Smithsonian Magazine (December 2023) –The latest issue features ‘Can A Robot Replace the World’s Greatest Artists?; A tiny reindeer enjoys its day in the sun; In Ukraine, war reshapes a Holocaust Memorial; the Rebirth of a Lost American Wine Region, and more…
Michael Cunningham’s “Day” peeks into the lives of a family on one specific April date across three years as life changes because of Covid and other challenges.
By Caleb Crain
DAY, by Michael Cunningham
Michael Cunningham’s new novel, “Day,” visits a family on April 5 in 2019, 2020 and 2021 — before, during and after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which shadows the book although the words “Covid” and “pandemic” never appear.
In Chetna Maroo’s debut novel, an adolescent girl mourns the death of her mother in the empty reverberations between points.
By Ivy Pochoda
WESTERN LANE, by Chetna Maroo
At the start of Chetna Maroo’s polished and disciplined debut, Gopi, an 11-year-old Jain girl who has just lost her mother, stands on a squash court outside London. She isn’t playing. Instead, she’s listening to the sound of the ball hitting the wall on the adjacent court, “a quick, low pistol-shot of a sound, with a close echo.” It is not so much the shot itself that Gopi is hearing, but that echo, the empty reverb, the lonely response as the ball’s impact gives the striker a split second to retreat to the T, the center of the court, and prepare to counteract her opponent’s responding shot.
The agreement at the conference of the parties (cop) to the un Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in Paris in 2015, was somewhat impotent. As many pointed out at the time, it could not tell countries what to do; it could not end the fossil-fuel age by fiat; it could not draw back the seas, placate the winds or dim the noonday sun. But it could at least lay down the law for subsequent cops, decreeing that this year’s should see the first “global stocktake” of what had and had not been done to bring the agreement’s overarching goals closer.
Science Magazine – November 17, 2023: The new issue features Dolomite, a key mineral in stunning geological formations, such as Drei Zinnen (shown here), Niagara Falls, and Hoodoos. Despite its natural abundance, laboratory growth of dolomite has proven impossible—a contradiction known as the “dolomite problem.”
HISTORY TODAY MAGAZINE (DECEMBER 2023) – This issue features The 50 years that made America from Revolution to the Monroe Doctrine, the forgotten role of Archbishop Wulfstan, the home front of the First World War, the role of sokol in Czech nationalism, Volcanos on tour, and the best history books of 2023.
Fifty years separate the Boston Tea Party and the Monroe Doctrine. How did a group of British colonies become a self-proclaimed protector of continents within half a century?
It was the evening of 16 December 1773. At Boston’s Old South Meeting House, more than 5,000 people awaited word from the governor of Massachusetts Bay, Thomas Hutchinson. Had the governor finally given in to their demand to send back to England the three ships laden with East India Company tea that were moored in Boston harbour? When learning of the governor’s refusal, tradition holds that the firebrand orator Samuel Adams loudly declared that ‘this meeting’ could do no more to defend the rights of the people. The words were a pre-arranged signal.
Books of the Year 2023
Revolutions and rubles, godlings and fascist symbols, Shakespeare and silk: ten historians choose their favourite new history books of 2023.
Nature Magazine – November 23, 2023: The latest issue cover features how cryo-electron microscopy can reveal the structure of motor protein myosin filaments, which power the heart via muscle contraction.
Times Literary Supplement (November 22, 2023): The new issue features Edward Thomas’s journey – The radical turn in English poetry; An AI emergency; Great American history; Magical thinking; Carry On Napoleon, and more…
London Review of Books (LRB) – November 30, 2023: The latest issue features Jaqueline Rose on violence and its origins; Zain Samir reporting from Southern Lebanon; Clare Bucknell – Rescuing Lord Byron; David Trotter – Werner Herzog’s Visions, and more….
In response to the destruction of Gaza, it seems to be becoming almost impossible to lament more than one people at a time. When I signed Artists for Palestine’s statement last month, I looked for mention of the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli Jews on 7 October, and then decided to settle for the unambiguous condemnation of ‘every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them’.
‘Little Boy’ exploded over Hiroshima at 8.15 a.m. on 6 August 1945, wiping most of the city off the face of the earth and killing eighty thousand people instantly. But the ‘shock’ to the leadership in Tokyo envisaged by the former US secretary of war Henry Stimson failed to materialise.
HARPER’S MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 2023: This issue features The Hofmann Wobble – Wikipedia and the problem of historical memory; Your Mind’s in the Hands of Everything – Letting go of Philip Roth; Risky Disco – A sensory workshop bridges the gap; Occult Murder and Gospel Thrillers, and more…
At twenty-six, in 2006, the year before the iPhone launched, I found myself driving a red Subaru Outback—the color was technically “claret metallic,” the friend who’d lent me the car had told me, in case I ever wanted to touch up the paint—on Highway 12 in Utah. I was heading to the East Bay after a painful breakup in New York. I remember, wrongly, that I was listening to a book on tape, a work by a prominent linguist, as I moved through the alien landscape, jagged formations of red rock towering against a cloudless sky.
It is difficult to predict when one will spend the night at a hotel in Newark, let alone three, and uncommon to agree to such a scenario willingly. If you live there already, you stay home. If you’re there for a professional engagement, your boss made you go. If your flight has been canceled, you go there as a last resort. Whereas, though I felt compelled to be there, I couldn’t point to an authority outside of myself that had forced my hand. The room had been booked a week in advance.
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