet Than Tesla. Buy It Now.

Tesla and China-based BYD are financially similar. Both car makers generated almost identical operating profit in the third quarter. The one big difference: their valuations.Long read

5 Ways to Play the Rally in Small-Cap Stocks

5 Ways to Play the Rally in Small-Cap Stocks

Shares of smaller companies have taken off in the recent rally, but they are still a bargain compared with bigger companies.Long read

Star Stockpickers Are Coming to ETFs. Why They May Not Shine as Brightly.

Star Stockpickers Are Coming to ETFs. Why They May Not Shine as Brightly.

Active ETFs are the industry’s hottest trend. Picking winners is as tricky as ever.Long read

The New York Times Book Review – December 24, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (December 22, 2023): The latest issue features MAGIC: The Life of Earvin “Magic” Johnson, by Roland Lazenby; My Jewish Charlie Brown Christmas – The Peanuts special is the most overtly Christian TV holiday classic. So why does it speak to me so deeply?; Seven Fishes (Not Seven Dishes) for Christmas Eve – A modern Italian American take on the Feast of the Seven Fishes offers a streamlined menu any family can pull off….

Magic Man: The Story of the Greatest Point Guard in N.B.A. History

A color photograph of a tall man in midair holding a basketball. His uniform is purple and gold.

Roland Lazenby’s big biography of Magic Johnson gives us a wealth of detail, a huge cast of characters and, in a way, the tapestry of our time.

By Thomas Beller

MAGIC: The Life of Earvin “Magic” Johnson, by Roland Lazenby


I once asked a portrait photographer why no one ever smiled in her pictures, and she replied, “A smile is a mask.”

I thought of this aphorism as I read Roland Lazenby’s 800-page biography of Magic Johnson. Sports Illustrated declared his smile to be one of the two greatest smiles of the 20th century. (The other was Louis Armstrong’s.) As Missy Fox, the daughter of his high school coach, says in the book, “That is the one thing he’s always had, that smile.”

My Jewish Charlie Brown Christmas

Two animated Peanuts characters, Charlie Brown and Linus, stand beside a very anemic Christmas tree in the snow.

The Peanuts special is the most overtly Christian TV holiday classic. So why does it speak to me so deeply?


By James Poniewozik

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a one-of-a-kind wonder when it premiered in 1965 and remains so almost 60 years later. Unlike the other jingle-belled baubles that TV throws down the chimney each year, it is melancholy and meditative. The animation is minimalist and subdued, full of grays and wafting snowflakes. I could wrap myself in the Vince Guaraldi jazz score like a quilt.

And then there’s the speech.

The New York Times Magazine – Dec 24, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 22, 2023):

He Was My Role Model. My Mentor. My Supplier.

A portrait of Lonnie in a car looking into the camera.

Decades after I left hustling to become a writer, why did I seek out the man who drew me into that world?

By Mitchell S. Jackson

O.G. rings me in the a.m. to say he’s just touched down in Phoenix. It’s the day before he said he’d arrive, and while there was a time when I’d treat the seeming opacity of his plans as par, the call’s a minor surprise. He asks for my address and tells me he can drop by as soon as he grabs his rental car. “Cool,” I say, as if the call ain’t ramped my pulse, as if my crib is presentable for guests. It isn’t. So I shoot out of bed and get to cleaning and straightening the first floor, going so far as to light a candle. It’s been umpteen years since I’ve seen O.G. — Lonnie’s his name — and God forbid he judge me anything less than hella fastidious.

In Jordan, a Sprawling Palestinian Diaspora Looks Towards Gaza

The story of 2.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan has been shaped by generations of war and exile.Photographs

by MOISES SAMAN

How Do You Make a Movie About the Holocaust?

A photo illustration of various stills from movies about the holocaust collaged together.

With “The Zone of Interest,” Jonathan Glazer is just the latest director to confront the problem.

Poetry makes nothing happen, W.H. Auden said in 1939, when words must have seemed especially impotent; but cinema is another matter. For several decades after the end of the Second World War, what’s come to be seen as its central catastrophe — the near-total destruction of the European Jews — was consigned to the status of a footnote. The neglect was rooted in guilt: Many nations eagerly collaborated in the killing, while others did nothing to prevent it. Consumed by their own suffering, most people simply didn’t want to know, and a conspiracy of silence was established.