Category Archives: Reviews

The New York Times Magazine – Sept. 15, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (September 13, 2024): The latest issue features Sasha Weiss on the Prince we never knew; Ben Hubbard on a U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees; Giles Harvey on the writer Tony Tulathimutte; and more.

The Prince We Never Knew

A revealing new documentary could redefine our understanding of the pop icon. But you will probably never get to see it.

How a U.N. Agency Became a Flashpoint in the Gaza War

UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, has survived 75 years of Israeli-Palestinian strife. Can it survive the latest conflict?

An Acerbic Young Writer Takes Aim at the Identity Era

Tony Tulathimutte is a master comedian whose original and highly disturbing new book skewers liberal pieties. By Giles Harvey

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – Sept. 13, 2024

The Guardian Weekly (September 12, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Two Faces’ – Why the historical divide between Germany’s east and west could halt the rise of the AFD (Alternative for Germany)…

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Spotlight | After the Grenfell Tower inquiry
Seven years after 72 people died in a tower block fire in west London, Robert Booth and Emine Sinmaz report on the damning public investigation into a wholly preventable tragedy.

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Environment | The deep secrets of a Greenland glacier
Damian Carrington reports from Kangerlussuup glacier, where scientists are discovering new things about sediment banks that could slow the rate of rising seas.

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Feature | The big click-off: how to win at Fantasy Premier League
With 10 million players, the virtual football game has become a global phenomenon. Tom Lamont gets the lowdown from the world’s best armchair managers.

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Opinion | Why I’d pay to see Ticketmaster getting rinsed
After the Oasis ticket debacle, this much is clear, writes Marina Hyde: the “fan experience” is an excuse to be exploited while having to look grateful.

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Culture | James McAvoy on class, comfort and carnage
The Scottish actor talks to Zoe Williams about marriage, therapy – and why Ken Loach would never cast him.

Art Reviews: Gagosian Quarterly – Fall 2023

Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2024 | Gagosian Quarterly
Detail from Andy Warhol’s Mao (1972)

Gagosian Quarterly (Fall 2024) The new issue features Jessica Beck discussing Andy Warhol’s Mao series, contextualizing Warhol’s return to painting in the early 1970s and his attraction to subjects of notoriety. We dig into the archives to honor the inimitable Richard Serra, who had over forty exhibitions at Gagosian since his first in 1983. Elsewhere in the issue, Salomé Gómez-Upegui examines the work of artists confronting the climate crisis, and Péjú Oshin speaks with Jayden Ali about his expansive view of architecture.

In Conversation – Christopher Makos and Jessica Beck

Christopher Makos and Jessica Beck

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade is a group exhibition and shop takeover that feature works by Warhol and portraits of the artist by friends and collaborators including photographers Ronnie Cutrone, Michael Halsband, Christopher Makos, and Billy Name. To celebrate the occasion, Makos met with Gagosian director Jessica Beck to speak about his friendship with Warhol and the joy of the unexpected.

The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters

The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters

Against the backdrop of the 2020 US presidential election, historian Hal Wert takes us through the artistic and political evolution of American campaign posters, from their origin in 1844 to the present. In an interview with Quarterly editor Gillian Jakab, Wert highlights an array of landmark posters and the artists who made them.

The New York Review Of Books – October 3, 2024

Table of Contents - October 3, 2024 | The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books (September 12, 2024)The latest issue features:

Savvy in the Grass

Some botanists maintain that peas are capable of associative learning, others that tropical vines have a sort of vision. If plants possess sentience, what is the morally appropriate response?

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger

The Nation of Plants by Stefano Mancuso, translated from the Italian by Gregory Conti

Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence by Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence

An Entry of One’s Own

A collection of excerpts from women’s diaries written over the past four centuries offers a vast range of human experience and a subtle counterhistory.

Secret Voices: A Year of Women’s Diaries edited by Sarah Gristwood

The Bliss and the Risks

The painter Paula Modersohn-Becker’s ascension to greater visibility raises questions about how we assess artistic talent, how reputations are made, and how we reevaluate once-neglected artists, particularly women.

Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich/I Am Me an exhibition at the Neue Galerie, New York City, June 6–September 9, 2024, and the Art Institute of Chicago, October 12, 2024–January 12, 2025

Preview: Military History Magazine – Oct/Nov 2024

Military History Matters 142 – The Past

MILITARY HISTORY MAGAZINE (September 12, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Napoleon At War’ – The Rise of a Military Colossus…

Napoleon: Rise of a military colossus

In our special two-part feature in this issue, Graham Goodlad explores, first, the part played by Napoleon’s generalship in his progress from unknown artillery officer to ruler of France. Then we analyses in depth two battles he fought in his…

Napoleon by numbers

Infographics: Calum Henderson

Lodi and Arcola: making the myth

Graham Goodlad analyses the clashes that made Napoleon’s name as a soldier of genius.

Hidden figures

The use of ‘native levies’ has long been a feature of foreign wars – but their employment and their sacrifice reached a peak during the British colonial era. Stephen Roberts…

Thunder in the East: Armoured warfare in South-East Asia and the Pacific, 1937-1945

From Burma to Iwo Jima, armoured fighting vehicles played a key role in some of World War II’s most challenging environments. Our military technology expert David Porter takes notes.

The Economist Magazine – September 14, 2024 Preview

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The Economist Magazine (September 12, 2024): The latest issue features How ugly will it get?

America’s election is mired in conflict

Donald Trump’s conspiracy machine is already gearing up for election night

Is Labour in thrall to the unions?

