The New York Review of Books (August 17, 2023) – American Carnage – Jeffrey Toobin’s book about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing; The Sadistic Brats of ‘Succession’; Rats in Paris!; Colin Grant’s Unsparing Family Portrait; Resurrecting the Porter Sisters; The True Fables of Agota Kristof, and more…
Jeffrey Toobin’s book about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing traces the path from Ronald Reagan’s antigovernment ideology to today’s radicalized right.
Ronald Reagan’s pronouncement, in his first inaugural address in 1981, that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” marked a signal moment in what has become the most successful political counterrevolution in modern American history.
The New Yorker – July 31, 2023 issue: The ‘rich and famous’ above the law, a small-town newspaper lands ‘Big Stories’, how Larry Gagosian reshaped the art world, and more…
With a common touch that appeals to juries and a client list that includes Elon Musk, Jay-Z, and Megan Thee Stallion, he’s on a winning streak that makes his rivals seethe.
In the summer of 2018, four years before he bought Twitter, the entrepreneur Elon Musk was facing legal consequences for two of his more reckless forays on the social-media platform. A boys’ soccer team in Thailand had been trapped in a flooded cave for more than two weeks, and a caver involved in the rescue said on CNN that a bespoke submarine Musk had sent to save the children was a “PR stunt.” Infuriated, Musk told his twenty-two million Twitter followers, without basis in fact, that the caver, Vernon Unsworth, was a “pedo guy.” The tweet went viral, and Unsworth’s attorney threatened to sue Musk for defamation.
It was the Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend on Further Lane, the best street in Amagansett, the best town in the Hamptons, and the art dealer Larry Gagosian was bumming around his eleven-thousand-square-foot modernist beach mansion, looking pretty relaxed for a man who, the next day, would host a party for a hundred and forty people. A pair of French bulldogs, Baby and Humphrey, waddled about, and Gagosian’s butler, Eddie, a slim man with a ponytail and an air of informal professionalism, handed him a sparkling water.
July 23, 2023– Monocle’s editorial director Tyler Brûlé is joined by Priska Amstutz and Marcus Schögel. Plus, check-ins with our friends and correspondents in London, Ljubljana and Istanbul.
Tennessee’s government has turned hard red, but a new set of outlaw songwriters is challenging Music City’s conservative ways—and ruling bro-country sound.
On March 20th, at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, a block from the honky-tonks of Lower Broadway, Hayley Williams, the lead singer of the pop-punk band Paramore, strummed a country-music rhythm on her guitar. A drag queen in a ketchup-red wig and gold lamé boots bounded onstage. The two began singing in harmony, rehearsing a twangy, raucous cover of Deana Carter’s playful 1995 feminist anthem “Did I Shave My Legs for This?”—a twist on a Nashville classic, remade for the moment.
The Governor’s strategy for revitalizing her state has two parts: to grow, Michigan needs young people; to draw young people, it needs to have the social policies they want.
July 16, 2023– Monocle\’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, Alexandra Andrist and Chandra Kurt discuss the major topics of the weekend. Plus: we check in with our friends in London, Barcelona and Bangkok.
Outside Magazine (July/August 2023) – The Power of Awe – Time outside can feel like an escape, but your mindset matters; A hilarious trek to an unforgettable Jungle Wedding; Nick Offerman’s Grand Kabuki Adventure, and more…
It’s becoming harder to find a slice of nature all to yourself. But there are plenty of secluded sweet spots around the country if you know where to look. From national monuments and lakeshores to forests and scenic waterways, here are some stunning, uncrowded wildlands that are definitely worth exploring.
July 9, 2023– Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, and Emma Nelson are joined by Fabienne Kinzelmann, Oliver Strijbis and Alexandra Andrist. Plus: we check in with our friends and correspondents in London, Helsinki and Bangkok.
I did everything I could to avoid writing my historical novel. When I finally started “The Fraud,” one principle was clear: no Dickens. By Zadie Smith
For the first thirty years of my life, I lived within a one-mile radius of Willesden Green Tube Station. It’s true I went to college—I even moved to East London for a bit—but such interludes were brief. I soon returned to my little corner of North West London. Then suddenly, quite abruptly, I left not just the city but England itself. First for Rome, then Boston, and then my beloved New York, where I stayed ten years. When friends asked why I’d left the country, I’d sometimes answer with a joke: Because I don’t want to write a historical novel. Perhaps it was an in-joke: only other English novelists really understood what I meant by it. And there were other, more obvious reasons.
After a millennium, she remains the hardest-working woman in literature. It was not enough to be saddled with a husband who had the nasty habit of marrying and murdering a new virgin every day to assure himself of spousal fidelity. Nor was it enough to produce a series of nested stories under such deadlines (truly, I complain too much), stories so prickly and tantalizing that the king postponed her murder every night to wait for the next installment. That’s to say nothing of the entirely forgotten three children she bore over those thousand and one nights. Who recalls that there was always a new baby in Scheherazade’s arms?
July 2, 2023– Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, discusses the weekend’s biggest news stories with Eemeli Isoaho and Christof Münger. Plus: check-ins with our friends and correspondents in London and Tokyo.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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