The theoretical objects would have left a larger imprint on cosmic radiation if they were a source of the invisible force pulling together the galaxies.
I’m writing this as the world wakes up to news of a blue wave of Democrat wins in the US midterms. What they mean for America and the world will be the subject of next week’s issue but this week we are focusing on Israel.
As seasoned Knesset watchers know, the plethora of parties on the ballot and proportional representation rarely produce immediate clear winners and a new government in short order. But as Jonathan Freedland puts it in this week’s cover story, the 2026 election presents a philosophical as well as a political puzzle.
Benjamin Netanyahu may have lost his parliamentary majority, but the opposition bloc needs more than Jewish parties to take control of the Knesset and offer Gadi Eisenkot the premiership. As Jonathan explains, Netanyahu’s loss contains the path to a possible win, while the road to success for Eisenkot means working with Palestinian parties, a red line many Jewish voters and MPs may not be willing to cross.
Spotlight| Connected through chaos As Donald Trump fans the flames of a world on fire with his vengeful foreign policy, can rational actors on the diplomatic stage douse the conflagration, asks Patrick Wintour
Science| The tales one fish can tell Pioneering research into the tambaqui has shown that it is a vital canary in the coalmine to monitor the effects of global heating and oxygen loss in the Amazon, reports Mac Margolis
Feature| A spectrum of opinion on autism Why have the numbers of people diagnosed with the condition ballooned over the past 20 years: is it overdiagnosis or an overly expansive definition? John Harris investigates
Opinion| Serbia deserves to succeed But the victorious Student List’s ability to consolidate democracy relies on a future in Europe and Brussels must court these new leaders, argues Srđjan Cvijić
Culture| Still on the line Jimmy Webb, who wrote the ever poignant Wichita Lineman for Glen Campbell as well other classic American hits, tells Dave Simpson about a new album and why, at 80, he still loves playing live
The Burlington Magazine: The latest issue features the upcoming 150th anniversary of Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery in 2027, honors the career of late Victoria and Albert Museum jewelry curator Richard Edgcumbe, and reviews the monumental realism and modernist influence of nineteenth-century French painter Gustave Courbet.
Liverpool 2027
The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool will be 150 years old in 2027. It was named after the local brewer Andrew Barclay Walker (1824–93), who donated £20,000 for the creation of the gallery. It opened in September 1877 and welcomed over 300,000 visitors during the next four months. Walker was not a collector of art but appears to have displayed an aesthetic sensibility through the high standards he insisted on for the design of his public houses. read more
Richard Edgcumbe (1951–2026)
A gifted curator who specialised in jewellery, Richard Edgcumbe pursued a successful career at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and notably published on gold chasing in the eighteenth century. read more
I, Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet (1819–77) was arguably the most important artist in nineteenth-century France. Over almost four decades, he created paintings of monumental achievement and innovation in all genres and changed how art was exhibited and sold – mostly in Paris, the capital of the international art world. He launched an aesthetic of realism that emphasised painterly facture and set the stage for modernist art in the decades that followed. read more
Democrats flipped seven Senate seats and overcame the Republicans’ House redistricting effort to capture control of Congress. President Trump told The New York Times that he would accept the results.
President Isaac Herzog has tried to avoid controversy and heal rifts in his largely ceremonial role. But his skills as a savvy mediator could be instrumental after an inconclusive election.
American women’s most listened-to podcast is Call Her Daddy. It is hosted by the glamorous Alex Cooper, whose shtick is grilling female celebrities on their sex lives. For example, she made Gwyneth Paltrow rank all her boyfriends according to their sexual skills. I hope her husband and kids didn’t bother listening to that episode. She recently hosted an actress named Sophia Bush. They discussed Sophia’s multiple divorces while Alex declared breathlessly that if a woman is questioning whether she can do better than her current husband, “the answer is always yes.” Sophia agreed. “The answer is always yes, and this idea that it’s too late or you’re too old, or who are you to want more – that’s patriarchy. That is crazy!” Something around here is crazy, yes, Ms. Bush.
Donald Trump has so dominated the news over the past decade that it is hard to imagine American politics without him. Yet now we are in the last 27 months of his presidency. And as this year ends and the next approaches, the national conversation turns toward the looming election cycle of 2028 and the vital question of who comes next. The Democratic nomination seems destined to be a complicated struggle between various factions and candidates. The outgoing Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, is a figure of ridicule yet strangely unsquashable. He remains the betting favorite. Senator Jon Ossoff, this magazine’s last cover star, is a contender. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a telegenic and increasingly influential force – and Kamala Harris just won’t take no for an answer.
