LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA: The latest issue features…
On the connection between books and home Kyle Wyatt
Does healing the world mean abandoning capitalism? Darrell Varga
Where non-sovereign nations dwell George Anderson
Jackie Robinson’s season in Montreal David Marks Shribman
PORTICO LITERARY QUARTERLY: The latest issue features….
By Michael Crews
Tracy Daugherty’s biography of Cormac McCarthy is a landmark publication. Putting together the life of a writer who not only shunned publicity but actively worked to keep fans, journalists, the media, and academics off his trail requires the powers of both a skilled biographer and a nosy private detective. In that latter role, some of what Daugherty has uncovered is unsavory, though with the recent revelation of McCarthy’s relationship with Augusta Britt, who was sixteen when they began an affair, readers may be prepared for some of the shocks. One of Daugherty’s leitmotifs is McCarthy the “bad boy” and “outlaw,” and though such appellations risk cliché, the story he tells is of a man who, at least in the first half of his life, preferred the company of moonshiners, gamblers, hard drinkers, and petty criminals like his old Knoxville pal John Sheddan, who seems to have been the Falstaff to McCarthy’s Prince Hal.
Helen Andrews
There are two books before me, which, if I mistake not, will mark an epoch,” wrote W. E. B. Du Bois in The Crisis magazine in 1924. One was a novel of middle-class African-American life by Jessie Fauset called There Is Confusion. The other was a collection of stories, songs, poems, and character sketches called…
Christopher J. Scalia
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, few writers were more admired by peers and critics than Andre Dubus. But because Dubus’s territory was the relatively confined space of the short story and novella, he never enjoyed great commercial success or recognition. Dubus was destined to be a writer’s writer—what Joshua Bodwell calls a…
By Lionel Shriver
In that we’ve been married for sixteen years, you really don’t have to try so hard to make your feelings known,” Janet said at the wheel. “I’m well aware you don’t want to do this.”
“I THINK I’ve been pretty stoic about it,” Rick said, eyes to the thick woods he’d be reflexively scanning for deer. Ever since they’d planted an ambitious garden behind their upstate New York summerhouse, the creatures that had once seemed so exquisite had become evil incarnate.
“Stoic? More like long-suffering,” Janet said. “You’ve hardly said a word the whole way here. But there’s no point in having joined Saint Peter’s if we don’t put our beliefs into practice. Charity doesn’t only mean parting with twenty bucks to get someone at the door to go away. It means sometimes doing what’s right when you don’t feel like it.”
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘A Season In Hell’ – Tourism on a heating planet.
California’s Big Sur coastline is often called a slice of heaven. But this year – beset by wildfires, road closures and disruptions to tourist amenities – it has endured a long summer of hell. Now questions are being asked about how many visitors it can sustain in the face of the climate crisis.
For our big story this week, Andrew Gumbel visits Big Sur, where the tourist industry accounts for about 90% of the local economy, to hear why the community fears its ethos is under threat.
The UN has warned that the El Niño climate phenomenon is “supersizing before our eyes”. Environment editor Damien Carrington reports on the latest forecasts, which predict the event is near certain to shatter temperature records.
Then, the mayors of Paris, Milan and Phoenix write about how their cities are learning from each other on responding to the heat crisis. “How do you protect millions of people,” they ask, “when extreme heat is no longer an exceptional event, but an increasingly familiar part of summer?”
Spotlight | ‘It breaks my heart’
Kate Connolly reports from Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, where voters are digesting the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s state election triumph
Science | Forbidden planet
Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting the decision – and they’re only getting more passionate, writes Tim Dowling
Feature | Your lying AIs
LLMs have an alarming tendency to deceive and manipulate their users. As they become ever more embedded in society, the race is on to find out why – and stop them doing it. Snigdha Poonam explains
Opinion | The route to a brighter future
The world is being driven to the brink by thugs and dictators, says Simon Tisdall, but ordinary people have more power than we think
Culture | A stitch up
As the Bayeux tapestry goes on show in London, cartoonist Edith Pritchett offers an alternative 21st century take, capturing today’s battles, while art critic Jonathan Jones reviews the British Museum’s blockbuster exhibition of the original masterpiece
On the occasion of the publication of Brice Marden: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, 1961–2023 this fall and of a corresponding exhibition of the artist’s work at Gagosian, New York, we invited Glenn Lowry, a friend of the artist’s and former director of the Museum of Modern Art, to reflect on moments spent with Marden and on the enduring power of his art.
