Category Archives: Arts & Literature

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – JUNE 16, 2025 PREVIEW

A cat sits on a table and knocks over a glass of wine.

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest issue cover features Haruka Aoki’s “Nothing to See” – It’s good to be a cat. By Françoise Mouly Art by Haruka Aoki

The Victims of the Trump Administration’s China-Bashing

A Cold War-era report is a reminder of how long suspicion has trailed people of Chinese descent in the U.S. By Michael Luo

Jacinda Ardern’s Overseas Experience

New Zealand’s ex-Prime Minister, an anti-Trump icon during COVID, revisited her impoverished New York days, when she slept on a couch and loitered at the Strand. By Andrew Marantz

A First Kiss from America’s First Woman in Space

Tam O’Shaughnessy came out as Sally Ride’s partner of twenty-seven years when she wrote of the relationship in Ride’s obituary. By Michael Schulman

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JUNE 8, 2025

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW: The latest issue features ‘Money Problems’…

A Chronicle of the Rich Getting Richer, Crasser and More Obscene

In “The Haves and Have-Yachts,” the New Yorker writer Evan Osnos presents an urbane set of profiles in excess.

Crime Fiction Filled With Dark Passages and Dark Hearts

Our columnist on the month’s most notable releases.

Worried the World Is Falling Apart? That’s OK. It’s Happened Before.

In “The Once and Future World Order,” by Amitav Acharya, and “The Golden Road,” by William Dalrymple, our best hope might be that history repeats itself.

LITERARY REVIEW JUNE 2025

LITERARY REVIEW (June 2, 2025): The latest issue features ‘ A.C. Benson Unleashed; Into the Manosphere; Yours, Virginia Woolf; Passions of Gwen John and Apple’s Dangerous Deal…

Land of Dopes & Tories – The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson

To the Postbox – The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf

Guys & Trolls – Lost Boys: A Personal Journey Through the Manosphere

By James Bloodworth

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – JUNE 9, 2025 PREVIEW

A winding road in a hilly countryside.

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE (June 2, 2025): The latest issue features David Hockney’s “Going Up Garrowby Hill” – An artist revisits seasons across a lifetime. By Françoise MoulyArt by David Hockney

Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America

The reactionary blogger’s call for a monarch to rule the country once seemed like a joke. Now the right is ready to bend the knee.

Who Gets the Guns in Lebanon?

As the Lebanese Army tries to assert its authority in the war-torn south, calls to disarm Hezbollah are rising. By Rania Abouzeid

Elon Musk Didn’t Blow Up Washington, but He Left Plenty of Damage Behind

The obits for the tech mogul’s time at the Department of Government Efficiency are, justifiably, vicious. By Susan B. Glasser

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT – MAY 30, 2025 PREVIEW

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (May 28, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Their dollar, our problem’ – America’s crumbling financial empire…

“The dollar plays a similar role to that of the English language in global commerce”, writes Edward Chancellor in his lead review of three books devoted to American financial supremacy. “Both enjoy network effects: the more they are used, the more others are obliged to use them.”

By Martin Ivens

King Dollar’s shaky throne and fall    

Can the world’s dominant currency survive Donald Trump?

By Edward Chancellor

‘Literature is the antidote to numbness’

What questions should today’s writers and artists be asking? Responses from authors at the Hay Festival and the

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – JUNE 5, 2025 PREVIEW

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS (May 28, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Leopold’s Legacy’; Politics of Resentment and Murder Most Delicious…

Daniel Trilling

Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilisation by Richard Seymour

Letters

Galen Strawson, Rachel Hammersley, Colin McArthur, Jeremy Whiteley, Richard Davenport-Hines, Terry Hanstock, Margaret Morganroth Gullette, George Anderson, Koldo Casla, Martin Rose

Ed Kiely

Short Cuts: University Finances

Susan Pedersen

Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War by Sheila Fitzpatrick

Neal Ascherson

A Quiet Evening: The Travels of Norman Lewis by Norman Lewis, introduced and selected by John Hatt

Jeremy Harding

Paths to Restitution

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS – MAY 29, 2025

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (May 8, 2025): The latest issue features…

‘There’s Nothing for Me Here’

What caused Venezuela’s collapse, and who is responsible? A recent memoir tells the story as so many families have lived it.

Motherland: The Disintegration of a Family in a Collapsed Venezuela by Paula Ramón, with translations by Julia Sanches and Jennifer Shyue

Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela by William Neuman

The Spy in the Jeu de Paume

The detailed information gathered by the French curator Rose Valland about the Nazis’ looting of artworks made it possible for the Allies to recover tens of thousands of them after World War II.

The Art Front: The Defense of French Collections, 1939–1945 by Rose Valland, translated from the French by Ophélie Jouan, with a foreword by Robert M. Edsel


Doing Their Own Research

An electoral coalition of the conspiracy cultures of both the Christian right and the countercultural left helped bring Donald Trump back to power, and now pseudoscience and paranoia are in the ascendant.

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker

Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists and the New Order in Wellness by Stewart Home

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT – MAY 9, 2025 PREVIEW

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (May 7, 2025): The latest issue features ‘The Other America’ – The Hispanic Achievement…

Putting the blame on Spain

Why Anglo-American colonialism has no claim to moral superiority

Behind the velvet rope

The former editor of Vanity Fair looks back on an era of excess

Night visions

Fantastic gloomth: Victor Hugo the artist

The New Yorker Magazine – May 12 & 19, 2025 Preview

A series of images about New York City featuring a bagel a pigeon the subway and a baseball game.

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE (May 5, 2025): The latest issue features Christoph Niemann’s “Spotted in New York City” – Small moments that span a century.

The Promise of New York

Other cities have better infrastructure, fewer rats, cleaner streets, plentiful public toilets, more elbow room. Yet people continue to flock here.

By Alexandra Schwartz

Ed Helms Dives Into Disaster

In a new book, the boundlessly curious “Hangover” star probes history’s greatest blunders—like how the C.I.A. tried to make Castro’s beard fall out—as a way to face the present.

By Henry Alford

Why Can’t New York Have Nice Mayors?

As the Trump Administration encroaches on the city, Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams try to salvage their political careers.

By Eric Lach

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