Tag Archives: Reviews

Arts & Literature, Ethics, Magazines, Philosophy, Politics, Reviews

Preview: Philosophy Now Magazine January 2025

Leave a comment

Philosophy Now Magazine (December 11,2024) – The new issue features ‘The Return of God?’ and Social Media & Plato’s Cave…

Return to God?

by Rick Lewis

NEWS

News: December 2024 / January 2025

Lost Hegel lecture notes now being digitized • Professor Ted Honderich dead at 91 — News reports by Anja Steinbauer

SOCIAL MEDIA

Plato’s Cave & Social Media

Seán Radcliffe asks, has Plato’s Allegory of the Cave been warning us of social media for 2,400 years?

Trolls, Skeptics & Philosophers

Rosemary Twomey questions our online epistemology.

THE RETURN OF GOD?

Exploring Atheism

Amrit Pathak gives us a run-down of the foundations of modern atheism.

A Critique of Pure Atheism

Andrew Likoudis questions the basis of some popular atheist arguments.

Evil & An Omnipotent, Benevolent God

Zdeněk Petráček looks at the biggest problem facing monotheism.

A God of Limited Power

Philip Goff grasps hold of the problem of evil and comes up with a novel solution.

The Best Possible World, But Not For Us

Mohsen Moghri gives a Godless but principled response to the problem of evil.

Medieval Islam & the Nature of God

Musa Mumtaz meditates on two maverick medieval Muslim metaphysicians.

ARTICLES

Metaphors & Creativity

Ignacio Gonzalez-Martinez has a flash of inspiration about the role metaphors play in creative thought.

Seeing & Knowing

Shashwat Mishra explores the limits of perception via the Molyneux problem.

Perpetuating the Santa Deception

Jimmy Alfonso Licon wonders whether pretending there’s a Santa is naughty or nice.

Volney (1757-1820)

John P. Irish travels the path of a revolutionary mind.

How Can We Make A Computer Conscious?

Each answer below receives a random book. Apologies to the entrants not included.

INTERVIEWS

Robert Stern

Robert Stern talks with AmirAli Maleki about philosophy in general, and Kant and Hegel in particular.

LETTERS

Letters

Thoughts on Thoughts on Thoughts • Get Smarter • Decoding A Decoding • A Swift Rebuttal • Basic Arithmetic • A Message on Meaning

COLUMNS

Xenophanes (c.570-c.478 BCE)

by Terence Green

Philosophers on Dance

by Matt Qvortrup

“I refute it thus”

Raymond Tallis kicks immaterialism into touch.

Seneca On Anger

Massimo Pigliucci tells us how to avoid becoming irate.

REVIEWS

Too Late To Awaken by Slavoj Žižek

T.W.J Moxham reads Slavoj Žižek’s little book of Hegelian horrors.

Barriers to Entailment by Gillian Russell

Christopher John Searle recommends a study of which moves are allowed in logical arguments.

It’s A Wonderful Life

Becky Lee Meadows considers questions of guilt, innocence, and despair in this classic Christmas movie.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Homes, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Country Life Magazine – December 18, 2024 Preview

Leave a comment

Country Life Magazine (December 10, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Christmas Double Issue’…

A story of homeliness

The Revd Dr Colin Heber-Percy considers the Christmas story told in familiar rituals

Earth stood hard as iron

Frost casts a garden’s structure into sharp relief. Tiffany Daneff enters a sparkling world

The Very Revd Jo Kelly-Moore’s favourite painting

The Dean of St Albans chooses a canvas full of uplifting light for dark times

The legacy

Kate Green pays tribute to Dame Ninette de Valois, the ‘godmother of ballet’

Where Britain’s first saint lies

In the first of two articles, John Goodall traces the saintly history of the ancient abbey church of St Albans, Hertfordshire

Love to hear the robin go tweet, tweet, tweet

The feisty robin is the undisputed avian king of Christmas. Mark Cocker wonders why

It’s a most wonderful time of the year

From weaving wreaths to corralling choristers, the work is ramping up for country people, who talk to Kate Green and Paula Lester

Baby, it’s gold outside

Catriona Gray meets the artists capturing Nature’s beauty in gold

Silence is golden

Stop and listen to Nature’s voice, urges John Lewis-Stempel

Each year you bring to us delight

Hanging treasured decorations is all part of the magic. Matthew Dennison opens the bauble box

Look out! Look out! Jack Frost is about

Deborah Nicholls-Lee dares to unveil the mysterious figure

The Editor’s Christmas quiz

Take on our quizmaster — and, more importantly, your family and friends

Anyone for indoor cricket?