Celebrating the collector Laurent Asscher’s new art space in Venice, William Middleton underscores the richness of Asscher’s relationships with artists.
Eileen Costello explores the oft-overlooked importance of paper choice to the mediums of drawing and printmaking, from the Renaissance through the present day.
COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features…
Choices, choices
With a seemingly endless array to select from, Country Life contributors reveal the tulips they will be planting for spring.
Charles Quest-Ritson is hoping for warm days and cool nights to fuel a spectacular display of countryside autumn colour
Who let the dogs out?
Music and Man’s best friend go hand in hand. Harry Pearson collars canines calling the tune
Well, hello Salar!
David Profumo heads for the West Country in the wake of his fishing hero Ted Hughes
Luxury
Jonathan Self is dazzled by Coco Chanel jewellery and Tiffany Daneff is talking trugs
George Saumarez Smith’s favourite painting
The architect chooses a bold graphic linocut of the feline form
Country-house treasure
John Goodall admires the revival of the Tapestry Drawing Room at Castle Howard, North Yorkshire
The legacy
Tiffany Daneff pays tribute to the family who cooked up the secret recipe for Pulhamite rock
Grandstand views
An inspirational outlook makes for a magnificent garden at Mount St John, North Yorkshire. Kendra Wilson surveys the scene
Hot pots
Amelia Thorpe picks standout planters to showcase top tulips
Forever flowers
Blooms of Hydrangea paniculata are a must for every garden, suggests Charles Quest-Ritson
Why build a new country house
George Saumarez Smith weighs up the allure of a new country house in place of an historic pile
A point of prospect
John Goodall finds a striking new memorial tower worth the climb at Doddington Place, Kent
Picture this
Independent rural cinemas will always offer the best big-screen experience for Madeleine Silver
Interiors
A feast of design ideas awaits visitors to key events such as Focus/26, reveals Amelia Thorpe
Back to the future
Harry Pearson meets the art conservators giving historic paintings a new lease of life
Shell we?
The secret to dressed-crab perfection is keeping it simple, as Tom Parker Bowles reveals
Lord of the flies
Fruit flies are more than a mere pest — Ian Morton reveals their critical role in medical research
New series: Countryside mysteries
Otherworldly cramp balls — or King Alfred’s cakes — fire the imagination of John Wright
Travel
Gabriella Le Breton unpacks the winter latest, from new Swiss ski lifts to the high life in Courchevel
Arts & antiques
Benvenuto Cellini’s golden Saliera is a 16th-century cellar worth its salt, as Carla Passino discovers
BARRON’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘THE NEW RULES FOR BONDS’ – The rise in U.S. Treasury yields is creating portfolio risks. Where to seek safety now.
The rise in U.S. Treasury yields is creating opportunities—along with serious portfolio risks.
Retirees can benefit as AI expands into healthcare and other areas. What to know, from managing your health to your portfolio.
Venture capital funding for consumer tech has stalled as funds shift to artificial intelligence. That makes the story of Nothing, a start-up maker of phones and audio gear, all the more surprising.
Artificial intelligence is making it easier to be an online swindler. Everyone is at risk, particularly the elderly.
Many economists and investors expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point at its Sept. 16-17 policy meeting. But this coming week’s inflation data may prove cool enough to keep officials on the sidelines—and the federal-funds rate in a target range of 3.50% to 3.75%.
THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features ‘Fall Books’…
As AI erodes our attention spans and expressiveness, philosophers like Simone Weil and Arthur Schopenhauer offer profound insights on what it means to be an individual.
Timely questions lurk at the heart of connoisseurship: What counts as originality, what value do we place on it, how do we protect it?
The Connoisseur: A Cultural History by Peter Burke
The Goldsmith’s Debt: Conceptions of Property in Early Modern Art by Shira Brisman
Among its peers in the Ivy League, Dartmouth was perfectly positioned to resist Trump’s attack on higher education. It chose not to.
In The Diversity of Morals, Steven Lukes attempts to reconcile philosophical arguments that there is one morality despite cultural differences with empirical studies that suggest it’s all relative.
The Diversity of Morals by Steven Lukes
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘Swept Away’ – After the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster…
Over the last week, the world has watched with horror the scenes from the Tibet-Nepal border where a devastating torrent of mud, water and ice tore along the Bhotekoshi River, destroying entire communities and leaving more than 1,000 people dead and several thousand more missing.
