Tag Archives: Reviews

The Spectator World Magazine – June 2025

THE SPECTATOR WORLD (May 6, 2025): The latest issue features ‘The Reviving of the American Mind’…

The reviving of the American mind

For too long, academia has stifled intellectual originality

Keep AI ghouls out of the classroom

What if your first encounter with Shakespeare or Herman Melville was with an AI avatar in history class?

The Palisades, reimagined

You can see how wrecked the place is, and how temporarily low the de jure population – but the clean-up and rebuilding are well under way

The Trump administration is giving us excellence, not equity

We may not be in a golden age, but we can see one on the horizon

Wokeism is stifling thought in America’s universities

What if your first encounter with Shakespeare or Herman Melville was with an AI avatar in history class?

Literary Review – May 2025 Arts & Books Preview

LITERARY REVIEW (May 1, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Mad About Diana’…

Kind Hearts & Coronets

Dianaworld: An Obsession By Edward White

Descartes Be Damned

Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World By Graham Tomlin

Start the Presses!

Johannes Gutenberg: A Biography in Books By Eric Marshall White

The European Review Of Books – Spring 2025

THE EUROPEAN REVIEW OF BOOKS (May 1, 2025): The latest issue features …Around the world in strawberry red. Schengen’s pseudo-borderless « Europe ». A day in Minsk & an eternity at the border. A trip through Syria’s now-uninhabited terror apparatus (archivists needed). Cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, agricultural-novelists in Switzerland & France, tree-huggers in The Hague

Double negative

Our first piece from Issue Eight, out from behind the paywall! « It’s best to go into Schengen’s history unshocked by contradiction. by George Blaustein

The shortest, longest bus trip

Travelogue of a day in Minsk & an eternity at the EU border. Paula Domingo Pasarin

On learning to hate chickens

Two novelists (one Swiss, one Spanish) sign up for agricultural jobs. Tania Roettger

Bethlehem, Jericho & a view of Jerusalem

A Palestinian writer mentally retreats to three unreadable cities. by Karim Kattan

The Economist Magazine —- May 3, 2025 Preview

THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE (May 1, 2025): The latest issue features ‘The Taiwan test‘….

A superpower crunch over Taiwan is coming

China has a new chance to call America’s bluff

Investors’ risky bet: they can shrug off the trade war

The relief they are banking on needs to come fast

India must prove Pakistan’s complicity in the attack in Kashmir

It would then have every right to strike back

The Guardian Weekly – May 2, 2025 – Politics Preview

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY (April 30, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Northern Exposure’ – Can Mark Carney save Canada from Trump?

The North America edition showcases Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, who achieved a remarkable victory in Monday’s federal election. As our reporter in Ottawa Leyland Cecco explains, Carney reversed a huge Liberal party poll deficit after voters backed him over his conservative opponent, Pierre Poilievre, to stand up to the threats of Donald Trump. Can the dour but tough former central banker succeed in fending off the aggressive advances of his US counterpart?

The big story | Kharkiv suffers in the shadow of a peace deal
While US-led negotiations threaten to carve up Ukraine, deadly Russian attacks continue amid deep cynicism about the process. Luke Harding reports from a city under siege

Science | Why f ish farms on the moon aren’t such a wild idea
The Lunar Hatch project is studying whether aquaculture might be able to provide a source of protein for astronauts on space missions. Kim Willsher paid them a visit

Feature | The dirtiest race in Olympic history
How did the 2012 Olympics women’s 1500m get its reputation? Athletes cheated out of medals talk to Esther Addley about what happened – and how the results unravelled

Opinion | Will Pope Francis’s compassionate legacy endure?
Some, especially within the US, see the forthcoming conclave as an opportunity to establish a more conservative leader, says Guardian associate editor Julian Coman

Culture | The genius of Barrie Kosky and his Wagner phantasmagoria
He put Carmen in a gorilla suit and had Das Rheingold’s Erda represented by a naked elderly woman. What are the the opera director’s plans for his edge-of-the-seat Die Walküre? Fiona Maddocks finds out

Nature Magazine – May 1, 2025 Research Preview

Volume 641 Issue 8061

NATURE MAGAZINE (April 30, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Trait Expectations’ – Predicting the functional diversity of tropical forest canopies.