They agree on the labour market above all

Danger in the South China Sea

A new stage in the conflict is beginning

Getting Europe to grow

Mario Draghi, the continent’s unofficial chief technocrat, has a plan

Breast milk: the motherlode

Some of its myriad components are being tested as treatments for cancer and other diseases

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Sept. 12, 2024

Volume 633 Issue 8029

Nature Magazine – September 11, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Island Life’ – Genomic analysis sheds light on population history of Rapa Nui….

Ancient fish dined on bats — or died trying

Fossils hint that bats’ wings sometimes lodged in fish’s throats, leading the bat-eater to die of hunger.

Lassa fever to have a fearsome toll without vaccination

Modelling suggests that the Lassa virus could infect millions in a decade, but vaccines under development could sharply reduce deaths.

Simple steps could shrink US beef industry’s carbon hoofprint

Beef production accounts for 3% of country’s carbon emissions, but measures such as tree-planting offer help.

Literary Previews: The Paris Review – Fall 2024

Paris Review Fall'24

Paris Review Summer 2024 (September 10, 2024) — The new issue features:

Not Enough about Frank: A Visit with James Schuyler

Peter Schjeldahl

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From left, Frank O’Hara, John Button, Schuyler, and Joe LeSueur, ca. 1960. © Estate of John Button, courtesy of CLAMP, New York.

James Schuyler on Frank O’Hara: “I still can see Frank, standing on that street corner outside a pastry shop, holding a neatly tied-up box of God knows what—éclairs, perhaps.”

James Schuyler was born in Chicago in 1923, grew up in Washington, D.C., and East Aurora, New York, and spent most of his adult years in New York City and Southampton, Long Island. Although he is perhaps less widely known than the fellow New York School poets with whom he is associated, John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Barbara Guest, and Kenneth Koch, he published six full-length books of poetry during his lifetime—beginning with Freely Espousing, published by Doubleday and Paris Review Editions in 1969—as well as two novels, and a third written in collaboration with Ashbery. In 1981 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection The Morning of the Poem (1980). Mental illness plagued him intermittently, and there were times when his life threatened to veer out of control, but friends repeatedly rallied around him, and the years before his death in 1991 were happy and productive. 

Javier Cercas on the Art of Fiction: “Hell, to me, is a literary party.”

Prose by Josephine Baker, Caleb Crain, Marlene Morgan, Morgan Thomas, and Fumio Yamamoto.

Poetry by Hannah Arendt, Matt Broaddus, Sara Gilmore, Benjamin Krusling, Mark Leidner, James Richardson, and Margaret Ross.

Art by Ayé Aton and Ron Veasey, and cover by Sterling Ruby.

Previews: Country Life Magazine – Sept. 11, 2024

Country Life Magazine (September 10, 2024): The latest issue features

The summit of achievement

Charles Quest-Ritson marvels at Friar Park’s ‘Henley Matterhorn’ in the superb Oxfordshire garden created by the late Beatle George Harrison and his widow, Olivia

How to time travel to spring

Now is the time to plan next year’s colourful garden display. John Hoyland advises what to plant and where for best results

Put a smile on your garden

John Hoyland hails a welcome resurgence in the popularity of pelargoniums, a stalwart that  lights up the summer garden

Sing on, sweet bird

The soothing notes of Britain’s thrushes have long provided a reassuring soundtrack to our lives. Mark Cocker tunes in

Bravery beyond belief

As the Royal Humane Society marks its 250th anniversary, Rupert Uloth recounts a host of incredible life-saving feats

 ‘Without fever there is no creation’

Henrietta Bredin examines how the colourful life of Puccini was reflected in the melodramatic plot lines of his greatest operas

Rachel Podger’s favourite painting

The leading violinist chooses an inspiring, uplifting masterpiece with a beautiful depth of colour

Happiness in small things

The challenges facing female farmers in Africa put life in perspective for Minette Batters      

The great indoors

Amelia Thorpe has the pick of planters and accessories to make the most of your houseplants

Civic splendour

John Goodall is heartened by the restoration of St Mary’s Guildhall, a symbol of Coventry’s great 14th-century prosperity

The legacy

Kate Green applauds the work of Sir Arthur Hobhouse, founding father of our national parks

Let’s get to the bottom of this

Is it a blessing or a curse to find a well on your property? Deborah Nicholls-Lee tests the water

I was on fire for you, where did you go?

David Profumo is in his element as he teases Atlantic salmon from Iceland’s low, clear waters

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell turns over a new leaf with autumn-inspired jewellery

Interiors

It’s show time! Amelia Thorpe seeks Design Week inspiration

Get your cob on

Prepare to be amazed by maize as Tom Parker Bowles savours those golden corn kernels in mouth-watering Mexican style

Foraging

Do you know a damson from a bullace? John Wright revels in the plum job of explaining it all

The colour revolution

The 19th-century development of new paints was a green light for artists, finds Michael Prodger

Colour vision

Rob Crossan catches up with the most famous and enduring face of our television screens

Arts/Politics: The Atlantic Magazine – October 2024

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The Atlantic Magazine – September 9, 2024: The latest issue features Trump’s antidemocratic actions, and the Republican politicians who bent to his will

Hypocrisy, Spinelessness, and the Triumph of Donald Trump

illustration with abstract figures of yellow-haired figure in blue suit standing and extending orange hand with ring for kneeling figure in blue suit to kiss, on black background

He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.

Trump Promises a ‘Bloody Story’

His latest comments about mass deportation are a revelation about how he feels—and a troubling reminder of the sources of his appeal.

Finding Philanthropy’s Forgotten Founder

Julius Rosenwald understood that charity is not just about giving, but about fixing the inequalities that make giving necessary.