From the Nepali town of Devighat, our south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen describes a nightmarish scene of overflowing mortuaries and unidentifiable bodies, as shellshocked survivors of the flood slowly return to the ruins of their homes.
The disaster happened after the collapse of a glacier – and while global heating has not been definitively attributed as the cause, it is undeniable that steep mountain slopes and valleys are especially vulnerable to flooding and landslides, while extreme weather events such as monsoons and melting glaciers have become more common because of warming due to human-caused climate breakdown, as our global environment writer Jonathan Watts explains.
Then columnist Nesrine Malik paints a wider picture and argues that while for many people these floods may feel as though they have happened a world away, the climate crisis is coming for us all, one way or another.
Spotlight | Mark Carney shows combative nature in face-off with Trump
The Canadian PM is one of the few world leaders to stand up to the US president. Former colleagues say they are not surprised. Leyland Cecco, Heather Stewart and Kalyeena Makortoff report
Science | The robots are coming!
… Or are they? As entrants at the World Humanoid Games lurched from triumph to farce, Robert Booth finds that a robotics revolution may not be as close as it first appears
Interview | Gordon Brown on Burnham, billionaires – and a better Britain
The former UK prime minister is still shaping politics (even if he doesn’t want to interfere). He tells Charlotte Edwardes about keeping his temper, staying fit – and why he won’t splash out for a Scotland football shirt
Opinion | The tech titans must be stripped of their power, and soon
Those who said Meta harms children struck a blow, but the ability of big tech to gouge profits and cause harm is barely diminished. That’s the battle to come, argues Jonathan Freedland
Culture | Dolly Parton’s peerless career turned country music cliches inside out
Beneath the wig and rhinestones, the late US country singer was the genius behind strings of classic songs that continue to inspire new artists, says Alexis Petridis
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features…
By Colin Burrow
What’s the point of literary criticism? In June the University of Exeter announced plans that might make roughly a third of its English department – one of the best in the country – redundant. Other institutions, including Canterbury Christ Church University, have stopped offering English degrees altogether. Most mainstream publishers now wouldn’t dream of publishing a work of literary criticism, as they happily did in the 1970s and 1980s. Even literary biography, literary criticism’s previously marketable stepsister, no longer brings a gleam to a publisher’s eye. The grassroots of the subject are also suffering badly. Since 2000 the number of people taking A-level English literature in England has dropped by around a third, to around 36,000, with an even higher drop among male students.
COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features…
Edward Impey admires the ambitious attempt to revive early-12th-century interiors at Norwich Castle keep in Norfolk
What did the Normans ever do for us?
Jason Goodwin examines how the 1066 invasion by William the Conqueror changed the character of England forever
Walk on the wild side
Nicholas Crane re-creates the 1,000-mile, 12th-century journey undertaken by Gerald of Wales, Britain’s first great travel writer
Architecture as power
The monumental castles and churches the Normans left behind still express their strength in stone, reveals John Goodall
That sinking feeling
Quicksand is the stuff of many a nightmare. Harry Pearson tries not to get sucked in
Arts & antiques
Artists have long been inspired by the Battle of Hastings, as Carla Passino discovers
Michael Whitehall’s favourite painting
The podcast co-host chooses an arresting work expressing movement and fleeting beauty
Save our seeds
Seed Detective Adam Alexander issues an appeal to gardeners to revive the Victorian tradition of gathering life-giving pips
The legacy
The fossil-hunter Mary Anning helped put palaeontology front and centre, finds Kate Green
Country-house treasure
The golden Jean Tijou gates at Burghley House in Lincolnshire catch the eye of John Goodall
New series: Countryside mysteries
In the first of a series on rural riddles, John Wright cracks the old conundrum of strip lynchets
Yell for leather
Corinne Julius meets the animal-hide experts conserving historic objects from their Leicester HQ
You little cracker
The neglected Kentish cobnut is making an overdue come-back, suggests Susan Low
Luxury
The runway returns and Amie Elizabeth White’s earthy tones
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe picks out elegant fittings to elevate the bathroom
Will Hosie asks what makes a pub a pub and eyes properties with a pop of colour, plus our writers have all you need to know this month and Gio Fio marvels at the reinvention of the north bank of the Thames
Out on the prairie
American plants may be the answer to our warming climate, reports Charles Quest-Ritson
Travel
Pamela Goodman roots around in the Nadder Valley in Wiltshire
Boomers Daily 
