Times Literary Supplement (December 11, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The tragic Queen of France’ – The legend of Marie Antoinette; William Dalrymple’s Indian empire; Mary Beard – A night at the museum; The coffee house scientist; What Kindle readers want…
The Brooklyn Rail (December 11, 2024): The latest issue features…
“When you invent the ship, you must also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane, you must also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution… Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.”
–Paul Virilio
“The human spirit must prevail over technology.”
–Albert Einstein
Sylvia Plimack Mangold: Tapes, Fields, and Trees, 1975–84 – By Rebecca Allan
David Smith: The Nature of Sculpture – By Phong Bui
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 – By David Carrier
Jaeheon Lee: Ghosts in the Garden – By William Corwin
Edges of Ailey – By Ekin Erkan
Patterns in Abstraction – By Leia Genis
Jordan Nassar: THERE – By Robert Alan Grand
Jay DeFeo: Trees – By Suzanne Hudson
Nour Mobarak: Dafne Phono – By Eana Kim
Yuli Yamagata: Ghosts Don’t Wear Watches – By Alfred Mac Adam
Soledad Sevilla: Ritmos, tramas, variables – By Valerie Mindlin
Mark Bradford: Keep Walking – By Charles Moore
André Griffo: Exploded View – By Rômulo Moraes
Jesse Krimes: Corrections – By Joanna Seifter
Lynne Drexler: Color Notes – By David Whelan
Rosemarie Beck: Earthly Paradise – By Leah Triplett Harrington
Francesco Clemente: Summer Love in the Fall – By Selena Parnon
Sean Scully: Duane Street, 1981–1983 – By Raphy Sarkissian
Henni Alftan: Stop Making Sense – By Ann C. Collins
Hap Tivey: Perception is the Medium – By Benjamin Clifford
William Gropper: Artist of the People – By Margot Yale
The suspect, Luigi Mangione, was an Ivy League tech graduate from a prominent Maryland family who in recent months had suffered physical and psychological pain.
The National Association of Realtors has created a nonprofit that gives more heavily to one side of the political aisle and to groups that have little to do with real estate and housing.
Amnesty International described it as a “human slaughterhouse,” where, other rights groups say, tens of thousands of people were detained, tortured and killed during the 13-year civil war.
Almost 100 women have been killed in the span of three months, the police say. Rights groups want President William Ruto to declare femicide a national crisis.
Country Life Magazine (December 10, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Christmas Double Issue’…
The Revd Dr Colin Heber-Percy considers the Christmas story told in familiar rituals
Frost casts a garden’s structure into sharp relief. Tiffany Daneff enters a sparkling world
The Dean of St Albans chooses a canvas full of uplifting light for dark times
Kate Green pays tribute to Dame Ninette de Valois, the ‘godmother of ballet’
In the first of two articles, John Goodall traces the saintly history of the ancient abbey church of St Albans, Hertfordshire
The feisty robin is the undisputed avian king of Christmas. Mark Cocker wonders why
From weaving wreaths to corralling choristers, the work is ramping up for country people, who talk to Kate Green and Paula Lester
Catriona Gray meets the artists capturing Nature’s beauty in gold
Stop and listen to Nature’s voice, urges John Lewis-Stempel
Hanging treasured decorations is all part of the magic. Matthew Dennison opens the bauble box
Deborah Nicholls-Lee dares to unveil the mysterious figure
Take on our quizmaster — and, more importantly, your family and friends
Melanie Cable-Alexander buckles up for riotous country-house-corridor games
Harry Pearson takes over the world with the classic board game
Jonathan Self chortles at British comedy
The spirit of Christmas works its magic on a curmudgeonly baronet in Kate Green’s tale
Natural scents win for Arabella Youens
The sheep and its patient guardians have long delighted artists, finds Michael Prodger
Knitting, diamonds and Giles Coren’s treats
Is the perfect rural habitation real, wonders John Lewis-Stempel
Modern mince pies are but pale shadows of the past, believes Neil Buttery
Who can resist a roastie? Not Emma Hughes, nor anyone else in their right mind
Melanie Johnson builds a gingerbread house
Glazed and succulent, the Christmas ham is the king of the feast for Tom Parker Bowles
Give wine time to age, urges Harry Eyres
John Lewis-Stempel gathers in the holly, once divine diadem, now a cow’s Christmas feast
Labour’s family-farm tax will mean ruin for a beleaguered sector, says Minette Batters
Sam Leith opens the well-worn covers of the childhood books we will always cherish
From frogs to rat armies, the natural world has inspired countless ballets. Laura Parker straps on her pointe shoes for the bunny hop
Michael Billington awards his accolades to the stars — and the scourges — of the stage
Operas with food and wine may be rousing, but there are perils, warns Henrietta Bredin
Country Life reviewers select their top books
A day after the regime of President Bashar al-Assad fell, civilians poured into the streets of Damascus, weeping in disbelief. Many sought word of relatives held in a notorious prison on the outskirts of the city.
Mr. Penny choked Mr. Neely in a minutes-long struggle on the floor of an F train. The case reflected the pathologies of post-pandemic New York.
Luigi Mangione was arrested after a tip from a McDonald’s in Altoona. On Monday night, Manhattan prosecutors charged him with murder.
New technology alerts schools when students type words related to suicide. But do the timely interventions balance out the false alarms?
President Bashar al-Assad had kept opposition forces at bay for a decade with help from Russia and Iran. But rebels struck at a moment of weakness for those countries.
Thoughts of loved ones dead or missing complicate joyous relief at the prospect of Bashar al-Assad’s losing power.
With the fall of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Vladimir V. Putin has suffered one of the biggest geopolitical setbacks of his quarter-century in power.
Applicants for government posts, including inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, say they have been asked about their thoughts on Jan. 6 and who they believe won the 2020 election.
by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman
In a revelatory book, Farrell and Newman describe how the United States has turned its control over information networks into a hidden tool of economic domination—and warn of the risks of Washington’s weaponization of data power for ordinary people, as well as for the global financial system.read the review
by Sergey Radchenko
In a major reconsideration of Cold War history, Radchenko examines the Soviet Union’s competing ambitions for revolution, security, and legitimacy—and how Soviet leadership, blinded by its own hubris and aggression, set the stage for the downfall of the USSR. read the review
by Alan S. Kahan
Kahan argues that what unifies liberals across the centuries, including those involved in building and defending liberal democracy today, are their efforts to build societies free from the fear of arbitrary power. He sculpts a masterful and beautifully written history of liberalism’s long intellectual journey. read the review
by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
In this sobering study, Levitsky and Ziblatt demonstrate how the United States’ enduring constitutional order—one forged in a pre-democratic age—increasingly thwarts the will of an expanding multicultural majority in favor of a shrinking rural white minority.read the review
by Anne Applebaum
Focused on the sophisticated and networked world of autocracy, dictatorship, and tyranny, Applebaum argues that what separates hardcore autocratic states, such as China and Russia, from softer illiberal and authoritarian regimes, such as those in Hungary, India, and Turkey, is the ruthlessness and reach of their dictatorial power and their deep hostility to the Western-led democratic world.read the review
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