Melanie Cable-Alexander buckles up for riotous country-house-corridor games

No Risk, no reward

Harry Pearson takes over the world with the classic board game

Make ’em laugh

Jonathan Self chortles at British comedy

The Christmas Story: ‘Bring me flesh and bring me wine’

The spirit of Christmas works its magic on a curmudgeonly baronet in Kate Green’s tale

Interiors

Natural scents win for Arabella Youens

While shepherds watched their flocks

The sheep and its patient guardians have long delighted artists, finds Michael Prodger

Luxury

Knitting, diamonds and Giles Coren’s treats

It takes a village

Is the perfect rural habitation real, wonders John Lewis-Stempel

Don’t mince your words

Modern mince pies are but pale shadows of the past, believes Neil Buttery

You’re one hot roast potato

Who can resist a roastie? Not Emma Hughes, nor anyone else in their right mind

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson builds a gingerbread house

That’ll do, pig

Glazed and succulent, the Christmas ham is the king of the feast for Tom Parker Bowles

Lay, lady, lay

Give wine time to age, urges Harry Eyres

Crown Him with many crowns

John Lewis-Stempel gathers in the holly, once divine diadem, now a cow’s Christmas feast

The straw that broke the camel’s back

Labour’s family-farm tax will mean ruin for a beleaguered sector, says Minette Batters

 ‘Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional’

Sam Leith opens the well-worn covers of the childhood books we will always cherish

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

From frogs to rat armies, the natural world has inspired countless ballets. Laura Parker straps on her pointe shoes for the bunny hop

Highlights, delights and lowlights

Michael Billington awards his accolades to the stars — and the scourges — of the stage

Spectres of the feast

Operas with food and wine may be rousing, but there are perils, warns Henrietta Bredin

Unputdownable: the page turners of 2024

Country Life reviewers select their top books

Arts & Literature, Journals, Literature, Poetry, Previews, Reviews

Literarature: The Paris Review – Winter 2024-2025

Leave a comment
Image

Paris Review Summer 2024 (September 10, 2024) — The new issue features:

Fredric Jameson on the Art of Criticism: “Ideological critique has to end up being a critique of the self. You can’t recognize an ideology unless, in some sense, you see it in yourself.”

Hanif Kureishi on the Art of Fiction: “When I was in hospital in Rome, having the experience of being a paralyzed man nearly dead, my only excitement was in the thought that I could write some of this shit down.”

Gerald Murnane on the Art of Fiction: “A fatal question—what are people reading these days? Never mind what people are reading these days. What should I be writing about is the fundamental question.”

Prose by Dan Bevacqua, Caoilinn Hughes, Silas Jones, Alec Niedenthal, Adania Shibli, and Abdulah Sidran.

Poetry by Sargon Boulus, Egill Skallagrímsson, Rachel Mannheimer, Simone White, and Hua Xi.

Art by Ann Craven, Ala Ebtekar, and Josh Smith; cover by Seth Becker.

Architecture, Buildings, Cities, Reviews, Videos

Paris: Inside Notre Dame Cathedral’s Recovery

Video Leave a comment

CBS Mornings (December 9, 2024): Saturday was a special day in Paris as Notre Dame Cathedral held its first mass in more than five years after a fire in April 2019 destroyed much of the cathedral’s roof. Senior foreign correspondent Seth Doane has been following the renovation over the years.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec. 16, 2024

Leave a comment
Santa exits the subway.

The New Yorker (December 9, 2024): The latest issue features Eric Drooker’s “A Seasonal Delivery” – Santa Claus—he’s just like the rest of us.

President Emmanuel Macron Has Plunged France into Chaos

Lawmakers have toppled the government for the first time since 1962. How did we get here? By Lauren Collins

What Will Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Accomplish with Doge?

