Tag Archives: Reviews

Previews: Country Life Magazine – Sept 5, 2023

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Country Life Magazine – September 6, 2023: The new issue features Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer’s vision for the countryside; Chelsea Physic Garden and motoring on at Goodwood; Remembering Elizabeth II and more…

Labour’s vision for rural Britain

Sir Keir Starmer promises a new politics of partnership and respect for rural communities

Not your average Fiesta

As Goodwood revs up for its Revival, the Duke of Richmond tells Octavia Pollock about 75 years of motorsport on his estate

Feudal splendours

In the second of two articles, John Martin Robinson steps inside Arundel Castle in West Sussex

British Artist Views: David Hockney’s “Perspectives”

Phillips (September 5, 2023) – From Phillips’ London photo studio, Head of Sale Rebecca Tooby-Desmond uncovers the masterful manipulation of perspective that characterizes David Hockney’s work.

  • DAVID HOCKNEY Hotel Acatlán: Second Day, from Moving Focus, 1984-85
DAVID HOCKNEY Hotel Acatlán: Second Day, from Moving Focus, 1984-85
  • DAVID HOCKNEY Pembroke Studio Interior, from Moving Focus, 1984
DAVID HOCKNEY Pembroke Studio Interior, from Moving Focus, 1984

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 11, 2023

Office space and mall.

The New Yorker – September 11, 2023 issue: The new issue features Dana Goodyear on editing humans with crispr, Elizabeth Kolbert on decoding whale communication, James Wood on George Eliot, and more.

The Transformative, Alarming Power of Gene Editing

Hands cutting DNA with a pair of scissors. Growth of a human baby is displayed in the background.

A rogue scientist showed that crispr gives humans the ability to transform ourselves. But should we?

By Dana Goodyear

Crispr, which may be the single most transformative biological technology of the twenty-first century, is a natural phenomenon, evolved over billions of years. It was first observed in the nineteen-eighties, when researchers noticed unexplained sequences of viral DNA in E. coli. Eventually, they realized that these sequences played a role in the bacteria’s immune system: they could find and destroy other pieces of viral DNA. 

The Holy Heresies of George Eliot

Two people lying with their faces close to each other with their long hair flowing over an open book

Her greatest rebellion against Victorian moralism was to reclaim the sacred for herself.

By James Wood

Literature bores me, especially great literature,” the narrator of one of John Berryman’s “Dream Songs” says. George Eliot sometimes bores me, especially the George Eliot draped in greatness. Think of the extremities of nineteenth-century fiction: labile Lermontov; crazy, visionary Melville; nasty, world-hating Flaubert; mystic moor-bound Brontës; fanatical, trembling Dostoyevsky; explosive Hamsun. There’s enough wildness to destroy the myth of that stable Victorian portal “classic realism.” It was not classic—certainly not then—and not always particularly “real.”

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – Sept 4, 2023

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BARRON’S MAGAZINE – SEPTEMBER 4, 2023: The new issue feature a Fall Investment 2023 preview.

Warner Bros. Discovery Has Big Challenges. The Barbie Movie Won’t Solve Them.

The Warner Bros. Discovery CEO has a big salary and a big task at the parent company for CNN and Max: turning around a media giant saddled with high debt and multiple challenges

Coinbase’s Winning Streak Looks Shaky. Why the Stock Isn’t a Buy.

Coinbase’s Winning Streak Looks Shaky. Why the Stock Isn’t a Buy.

Shares of the crypto exchange have soared, but legal challenges are mounting along with competitive threats.

Hedge Funds Challenge the SEC’s New Rules

Hedge Funds Challenge the SEC's New Rules

Just as they threatened to do, the hedge fund and private equity industries are challenging new rules imposed on them by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trade groups for those private fund advisers filed their petition Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fift…

Student Loan Payments Are Back. Your Biggest Questions Answered

Student Loan Payments Are Back. Your Biggest Questions Answered.

Federal student loans will resume soon, more than three years after the government paused them du…

Views: The New York Times Magazine – Sept 3, 2023

Current cover

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (September 3, 2023) – The 9.3.23 Issue features Michael Steinberger on how the war in Ukraine turned tennis into a battlefield; Keri Blakinger on the Dungeons and Dragons players on death row; Jennifer Szalai on Naomi Klein’s new book about her doppelganger; and more.

How the War in Ukraine Turned Tennis Into a Battlefield

All the photographs in this article are black-and-white. This shows a raised fist with a tennis ball in it.

For Ukrainian players, as well as those from Russia and its allies, the unceasing conflict at home has bled into the game. Now they face off at the U.S. Open.

By Michael Steinberger

It was a few days before the start of Wimbledon this summer, and Elina Svitolina, just off a flight from Geneva, had come to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club to check in for the tournament. She was returning after a year’s absence. “It feels like it has been 10 years,” she said as she got out of the car. A lot had happened since she last competed at Wimbledon, in 2021. She had given birth to a daughter named Skaï, the first child for her and her husband, the French player Gaël Monfils. Also, her country, Ukraine, had been invaded by Russia.

When Your ‘Doppelganger’ Becomes a Conspiracy Theorist

Naomi Klein.

If you’re Naomi Klein, you write a book about it.

By Jennifer Szalai

In June, the Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein was sitting in the dark gray booth of a recording studio in Lower Manhattan. Dressed simply for the New York City heat — white linen top, light cropped pants, white sneakers — she was reading from a script, and there was a line that was giving her a bit of trouble.

