National Geographic Traveller Magazine (July/August 2023): The issue features the best-value safaris available, an off-road journey in Bolivia, three Camino de Santiago itineraries and a weekend in Czech Republic’s South Moravia.
This issue also comes with a free UK & Ireland guide — featuring 52 short breaks around Britain and Ireland, whether it’s cycling in the Peak District or exploring Edinburgh’s finest wine bars.
Also inside this issue:
Bolivia: An off-road take on the classic journey from the Atacama Desert to the Uyuni Salt Flat. Florida: The show must go on in the Sunshine State, be it the Everglades or tropical Keys. Sardinia: Hiking trails, colourful townsand resilient communities from coast to mountains. Camino de Santiago: Retrace ancient pilgrim paths. Jaipur: Art is all around you in Rajasthan’s largest city. Perth: The capital of Western Australia beckons with revitalised public spaces. South Moravia: Germanic villages, ancient forests and wine cellars in the Czech Republic’s south east. Belém: Long overlooked as a culinary destination, this Brazilian city puts the spotlight on Amazonian ingredients. Bali: Where to stay on this popular Indonesian island.
Killingly by Katharine Beutner In 1897 Bertha Mellish, a student at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, disappeared. She was never found. Katharine Beutner uses this real-life mystery as the foundation for her second novel, Killingly (Corvus £14.99). Her focus is on those who were left behind, making what sense they can of Bertha’s exit from their lives. Agnes, her closest friend on campus, harbours knowledge she has vowed not to reveal; Florence, Bertha’s much older sister, is also keeping secrets from the past that have shaped her life; Henry Hammond, an arrogant medical man who believes he was destined to marry Bertha, uncovers truths for which he is unprepared. Beutner creates an impressive, multistranded story of pain, loss, and women’s struggle to escape the restrictions that are imposed on them.
Radical Love by Neil Blackmore Neil Blackmore’s Radical Love (Hutchinson £16.99) also takes a historical event — the Vere Street Coterie of 1810, which resulted in the hanging and pillorying of gay men — as the basis for its story. The narrator, John Church, is a minister who believes that love of all kinds should be religion’s motivating force. He takes this message to a molly house in Vere Street, where he offers same-sex marriages to the drag queens and rent boys who gather there. At the same time, he is driven by his own passion for Ned, a young former slave. Both a celebration of the erotic lives of long-dead gay Londoners and a lament for past persecutions, Radical Love is a powerful story of desire flourishing amid danger.
The Fascination by Essie Fox The Fascination (Orenda £16.99) is the fifth novel by Essie Fox, in which she once again makes skilful use of the tropes of Victorian gothic fiction. Keziah Lovell, 15, is an unwilling accomplice in her father’s schemes to sell his quack elixir to gullible punters. She is assisted by her twin sister, Tilly, a petite beauty who stopped growing at the age of five. Then their father sells them to an enigmatic Italian man known only as “Captain”. Surrounded by the “freaks” of his tribe, they face unexpected threats in a story of society’s outsiders seeking acceptance and redemption.
Morgan Is My Name by Sophie Keetch There has been no shortage recently of feminist retellings of Greek myths. New versions of the Arthurian stories have been less common, but Sophie Keetch’s Morgan Is My Name (Magpie £16.99) is the first volume of a promised trilogy that has Morgan Le Fay as its narrator. Usually cast as the villain in the Arthurian tradition, here she is a fiery, intelligent woman who refuses to play the roles expected of her and determines to take control of her life. Turning the legends on their heads, Keetch finds new potential in them.
Flatlands by Sue Hubbard Taking its inspiration from Paul Gallico’s novella The Snow Goose, Sue Hubbard’s Flatlands (Pushkin £16.99) explores the wartime relationship that develops between Freda, a 12-year-old evacuee from the East End of London, and Philip Rhayader, a troubled conscientious objector, who are both exiled to the East Anglian fenlands. Precise in its historical detail and admirable in its evocation of the large skies and isolation of its setting, this is a moving study of an unlikely friendship and the healing power of the natural world.
Sotheby’s (June 16, 2023) – Morning Crescent and J.Y.M. Seated II are two seminal paintings by Frank Auerbach that represent the artist’s celebrated investigation into the genres of portraiture and the cityscape.
Executed eighteen years apart, both works exemplify Auerbach’s expressive use and colour and a faultless display of decisive and heavily impasto brushwork. Mornington Crescent is an incredibly rare and large-scale example from Auerbach’s 1960s output, and belongs to his ambitious and highly acclaimed body of landscapes.
This work ranks among the largest paintings in Auerbach’s catalogue raisonné and possesses a chromatic register that is unsurpassed. J.Y.M. Seated II is an important portrait of one of Frank Auerbach’s most celebrated sitters, Juliet Yardley Mills.
Frank Helmut Auerbach is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.
The controversial China-founded retailer is growing into a global titan. Analysts say that many Western competitors are ignoring the app—at their peril.
Stephen King reviews S.A. Cosby’s latest novel, “All the Sinners Bleed.”
