Tag Archives: Reviews

SCIENCE MAGAZINE – AUGUST 8, 2025 PREVIEW

Science issue cover

SCIENCE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Evoloving Immunity’…

The multifunctional immune system

Thank ketchup, and interbreeding, for your French fries

Hybridization 9 million years ago gave potatoes the genetic knack to develop tubers, a new study finds

Study reveals industrial-scale publishing fraud

Sophisticated global networks are infiltrating journals to publish fake papers

AI-generated text surges in research papers

One-fifth of computer science papers may include AI-written sentences

THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE – AUGUST 9, 2025 PREVIEW

THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE: The latest issue features Why Israel must hold itself to account

Why Israel must hold itself to account

And how it can be made to do so

Donald Trump’s awful trade policy will outlast him

He thinks America is winning. It is not

Buy now, pay later gets a bad rap. But it could be useful

Provided lenders open up

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – AUGUST 8, 2025 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘We are dying slowly, save us’ – The horror of famine in Gaza.

Images of starving Palestinians have appeared with increasing insistency across the world’s media over the past few weeks. Deciding whose child and which picture best illustrates the territory’s slide into famine is a grim task. Five-year-old Lana Salih Juha, on this week’s cover, weighed just 8kg when this photograph was taken in Gaza City on 28 July.

As Malak A Tantesh reports from Gaza for this week’s big story, Lana’s parents are among many inside the territory forced to watch children waste away as deliberate aid restrictions from Israel mean hunger is becoming a killer. It was, as Malak reports, a week when two milestones were reached: a Palestinian official record of 60,000 deaths and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a group of UN and aid organisations, stating that the whole population of 2.2 people were now living in a state of famine.

Five essential reads in this week’s edition

Spotlight | Transatlantic barbs traded over social media safety
The UK’s new law restricting under-18s’ internet access has only just come into force but already US tech giants and rightwing commentators are bolstering Nigel Farage’s efforts to turn restriction into a free speech issue, reports Dan Milmo

Environment | The best job in the world
Matthew Jeffery explains to Donna Ferguson how he became Cambridge University’s first expedition botanist since Darwin and how he prepared for his new post

Feature | Has nature writing strayed off the path of success?
In the footsteps of the controversy over The Salt Path, Alex Clark explores how, despite public appetite, memoirs of redemption through the natural world may have reached journey’s end

Opinion | A good jigsaw is simply champion
Why did the Lionesses bring Lego, sourdough starters and a puzzle or two to the Women’s Euro 2025? Because they are perfect ways to build mental resilience, explains Amy Izycky

Culture | AI rescues Woody Guthrie’s basement tapes
The legendary folk singer’s daughter and granddaughter tell Dave Simpson how they became custodians of his vast archive, including tracks that have now been released

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT – AUGUST 8, 2025 PREVIEW

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Tech Bro Utopia’ – Why Bacon’s New Atlantis is Peter Thiel’s favorite book; The monarch who built Britain; Charles and the carbuncles; The miseries of Victor Hugo’s daughter…

PHILOSOPHY NOW MAGAZINE – AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2025

PHILOSOPHY NOW MAGAZINE (August 5, 2025): The latest issue features ‘The Sources of Knowledge Issue’

Xuanzang & the Gettier Problem

Maya Koka journeys through the desert to seek knowledge about knowledge.

The Philosophical Method of Exception

Peter Keeble spotlights and critiques a common philosophical technique.

Popper, Science & Democracy

Brian King follows Popper’s idea of the evolution of knowledge, life and society.

Challenging the Objectivity of Science

Sina Mirzaye Shirkoohi observes science to get the facts straight about it.

Gödel, Wittgenstein, & the Limits of Knowledge

Michael D. McGranahan takes us to the edge of language, mathematics and science.

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – AUGUST 11, 2025 PREVIEW

The illustrated cover of the August 11 2025 issue of The New Yorker in which a trans woman poses as the Statue of Liberty.

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features ‘Amy Sherald’s “Trans Forming Liberty” – The art and politics of representation.

The Politics of Fear

As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump made his world view plain: there was “us” and there was “them.” Once he was in the White House, the fear factor would prevail. By David Remnick

The Pain of Perfectionism

It’s the fault people humblebrag about in job interviews. but psychologists are discovering more and more about the real harm it causes. By Leslie Jamison

The Engines and Empires of New York City Gambling

As plans are laid for a new casino, one can trace, through four figures, a history of rivalry and excess, rife with collisions of character and crime. By Adam Gopnik

LITERARY REVIEW – AUGUST 2025 NEW BOOKS PREVIEW

LITERARY REVIEW (August 2, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Mark Twain’s American Odyssey’…

The Bard & the Builders: The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare By Daniel Swift

Hannibal’s Lament: Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire By Eve MacDonald

Colosseum Confidential: Those Who Are About to Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind By Harry Sidebottom

THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE – AUGUST 2, 2025 PREVIEW

THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE: The latest issue features Greenlash‘ –

The climate needs a politics of the possible

To win voters’ consent, policymakers must offer pragmatism and hope

What opponents of the EU-US trade deal get wrong

Internal reform matters more than external trade

America is easing chip-export controls at exactly the wrong time

The ban on sales to China was working, and should be kept in place

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – AUGUST 1, 2025 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The Peace Broker’ – How Qatar Became the Capital of Diplomacy’

As this week’s issue of the Guardian Weekly went to press, a UN-backed monitor said famine was now unfolding in Gaza. That statement came less than 24 hours after Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time that there was “real starvation” and told Israel to allow “every ounce of food” into Gaza. This week’s big story, led by on-the-ground reporting by Gaza-based journalist Malak A Tantash, focuses on the limited pause in fighting by Israel to allow aid deliveries.

Spotlight | Russia’s kamikaze attacks
Luke Harding reports from the frontline in Dnipropetrovsk as once-safe Ukrainian villages are abandoned and the last inhabitants leave their animals and vegetable gardens behind

Environment | Nature fakes
Photographer and author of The Anthropocene Illusion, Zed Nelson reflects on the how humans seek to recreate versions of the environments and creatures they have destroyed to satisfy their cravings to be in nature

Science | Life of plastics
The journey of a single thread is traced by Phoebe Weston and Tess McClure, from garment to field and onwards, to illustrate how ubiquitous microplastic pollution has become

Opinion | Queens of England
As we celebrate the Lionesses’ historic win, isn’t it time English football fans stopped chasing glory through their men’s teams when the women are the ones delivering, asks Ava Vidal

Culture | In the cradle of country music
As the Grand Ole Opry turns 100, Jewly Hight visits the Nashville institution to find out how it has kept reinventing itself while honouring tradition over the decades

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT – AUGUST 1, 2025 PREVIEW

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features Daniel Karlin about his twelve-month abstinence from the printed word. As one of his friends remarked, he must have been the first person to make a New Year’s resolution to read less.

Life beyond literature

A year without reading By Daniel Karlin

What lies ahead for fiction?

AI, literary theory and traditional storytelling By Benjamin Markovits

Maggots as meat

The ethics of industrial insect farming By Simone Gubler

A right to choose

Efforts to prohibit abortion down the ages By Elizabeth Abbott