The New York Times Book Review – September 3, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (September 3, 2023): The new issue features “THE EXHIBITIONIST“, a barbed comic novel about a midwardly mobile London family by Charlotte Mendelson;  “THE GUEST“, by Emma Cline, “about one woman’s week of lying, scamming and conning her way through the Hamptons; CROOK MANIFESTO, the sequel to Colson Whitehead’s 2021 novel “Harlem Shuffle” (and the middle volume of a planned trilogy), and more….

In Stephen King’s Latest, Beware the Kindly Old Professors

His new novel, “Holly,” charges into thorny contemporary debates with a pair of unassuming fiends.

Preview: Foreign Policy Magazine – Fall 2023

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Foreign Policy Magazine – Fall 2023: The new issue features The G-7 Becomes a Power Player – Russia’s war and China’s rise are turning a talking shop into a fledgling alliance of democracies; Vivek Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policies Raise Eyebrows in Washington – The GOP’s rising star offers up a grab bag of ideas cribbed from Eminem to Richard Nixon and more…

The G-7 Becomes a Power Player

Foreign Policy – the Global Magazine of News and Ideas

Russia’s war and China’s rise are turning a talking shop into a fledgling alliance of democracies.

By G. John Ikenberry, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University.

Time and again over the last century, the United States and the other liberal democracies in Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere have found themselves on the same side in grand struggles over the terms of the world order. This political grouping has been given various names: the West, the free world, the trilateral world, the community of democracies. In one sense, it is a geopolitical formation, uniting North America, Europe, and Japan, among others. It is an artifact of the Cold War and U.S. hegemony, anchored in NATO and Washington’s East Asian alliances.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policies Raise Eyebrows in Washington

Vivek Ramaswamy's Foreign Policies Raise Eyebrows in Washington – DNyuz

The GOP’s rising star offers up a grab bag of ideas cribbed from Eminem to Richard Nixon.

By Jack Detsch

End American dependence on Taiwan’s semiconductor factories. Declare economic independence from China. Give India an AUKUS-like submarine deal. And stage a dramatic visit to Moscow to broker a deal to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Week In Art Podcast (August 31, 2023): In the first episode of this new season of The Week in Art, we talk to Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper’s London correspondent, about the thefts scandal at the British Museum and its implications for the museum in the future.

The artist Grada Kilomba is one of four curators of this year’s Sāo Paulo biennial, called Choreographies of the Impossible, and she joins our host Ben Luke to discuss the show. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Village Square at Céret, a painting made in 1920 by Chaïm Soutine. It features in the exhibition Against the Current, which opens this week at K20 in Düsseldorf, Germany. The exhibition’s co-curator, Susanne Meyer-Büser, tells us about the picture.

The Sāo Paulo biennial: Choreographies of the Impossible, Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, Sāo Paulo, Brazil, 6 September-10 December.

Chaïm Soutine: Against the Current, K20 Düsseldorf, 2 September until 14 January next year; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, 9 February-14 July 14 2024; Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland, 16 August-1 December 2024.

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Sept 1, 2023

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Science Magazine – September 1, 2023: The cover features a drone photograph, taken near the town of Kahramanmaraş, of the surface rupture produced by the first mainshock of the 2023 Turkey earthquake sequence shows agricultural fields offset by the fault slip.

The future of ocean health

Human and environmental health are inextricably linked. Yet ocean ecosystem health is declining because of anthropogenic pollution, overexploitation, and the effects of global climate change. These problems affect billions of people dependent on oceans for their lives, livelihoods, and cultural practices. The importance of ocean health is recognized by scientists, managers, policy-makers, nongovernmental organizations, and stakeholders including fishers, recreationalists, and cultural practitioners. So why are the oceans still degrading?

The New York Review Of Books – September 21, 2023

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The New York Review of Books (September 21, 2023) – The Fall Books issue features Michael Gorra on Zadie Smith, Anahid Nersessian on Joyce Mansour’s Surrealist poetry, Osita Nwanevu on the Democrats, Colin Grant on Margo Jefferson, Fintan O’Toole on fascists in the family tree, Karan Mahajan on Williamsburg rock, Ben Tarnoff on the depredations of Silicon Valley, and more…

Playing with the Past

The Fraud, Zadie Smith’s first historical novel, asks if we might all be frauds of some sort, wearing masks and performing as people who are not quite ourselves.

By Michael Gorra

The Fraud by Zadie Smith; Penguin Press, 454 pp

Vibrant, Cacophonous Buddhism

A groundbreaking show at the Metropolitan Museum displays, among other treasures from India, works of Buddhist art that bear the mark of ancient animist cults that long preceded the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama.

By William Dalrymple

Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, July 21–November 13, 2023; and the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, December 22, 2023–April 14, 2024

Catalog of the exhibition by John Guy; Metropolitan Museum of Art, 343 pp.

In 2003 Indian archaeologists working on a remote hilltop in the southern state of Telangana uncovered a remarkable early Buddhist monastic complex. Phanigiri, “the snake-hooded hill,” had clearly been one of the most important Buddhist monasteries in India. All around were found spectacular fragments of sculpture, including substantial sections of elaborately carved ceremonial gateways and a torso now judged to be one of the masterworks of Buddhist art. Many of the statues had been dismantled and carefully buried in soft earth for their protection after the monastery was abandoned in the fifth century CE, and they were found in almost mint condition.