‘Being the party of normality has its appeal, but it reinforces precisely the wrong instinct. The polycrisis that is unfolding demands not a return to the status quo but urgent, progressive answers both at home and abroad. To formulate and articulate those, the Democrats need politicians, not algorithms. They need personalities capable of responding to the profound questions facing contemporary America.’
‘Would the army as a whole rise up against a government that made territorial concessions to Russia? Perhaps. But the more widely the recruiters spread their net, the more the army reflects a society that is starting to talk openly, if bitterly, about swapping land for peace.’
Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border by Ieva Jusionyte
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason de León
The New York Review of Books (October 31, 2024)– The latest issue featuresCoco Fusco on yearning to breathe free, Elaine Blair on Rachel Cusk, Fintan O’Toole on Trump’s predations, Ruth Bernard Yeazell on John Singer Sargent, Michelle Nijhuis on the disasters wrought by remaking nature for human ends, Clair Wills on Janet Frame, Andrew Raftery on the Declaration of Independence, Rozina Ali on evangelical missionaries in Afghanistan and Iraq, A.S. Hamrah on the Trump biopic, Tim Parks on Nathaniel Hawthorne, poems by John Kinsella and Emily Berry, and much more.
The Islamic Republic’s sordid proxy war with the West may now be leaving it open to an all-out attack as Israel attempts to eliminate its enemies throughout the region.
The fashion designer chooses a colourful, cheering scene.
A home reborn
Magnificent Knowsley Hall, Lancashire, has been rescued from institutional use through an admirable restoration project and is once again a home, discovers John Martin Robinson.
The Legacy
Amie Elizabeth White dons a Blue Peter badge to salute the show’s creator, John Hunter Blair.
Heal the land, heal the waters
Our precious rivers hold myriad life forms, yet have been sullied by the hands of humans. John Lewis-Stempel urges us to take care of them.
You’ve got peemail
Dogs, bats and other creatures keep up with the news through sniffing and sensing. Laura Parker reports on the animal kingdom’s telegraph system.
The ghost hunters
Deep in a glad or underwater, our rarest plants defy discovery. Peter Marren joins the quest.
Let Nature never be forgot
A cornucopia of delights awaits Tiffany Daneff in Alan Titchmarsh’s Hampshire garden, with secluded seats, ponds and plenty of space for wildlife.
The Renaissance men
Well-educated and curious, the British tourists with an eye for art laid the foundations of our great collections, finds Michael Hall.
Return to the steppe
Teresa Levonian-Cole boards the Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express to traverse Uzbekistan, a land brimming with art, history and caviar.
And, as always, much much more, including luxury, recipes, interior inspiration and gardens.
London Review of Books (LRB) – October 30 , 2024: The latest issue features ‘What was Bidenomics?’; Jenny Turner returns to Gillian Rose and Julian Barnes – Drinking for France…
Jenny Turner
Love’s Work by Gillian Rose – Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory by Gillian Rose, edited by Robert Lucas Scott and James Gordon Finlayson
Josephine Quinn – At the British Museum: ‘Silk Roads’
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite – The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain and Their Many Enemies by Andy BeckettA Woman like Me by Diane AbbottKeir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin
Times Literary Supplement (October 30, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Scare Stories’ – On modern horror. Asked why he liked horror films, or terror films as he preferred to call them, Kingsley Amis wrote: “like Mark Twain on a dissimilar occasion, I have an answer to that: I don’t know”. He viewed horror as purely “harmless” entertainment. That explanation might satisfy teenage addicts, but moralists, psychologists and literary critics are inclined to examine the bloody entrails of the genre to divine deeper truths.
We don’t have flying cars or Jetsons-like robots to cook our meals. What we have is better: constant incremental progress.
The Long History of the Future: Why Tomorrow’s Technology Still Isn’t Here By Nicole Kobie
A video flickers to life as Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” begins to sound. A long-haired man appears on screen. You might expect a jazz concert, but the man fiddles with a cabinet-like, camera-laden machine on wheels. As he steps away, a buzzer sounds, the machine slowly rolls forward, and the narrator announces its name: Shakey the Robot.
Boomers Daily 