Category Archives: Reviews

The Economist Magazine – May 31, 2025 Preview

THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE (May 29, 2025): The latest issue features New, untested and dangerous – A special report on American finance…

American finance, always unique, is now uniquely dangerous

Donald Trump is putting an untested system under almighty strain

Pausing foreign applications to American universities is a terrible idea

The Trump administration hobbles a great American export

First he busted gangs. Now Nayib Bukele busts critics

El Salvador’s president has all the tools of repression he needs to stay in power indefinitely

India needs to turn the air-con on

If its awful air pollution is ever solved the country will get even hotter

Nature Magazine – May 29, 2025 – Research Preview

Volume 641 Issue 8065

NATURE MAGAZINE (May 28, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Flight Path’ – Well preserved Archaeopteryx fossil reveals details birds evolution…

Telescope team reads the fine print — from more than a kilometre away

A pair of telescopes picking up reflected light achieve a performance 14 times better than a single telescope can manage alone.

Explosive volcanoes can bury carbon —a climate boon

Ash spread by violent eruptions in South American sequester carbon in the soil.

What big eyes this whale has — but not the better to see you with

The humpback whale has the whale equivalent of nearsightedness, which puts it at risk of being snarled in fishing gear.

The Guardian Weekly – May 30, 2025 Politics Preview

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY (May 28, 2025): The latest issue features Who will help Gaza City? – Hunger and despair in the Ruins of Gaza City; Plus: Dom Phillips’ last Amazon dispatch

Israel allowed a trickle of aid to enter Gaza last week while pinning its hopes of assuaging condemnation of the two-month-long blockade of the territory by this week permitting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed logistics group, to begin rigidly controlled deliveries that are barely a drop in the ocean of what the population needs.

While foreign journalists remain unable to report from Gaza, our correspondents Jason Burke, in Jerusalem, and Malek A Tantesh, who is based in Gaza, have written a powerful report on life in Gaza City for this week’s cover story. Even as attacks continue, more and more civilians move into the city, pushed out from northern Gaza as Israel’s new offensive intensifies. Life has been reduced to the very basics with, as the head of the Gaza NGOs Network, Amjad Shawa, put it, people “living in rubbish dumps, cesspits. There are flies, mosquitoes. We have no water to deliver, no food, no tents or blankets or tarpaulins, nothing. People are very, very hungry but there is nothing to give them.”

Spotlight |‘I knew I would die in jail’

Daniel Boffey reports on how the right-hand man of Georgia’s de facto ruler ended up on the run and what effect that had on the country’s relationships with Russia and the west

Science | Weight-loss drugs have additional gains
The benefits of Ozempic and similar medications go beyond treating obesity, as science correspondents Hannah Devlin and Nicola Davis discover from talking to researchers

Feature | A deadly Amazon quest
An extract from the book Dom Phillips was working on when he and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were killed

Opinion | Why Trump’s jaw-jaw isn’t working
Because, argues Simon Tisdall, both Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have calculated that a forever war is better for them personally than the reckoning peace would bring

Culture | The soul queen of New Orleans
At 84, Irma Thomas has a new album and a new generation of fans, but as she tells Garth Cartwright, her musical journey has not been easy

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 Times Magazine – May 12, 2025

Current cover

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (May 10, 2025): The 5.11.25 Issue features Susan Dominus on the growing body of research on the influence of siblings; Jamie Thompson on the police suicide crisis; Binyamin Appelbaum on President Trump’s attempt to turn back the U.S.’s economic clock; David Marchese interviews poet and author Ocean Vuong; and more.

Can Whitney Wolfe Herd Make Us Love Dating Apps Again?

The Bumble CEO has returned to run the struggling company she founded, and says she has a plan for getting Gen Z back By Lulu Garcia-Navarro

Why Do More Police Officers Die by Suicide Than in the Line of Duty?

His friend and fellow cop killed himself. Then he nearly became a statistic as well. Why do more police officers die by suicide than in the line of duty? By Jamie ThompsonCreditDanny Wilcox Frazier for The New York Times

The Surprising Ways That Siblings Shape Our Lives

Parents try everything to influence their children. But new research suggests brothers and sisters have their own profound impact. By Susan Dominus

The $200 Billion Gamble: Bill Gates’s Plan to Wind Down His Foundation

In a wide-ranging interview, he explains his decision —

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

The Economist Magazine – May 10, 2025 Preview

THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE (May 8, 2025): The latest issue features All grown up: Saudi Arabia’s surprising transformation‘…

Saudi Arabia is pulling off an astonishing transformation

Muhammad bin Salman is going from troublemaker to peacemaker

What Putin wants—and how Europe should thwart him

Many Europeans are complacent about the threat Russia poses—and misunderstand how to deter its president

Luck stands between de-escalation and disaster for India and Pakistan

Sooner or later, the luck will run out

The war in Gaza must end

America should press Binyamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire, then press Hamas to disarm

Donald Trump is right to ditch Joe Biden’s chip-export rules

Time to get realistic

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – MAY 9, 2025 POLITICS PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY (May 7, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Trump meets political gravity’…

The Weekly’s cover focuses on the US president, who has at last been feeling the pull of domestic political gravity. Trump’s chaotic first 100 days in office – marked last week – have featured a blitz of sweeping and vengeful changes to America that have been hard to fully compute. But as the US economy falters and his poll ratings sink, David Smith asks whether the seemingly unchallengeable president is showing some signs of vulnerability.


Five essential reads in this week’s edition

Spotlight | Russia’s new sabotage campaign in Europe
Moscow’s intelligence services have launched a new type of attack on the west, violent but piecemeal and hard to prove, writes Shaun Walker

Spotlight | Palestinians face difficult decisions over future in Gaza
As Israel’s aid blockade rumbles on and humanitarian zones disappear, fears of a ‘second Nakba’ are being realised. Bethan McKernan reports

Feature | How Ticketmaster ate the live music industry
From grassroots gigs to stadium shows, there’s no escaping the ticketing giant, making billions from increasing prices (and whacking on fees). Dorian Lynskey investigates who is really to blame for the great rock’n’roll rip-off

Opinion | We recall the joy of VE Day. My worry is what we forget
In 1945, Sheila Hancock’s street party tea was a muted celebration, full of uncertainty. Then, as now, we faced a long struggle towards a better world

Culture | Black Sabbath on reconciling for their final gig
Heavy metal’s godfathers are preparing a star-studded farewell – but will Ozzy Osbourne be well enough to perform? In their first interview for two decades, the original lineup talk to Alexis Petridis

NATURE MAGAZINE – MAY 8, 2025 RESEARCH PREVIEW

Volume 641 Issue 8062

NATURE MAGAZINE (May 7, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Relative Gains’ – Complete genome sequences for six ape species offer insights into human evolution…

Storm of seizures in a baby’s brain calms after trial therapy

The treatment, which aimed to block production of a mutant protein, reduced the frequency of infant’s seizures, but did not improve neurological impairments.

Tattoo-making tools used by ancient Maya revealed

The stone fragments had been discovered inside ‘Handprint Cave’ in Belize alongside other artefacts suggestive of ritual use.

One of the world’s richest lithium deposits began inside a mega-volcano

Lithium that pooled in a volcanic caldera in the western United States had no way out, thanks to a lack of rivers.

For these bats, eavesdropping is a valuable learnt skill

Over time, young fringe-lipped bats learn how to distinguish the calls of palatable frogs from those of toxic ones.