Category Archives: Previews

Front Cover: The Atlantic Magazine – June 2023

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The Atlantic Magazine – June 2023 issue:

The Atlantic’s June Cover Story: “The Counteroffensive,” by Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg

Bono illustrates President Zelensky for June cover

The Atlantic’s June cover is illustrated by U2’s lead singer, Bono, who sketches Zelensky and includes a quote from the Ukrainian president:

“The choice is between freedom and fear.”

In an editor’s note, also published today, Goldberg writes that, after learning Bono has a hobby of redesigning and reimagining  Atlantic  covers, he invited the singer and writer to create an original.

“Zelensky, a man we both admire, was a natural subject for his first go. Like Anne, Bono is preoccupied with issues of freedom and dignity, and, working with Oliver Munday, our associate creative director, he made a stunning cover that captures the resolve of Ukraine’s wartime president.”

CULTURE: FRANCE-AMÉRIQUE MAGAZINE – MAY 2023 ISSUE

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France-Amérique Magazine – May 2023 – Our publication was launched in New York City on May 23, 1943, during World War II – a period of intense political debate between supporters of the Vichy regime and those fighting for de Gaulle that our historian-in-residence,

1943-2023 – We’ll Always Have Passion

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This month, France-Amérique is celebrating its 80th anniversary – a miraculous example of longevity in today’s print media sector. This success is due to America’s longstanding passion for France, and the omnipresence of America in French controversies.

WORK TO LIVE? A French Pension Row with Deeper Implications

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The scale and intensity of the current protests reflect a deeper discontent relating to the very nature of work and its place in people’s lives. While these concerns may seem specifically French, they echo a much broader and long-standing debate in our societies.

By Anthony Bulger

Preview: New York Times Magazine – April 30, 2023

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The New York Times Magazine – April 29, 2023:

Dr. Fauci Looks Back: ‘Something Clearly Went Wrong’

In his most extensive interview yet, Anthony Fauci wrestles with the hard lessons of the pandemic — and the decisions that will define his legacy.

The Most Dangerous Person in the World Is Randi Weingarten’

Randi Weingarten, wearing a bright blue shirt and staring directly into the camera.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.Credit…Michal Chelbin for The New York Times

School closures and culture wars turned classrooms into battlegrounds — and made the head of one of the country’s largest teachers’ unions a lightning rod for criticism.

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – May 1, 2023

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Barron’s Magazine – May 1, 2023:

The Cautionary History of Debt-Limit Gimmicks

Illustration by Alvaro Bernis

The U.S. Congress began imposing debt limits in 1776. When the Continental Congress authorized its very first loan from France, it instructed U.S. commissioners to borrow a “sum not exceeding two million sterling.” Congress continued to permit the Treasury to borrow only up to bond-by-bond specific limits until 1917. Prior to then, U.S. Treasury secretaries actually operated under multiple debt limits, authorized bond by authorized bond. The single, aggregate debt limit we’re more familiar with today was first adopted by the U.S. in 1939.

The Fed Has Few Good Options. The Risk of a Misstep Is Growing.

The Fed Has Few Good Options. The Risk of a Misstep Is Growing.

The Federal Reserve is struggling to cool inflation further without damaging the economy. The easy part is over.

J&J’s Kenvue Spinoff: A Rare IPO Winner in a Moribund Market

J&J’s Kenvue Spinoff: A Rare IPO Winner in a Moribund Market

The consumer health company features a range of leading brands, a relatively cheap valuation, a solid balance sheet, consistent earnings, and a healthy dividend yield. It’s no tech unicorn, a good thing in 2023.

Pressure on First Republic Mounts as Advisors Jump Ship

Pressure on First Republic Mounts as Advisors Jump Ship

The bank’s elite wealth management unit is suffering a major talent drain. It may only get worse.

Art: ‘Must-See Museum Exhibitions’ – May 2023

Sotheby’s (April 28, 2023) – Looking for some inspiration for your next museum visit? This month, we’re taking a tour of six of the world’s most exciting and innovative museum exhibitions with Tim Marlow, Director of the Design Museum, London.