Why US police shootings are so deadly ― and why some police forces do better

Two studies show the extent of gunshot wounds inflicted by police and link certain police-department policies with a lower death toll.

A front-line antiviral drug disappoints against worrisome monkeypox strain

Tecovirimat, which has been approved to treat mpox, was no better than a placebo in a large trial.

Martian rock hints at ancient dense atmosphere

Carbonate mineral is long-sought evidence of conditions that supported liquid water.

‘Tatooine’-like planet orbits two stars ― but at a weird angle

Like the Star Wars planet, a distant world follows a path around two stars, both of them small, cool bodies called brown dwarfs.

London Review Of Books – May 2, 2025 Preview

Image

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (April 30, 2025): In the period of extravagant mourning that followed Princess Diana’s death, the human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy complained that the country had entered “an era in which the public had lost its capacity for rational thought”.

Dangerous Chimera

Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal 
by Quentin Skinner.

Red Pants on Sundays

The Maverick’s Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream 
by Blake Gopnik.

It’s a shitshow

Inside Thatcher’s Monetarism Experiment: The Promise, the Failure, the Legacy  by Tim Lankester.

The Atlantic Magazine – June 2025 Preview

THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE (April 28, 2025): The latest issue features “I Run The Country and The World” – Donald Trump explains his victory and his plan…

1. “I run the country and the world”

Asked how his second term so far differed from his first, Trump said: “The first time, I had two things to do — run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys.”

  • “And the second time, I run the country and the world,” he added.
  • “I’m having a lot of fun, considering what I do … You know, what I do is such serious stuff.”

2. A third term “would be a big shattering”

Of a potential 2028 run, Trump told the magazine it “would be a big shattering.”

  • He continued, “Well, maybe I’m just trying to shatter.” But Trump added, “It’s not something that I’m looking to do. And I think it would be a very hard thing to do.”
  • That follows his comments from last month, when said he is “not joking” about a third term,

Reality check: Trump launching a bid for a third term wouldn’t just shatter norms — it would violate the 22nd amendment.

  • Meanwhile, the Trump Organization has started selling “Trump 2028” hats.

3. The billionaire class’ “higher level of respect”

The billionaire class has largely bowed to Trump in his second term. He described the mega-rich taking a friendlier posture as “just a higher level of respect.”

  • “I don’t know … Maybe they didn’t know me at the beginning, and they know me now,” he continued.

The New Yorker Magazine – May 5, 2025 Preview

The Statue of Liberty sitting in a prison cell with a hundred tallies behind her to count the days.

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE (April 28, 2025): The latest issue features Barry Blitt’s “The First Hundred Days” – A beacon extinguished.

A Hundred Days of Ineptitude

Now we know that Donald Trump’s first term, his initial attempt at authoritarian primacy, was amateur hour, a fitful rehearsal. By David Remnick

A Hundred Classics to Get Me Through a Hundred Days of Trump

Each morning, before the day’s decree, I turned to a slim book, hoping for sense, or solace. By Jill Lepore

Is the U.S. Becoming an Autocracy?

Other countries have watched their democracies slip away gradually, without tanks in the streets. That may be where we’re headed—or where we already are. By Andrew Marantz

The New York Times Magazine – April 28, 2025

Current cover

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 4.27.25 Issue features Jason Zengerle on a college volleyball player catapulted to the heart of the debate over trans athletes in women’s sports; Amanda Hess on how the internet comforted and tormented her after her son was diagnosed with a rare illness; and Mitch Moxley on a particularly strange quarter-of-a-billion dollar crypto heist; and more.

They Stole a Quarter-Billion in Crypto and Got Caught Within a Month

How luxury cars, $500,000 bar tabs and a mysterious kidnapping attempt helped investigators unravel the heist of a lifetime.

What the Pope Told Me About Politics

My brief tour with Pope Francis, the diplomat of our times. By John Jeremiah Sullivan

How the War Over Trans Athletes Tore a Volleyball Team Apart

Blaire Fleming was a little-known college player. Then she suddenly became a symbol of injustice — to both sides of the controversy. By Jason Zengerle