Titus Crown is an ex-F.B.I. agent who gets a sheriff’s job, almost by accident, in a rural Virginia community. He’s Black. Mr. Spearman teaches geography and wears a coat of many countries on Earth Day. He’s white. Given the name of the town and county where these two live — Charon — one can expect bad things to happen, and they certainly do. As in S.A. Cosby’s previous two novels, “Blacktop Wasteland” and “Razorblade Tears,” the body count is high and the action pretty much nonstop.
In Melissa Sevigny’s “Brave the Wild River,” we meet the two scientists who explored unknown terrain — and broke barriers.
Let’s start this story on a sun-blistered evening in August 1938. A small band of adventurers had just concluded a 43-day journey from Utah to Nevada — although perhaps “journey” is too tame a description for a trip that had required weeks of small wooden boats tumbling down more than 600 miles of rock-strewn rivers. The goal was twofold. First, to simply survive. And then, to chart the plants building homes along the serrated walls of the Grand Canyon.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (June 16, 2023) – Three young Iranian women share their diaries; plus, a profile of the YouTube superstar MrBeast; and inside the moral crisis of America’s doctors.
The corporatization of health care has changed the practice of medicine, causing many physicians to feel alienated from their work.
By Eyal Press
Some years ago, a psychiatrist named Wendy Dean read an article about a physician who died by suicide. Such deaths were distressingly common, she discovered. The suicide rate among doctors appeared to be even higher than the rate among active military members, a notion that startled Dean, who was then working as an administrator at a U.S. Army medical research center in Maryland. Dean started asking the physicians she knew how they felt about their jobs, and many of them confided that they were struggling. Some complained that they didn’t have enough time to talk to their patients because they were too busy filling out electronic medical records.
Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a. MrBeast, has become a viral sensation for his absurd acts of altruism. Why do so many people think he’s evil?
Even within this context, Donaldson stands out for his dedication to understanding how YouTube works. For most of his teenage years, “I woke up, I studied YouTube, I studied videos, I studied filmmaking, I went to bed and that was my life,” Donaldson once told Bloomberg. “I hardly had any friends because I was so obsessed with YouTube,” he said on “The Joe Rogan Experience” last year.
Science Magazine – June 16, 2023 issue: A wild little penguin (Eudyptula minor) stands silhouetted against the city of Melbourne, Australia. Increasing levels of light pollution are having adverse effects on humans and the natural world.
For most of history, the only lights made by humans were naked flames. Daily life was governed by the times of sunrise and sunset, outdoor nighttime activities depended on the phase of the Moon, and viewing the stars was a common and culturally important activity. Today, the widespread deployment of outdoor electric lighting means that the night is no longer dark for most people—few can see the Milky Way from their homes. Outdoor lighting has many legitimate uses that have benefited society. However, it often leads to illumination at times and locations that are unnecessary, excessive, intrusive, or harmful: light pollution.
Data on shark populations in coral reefs raise concern and hope for recovery
Sharks and their relatives are some of the most threatened vertebrates on Earth, with approximately one-third estimated or assessed as threatened with extinction (1). This is a major problem because as predators that help keep the food web in balance, these animals play a variety of vitally important ecological roles (2) and in doing so help to keep healthy many ecosystems that humans depend on. Coral reefs provide homes for countless fish species that are vital for fisheries and are therefore an especially important ecosystem for humans—and one where the decline of shark populations seems to be especially acute
India does not love the West, but it is indispensable to America
No country except China has propped up Russia’s war economy as much as oil-thirsty India. And few big democracies have slid further in the rankings of democratic freedom. But you would not guess it from the rapturous welcome Narendra Modi will receive in Washington next week. India’s prime minister has been afforded the honour of a state visit by President Joe Biden. The Americans hope to strike defence deals.
The technology developed by DeepMind that plays Go and chess can also help to write code.
An artificial intelligence (AI) system based on Google DeepMind’s AlphaZero AI created algorithms that, when translated into the standard programming language C++, can sort data up to three times as fast as human-generated versions.
“We were a bit shocked,” said Daniel Mankowitz, a computer scientist at DeepMind who led the work. “We didn’t believe it at first.”
Large sections of the Kakhovka dam have collapsed, unleashing catastrophic floods. Credit: Satellite image (c) 2023 Maxar Technologies via Getty
Extensive flooding could have severe consequences for farming, health and the environment.
The 66-year-old Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River in south Ukraine collapsed on the morning of 6 June after a suspected explosion, triggering a catastrophic humanitarian and environmental crisis.
More than a week has passed since the collapse of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine. Only as the flood waters begin to recede is the long-term scale of the disaster becoming apparent.
With suspicion (though not yet, according to western capitals, conclusive proof) falling on Moscow, Dan Sabbagh, Artem Mazhulin and Julian Borger report on a human and environmental catastrophe, and what it might mean for Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans against Russia.
And amid reports of disunity among Moscow’s ruling elite, Shaun Walker went along to a gathering of exiled influential Russians who are once again daring to dream of an end to Vladimir Putin’s rule.
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