Doris Salcedo – Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, 21 May–17 September 2023 – Salcedo is a Colombian-born artist, whose central subject is human trauma and tragedy. Though much of her work emanates from the violent conflict over the last three decades in her native land, its resonance is universal. Doris Salcedo presents eight major series of works from across her career – from untitled pieces of wooden furniture filled with concrete to the remarkable Palimpsest in which the names of over 300 refugees and migrants who died at sea quite literally weep before our eyes.

Vincent van Gogh 2023 marks the 170th anniversary of Vincent van Gogh. Three exhibitions opening this month look set to enhance our understanding of the great Dutch painter:

Van Gogh and the Avant Garde The Art Institute of Chicago 14 May–4 September 2023 – Van Gogh and the Avant Garde takes the modern landscape as its central subject and looks at how the artist – along with Seurat, Signac and others – turned his attention from urban Parisian life to wrestling with the surrounding countryside with a formal inventiveness that set the tone for the development of Modernism.

Van Gogh’s Cypresses The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 22 May–27 August 2023 – From the religious connotation of trees in graveyards to their role as the backdrop of his incarceration at the asylum in Saint-Remy, the artist’s flame-like evergreens will be presented with all their evocative resonance in Van Gogh’s Cypresses,

Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 12 May–3 September 2023 – The unsurpassable Van Gogh Museum will celebrate its own 50th anniversary with Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months – an exhibition delving into the tremendously productive final period of his life, in which he made several of his most renowned masterpieces.

The New York Times Book Review – April 30, 2023

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The New York Times Book Review (April 30, 2023): On the cover this week – Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovery of America,” a sweeping, important, revisionist work of American history that places Native Americans front and center. Illustrating it is “Les Castors du Roi,” a 2011 painting by Kent Monkman, a Cree artist in Canada’s Dish With One Spoon Territory.

Read Your Way Through Boston

An illustration depicting a snowy street in Boston; a man in the foreground is engrossed in reading his book.
Credit…Raphaelle Macaron

Paul Theroux, the quintessential travel writer, has also enshrined his Massachusetts roots in his writing. Here are his recommendations for those who come to visit.


My father, like many passionate readers, was a literary pilgrim in his native Massachusetts, a state rich in destinations, hallowed by many of the greatest writers in the language. “Look, Paulie, this is the House of the Seven Gables — go on, count them!”

Everything, Everywhere, in One Big Book

This color photo shows a woman flipping pages of a book posed on top of a long low bookcase filled with volumes. Behind the woman, stretching to the top of the photograph are more bookshelves filled with books.
A woman consults a book at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan.Credit…Ángel Franco/The New York Times

In “All the Knowledge in the World,” Simon Garfield recounts the history of the encyclopedia — a tale of ambitious effort, numerous errors and lots of paper.

In ‘Ordinary Notes,’ a Radical Reading of Black Life

The book cover for “Ordinary Notes,” by Christina Sharpe, is lilac with bold black type. A blurry photo of houses at twilight sits along the bottom edge.

The scholar Christina Sharpe’s new book comprises memories, observations, artifacts and artworks — fragments attesting to the persistence of prejudice while allowing glimpses of something like hope.

Research Preview: Science Magazine – April 28, 2023

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Science Magazine – April 28, 2023 issue: Mammals come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, here represented by some of the least well known and most unusual—clockwise from top left: a fossa, a Hoffmann’s two-toed sloth, a lesser hedgehog tenrec, two tree (or white-bellied) pangolins, and an aye-aye. 

Zoonomia

Mammals are one of the most diverse classes of animals, ranging both in size, across many orders of magnitude, and in shape—nearly to the limit of one’s imagination. Understanding when, how, and under what selective pressures this variation has developed has been of interest since the dawn of science.

The 240 mammals sequenced through the Zoonomia project include the famous sled dog Balto, who was reported to have led a team of sled dogs in the final leg of the race to carry a life-saving serum to Nome, Alaska, in 1925. His genome, in conjunction with others, was used to reveal his ancestry and adaptations, as well as predict aspects of his morphology, including his coat color.