I’ve had hexes put on me by a university professor, had online vigilantes send packages of dogshit to my childhood home in New Jersey and been hounded by the trauma-informed journalists of the New York Times. CNN, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and other estimable sources have credited me with starting a dark…
In the fall of 2017, Virginia was going through its quadrennial tradition of giving the nation an electoral check-in on the president by holding an off-year gubernatorial election. The nation’s mood was, to say the least, heated. Four months earlier, at a baseball field in Alexandria, a radicalized and mentally imbalanced left-wing activist had nearly killed House whip Steve Scalise and three others in a shooting. So it was with some recklessness that Latino Victory Project, in
The midterm elections will offer the first nationwide verdict on President Trump’s second term. Tens of millions of early ballots have already been cast.
The energy-rich Gulf Arab countries are engaged in a flurry of mediation efforts to avert war between the U.S. and Iran, as many fear that the fighting will be worse this time around.
Super-Beast: The Mysterious Life of Saki By Oliver Soden
In some ways all you really need to know about Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916) can be gleaned from the short story ‘Sredni Vashtar’, first published in the Westminster Gazette in the summer of 1910. Conradin – Munro’s heroes nearly always have these hifalutin names – is a sickly small boy quartered on a tyrannical guardian called Mrs de Ropp. Denied much in the way of freedom or material comfort, in particular the hot buttered toast he craves, Conradin makes a fetish out of a savage polecat-ferret hidden in the garden shed, worships it as a god and looks to it for vengeance.
Here in the World
Letters: 1944–1959 By Albert Camus & Maria Casarès (Edited by Béatrice Vaillant, translated from French by Sandra Smith & Cory Stockwell)
What an amazing behemoth of a book! I’ve been lugging it around for weeks. Nearly a thousand letters: the intimate correspondence of Albert Camus and Maria Casarès. When they first met in Paris – on D-Day, 1944 – Camus had already published L’Etranger (1942; The Outsider). Born and raised in Algeria, he was in Paris when the Second World War broke out, and later joined the French Resistance. Camus’s wife, Francine Faure, a mathematician and pianist, remained in Algeria. Maria Casarès was originally from Galicia, the daughter of an exiled former prime minister of Spain, Santiago Casares Quiroga. In 1944, Casarès was already known as an actress, having played the titular role in J M Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows. She later starred in Les Enfants du paradis (1945), Cocteau’s Orphée (1950) and La Lectrice (1988), among other films and plays.
Talk to the Animals
Minds I’ve Met: From Denying to Embracing the Inner Lives of Animals By Frans de Waal
Some years ago, a prominent animal-behaviour scientist hosted a colleague at his field station devoted to the study of chimpanzees. Talking together on top of the observation tower, the pair glanced at the apes but mostly stayed absorbed in conversation. Then a female chimpanzee named Thai began to scream and hit herself in dramatic fashion. In response to her outburst, other chimpanzees rushed to embrace, hold and kiss her.
Anger at Trump is driving a surge in Black turnout across the South.
The first hint appeared in the 2025 elections, when Democrats won larger-than-expected margins in Virginia and New Jersey. Then, beginning early this year, the turnout numbers in primaries were unmistakable. And now, the story is blaring in neon as early and absentee votes soar.
No clear challengers for Chuck Schumer’s post, barring a midterm catastrophe
If there’s a Democratic majority in the Senate, the New Yorker will almost certainly lead it. If not, buckle up.
What Hakeem Jeffries’ Albany years reveal about how he’d lead the House
The moderate Democrat developed a signature style in the New York capital that will be put to the test next year if his party wins the House.
MONTHLY REVIEW MAGAZINE: The latest issue features the United States as the world’s chief enemy of sovereign elections.
Citing Dov Levin’s research, it counts 128 U.S. interventions in foreign elections from 1946 to 2014, rising after the Cold War, increasingly overt, and successful about 60 percent of the time before 2000. Methods include funding right-wing campaigns, dirty tricks, lawfare, social-media bots, aid threats, and CIA surrogates posing as “democracy assistance” groups. Recent examples include Venezuela, ending in Maduro’s abduction; $20 billion tied to electing Milei’s allies in Argentina; and Honduras, where Trump declared Asfura the winner. Leaked “Hondurasgate” tapes exposed regional manipulation schemes.
Nietzsche’s French Legacy
The Poverty of Left Nietzscheanism by Aymeric Monville
MR is pleased to be able to share with readers Gabriel Rockhill’s Introduction to The Poverty of Left Nietzscheanism by Aymeric Monville (Iskra Books, 2026). Rockhill provides readers with a thorough account of the rehabilitation of Nietzsche within French Theory and its consequences within the non-communist left. Fascism, Rockhill argues, “can only be understood and contested through materialist analysis and anticapitalist praxis”—a fitting preamble to a book that acts as “an insightful indictment of the dominant capitalist ideologies while clearly articulating the political path forward.”
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