Two political newcomers have arrived to slash big government, but so far the project seems less revolutionary than advertised.

Books, Economics, Foreign Affairs, History, Previews, Reviews

Reviews: Best Books On Foreign Affairs Of 2024

Leave a comment

Foreign Policy Magazine (December 8, 2023): The Best of Books 2024  on international politics, economics, and history that were featured in the magazine this year, selected by Foreign Affairs’ editors and book reviewers.

Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy

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

To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power

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

Freedom From Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism

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

Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

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

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

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

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Poetry, Previews, Reviews

Arts & Literature Preview: Kenyon Review – Fall 2024

Leave a comment
Fall 2024 | Journal

Kenyon Review – December 8, 2024: The 2024 The Fall 2024 issue of The Kenyon Review includes the winner and runners-up for the Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers, selected by Richie Hofmann; the winner of the First Annual Poetry Contests selected by Pádraig Ó Tuama; and a Rural Spaces folio guest-edited by Jamie Lyn Smith, Brian Michael Murphy, and Andrew Grace, with poetry by ethan s. evans, JP Grasser, Faylita Hicks, and Alberto Rios; fiction by Nick Bertelson, Chee Brossy, Kai Carlson-Wee, and Issa Quincy; and nonfiction byapyang Imiq translated by brenda lin; and much more, including interior and cover art by Ming Smith.

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews, Society

The New York Times Magazine – Dec. 8, 2024

Leave a comment
Current cover

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 7 2024): The 12.8.24 Issue features William Langewiesche on the secret Pentagon war game how nuclear escalation spirals out of control; Daniel Bergner on a mysterious gap in psychosis rates; Alexis Okeowo on an endless war in Ethiopia; and more.

The Secret Pentagon War Game That ​Offers a Stark​ Warning for Our Times

The devastating outcome of the 1983 game reveals that nuclear escalation inevitably spirals out of control.

The Interview: Tilda Swinton Would Like a Word With Trump About His Mother

The Academy Award-winning actress discusses her lifelong quest for connection, humanity’s innate goodness and the point of being alive.

Ethiopia’s Agony: ‘I Have Never Seen This Kind of Cruelty in My Life’

A rare look inside a region still reckoning with the toll of war crimes, even as new conflicts roil the nation. By Alexis Okeowo

America’s Hidden Racial Divide: A Mysterious Gap in Psychosis Rates

Black Americans experience schizophrenia and related disorders at twice the rate of white Americans. It’s a disparity that has parallels in other cultures. By Daniel Bergner

Read this issue

Financial, Investing, Magazines, Previews, Retirement, Reviews

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – Dec. 9, 2024

Leave a comment
Magazine - Latest Issue - Barron's

BARRON’S MAGAZINE (December 7, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Bull Case for Investing Abroad’…

International Roundtable: 4 Experts, 12 Stock Picks

Investing abroad has been a tough sell, but overseas markets offer growth—and value.

MicroStrategy Is Winning by Breaking Wall Street’s Rules. Avoid the Stock.

Investors effectively are paying nearly $240,000 for each of the company’s 402,100 Bitcoins, well above the market price. 

What Happens if You Die Without a Will? You Could Leave Heirs—and Pets—With Even More Grief.

People can avoid messy family fights by preparing a will. It needn’t be a complicated document.

Inflation Isn’t Dead Yet. How to Protect Your Retirement Income.

Rising prices are here to stay. Use these investments to beat the inflation trap.Long read

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Podcasts, Reviews

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

Audio Leave a comment

The Week In Art Podcast (December 6, 2024): The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton, and our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, are in Florida and report on the sales and the mood on the first VIP day at Art Basel Miami Beach.

On 8 December, the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris will reopen, more than five years after the fire that partly destroyed it. Ben Luke talks to one of the architects responsible for its rise from the ashes, Pascal Prunet. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Madonna and Child with Saints (1526-27) by Parmigianino, better known as The Vision of Saint Jerome.

The painting this week returned to public display for the first time in 10 years, in a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London, following conservation, and we talk to Maria Alambritis, the show’s co-curator.

Art Basel Miami Beach, until Sunday, 8 December.

Notre-Dame reopens on Sunday, 8 December.

Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome, National Gallery, London, until 9 March 2025