A two-stage earthquake in the Aleutians

Researchers deploy a wave glider to measure seafloor displacement associated with earthquakes.PHOTO: TODD ERICKSEN

The destructive behavior of great earthquakes in subduction zones, such as in Japan in 2011, depends on details of the earthquake slip. A slip at shallow depth is the dominant driver of tsunami. Using recently developed seafloor geodetic instrumentation, Brooks et al. found that the deeper slip of the July 2021 magnitude 8.2 Chignik, Alaska earthquake was followed 2.5 months later by a second stage of (aseismic) slip. This approximately 2 to 3 meters of “silent” slip allowed the shallow fault to catch up with its deeper portion, reducing its future earthquake potential.

Previews: The Economist Magazine – April 29, 2023

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The Economist – April 29, 2023 issue:

As Israel turns 75, its biggest threats now come from within

The country needs a new political settlement that diminishes the power of extremists

As israel marks its 75th anniversary, take a moment to admire how it has triumphed against the odds. Before it declared independence in 1948 its own generals warned that it had only a fifty-fifty chance of survival. Today Israel is hugely rich, safer than it has been for most of its history, and democratic—if, that is, you are prepared to exclude the territories it occupies. It has overcome wars, droughts and poverty with few natural endowments other than human grit. It is an outlier in the Middle East, a hub of innovation and a winner from globalisation.

The West should supply Ukraine with F-16s

Or Russian fighter jets may win control of Ukrainian skies

A F-16 jet fighter of Royal Dutch Air Force lands on the runway of Volkel air base, southern Netherlands, on January 2, 2019. - The Dutch Air Force took part in the Air Task Force Middle East mission to fight against ISIS in Iraq and Eastern Syria. (Photo by Remko de Waal / ANP / AFP) / Netherlands OUT (Photo credit should read REMKO DE WAAL/AFP via Getty Images)

As Ukraine prepares its forces for a crucial counter-offensive, the argument among its Western allies about what equipment to provide chunters on. Having finally received the tanks it had been pleading for since last year, Ukraine has increased the intensity of its demands for fighter jets. Yet its pleas are falling on largely deaf ears.

Preview: MIT Technology Review – May/June 2023

MIT Technology Review – May/June 2023: How AI is transforming the classroom. Surveilling students. Teaching the biliterate brain to read. What we’ve learned from “learning to code.” Plus keyboard obsessions, wildfire resilience, and shroom speak.

Teachers in Denmark are using apps to audit their students’ moods

surveillance on playground concept

Companies say the software can help improve well-being, but some experts worry it could have the opposite effect.

How AI is helping historians better understand our past

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The historians of tomorrow are using computer science to analyze how people lived centuries ago.

It’s an evening in 1531, in the city of Venice. In a printer’s workshop, an apprentice labors over the layout of a page that’s destined for an astronomy textbook—a dense line of type and a woodblock illustration of a cherubic head observing shapes moving through the cosmos, representing a lunar eclipse. 

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – April 27, 2023

Volume 616 Issue 7958

nature Magazine – April 20, 2023 issue:

Massive mosquito factory in Brazil aims to halt dengue

Facility will produce up to five billion bacteria-infected mosquitoes per year

A WMP staff member releases Wolbachia mosquitoes in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro
A World Mosquito Program (WMP) staff member releases Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in Niterói, Brazil.Credit: WMP Brasil.

The non-profit World Mosquito Program (WMP) has announced that it will release modified mosquitoes in many of Brazil’s urban areas over the next 10 years, with the aim of protecting up to 70 million people from diseases such as dengue. Researchers have tested the release of this type of mosquito — which carries a Wolbachia bacterium that stops the insect from transmitting viruses — in select cities in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Vietnam. But this will be the first time that the technology is dispersed nationwide.

Rewilding the planet

An archipelago constructed of sand and mud is bringing new life to a dead lake but can this bold experiment have a lasting impact