THE NEW CRITERION MAGAZINE (February 14, 2025): The latest issue features…
The New Criterion – March 2025 Preview
Category Archives: Reviews
The Economist Magazine – February 15, 2025 Preview
THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE (February 13, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Battle for the Pentagon‘ – Can Donald Trump remake American defense?
Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk wreck or reform the Pentagon?
America’s security depends upon their success
After DeepSeek, America and the EU are getting AI wrong
Europe has a chance to catch up, whereas America should ease up
Countering China’s diplomatic coup
China has turned much of the global south against Taiwan. That could be laying the ground for forced unification
Can Friedrich Merz save Germany—and Europe?
He is on track to win the election, but to fix Europe he will have to fix his country first
The Guardian Weekly – February 14, 2025 Preview
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY (February 13, 2025): The latest issue features The Orbánisation of America…
We’re just over three weeks into the second Donald Trump administration, and the pace of events both inside and outside the US has been dizzying and unprecedented.
Many of us have been alarmed by Trump’s shocking pronouncements on the Israel-Gaza war, trade tariffs and territorial claims on Greenland and Panama. But inside America, an equally startling transformation has been taking place.
Aided by the tech billionaire Elon Musk, Trump has moved swiftly to fire critics, reward allies, punish media, gut the federal government and exploit presidential immunity. Yet much of the blueprint comes not from Trump’s own policy team, but from a power-consolidation playbook established over the past decade by the Hungarian authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.
Nature Magazine – February 13, 2025
NATURE MAGAZINE (February 12, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Cosmic Catcher; – Deep sea telescope detects neutrino with highest energy ever recorded.
How to make the perfect egg: give it lukewarm baths
Process turns out eggs with delectable texture and high nutritional value.
How COVID vaccination keeps a ‘breakthrough’ infection in check
The vaccines’ effect on inflammation-promoting cells might help to explain why the jabs protect against severe disease.
Record-setting trove of buried beads speaks to power of ancient women
A Copper Age burial in Spain holds the largest collection of beads ever found ― enough to require a tonne of shellfish as raw material.
London Review Of Books – February 20, 2025 Preview
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS (February 12, 2025): The latest issue features Clair Wills on Marion Milner; Deaths in Custody; Adam Shatz on Messiaen’s Ecstasies; Bee Wilson looks in the fridge and Christopher Clark defends Merkel…
Marion Milner’s Method – Clair Wills
Marion Milner believed in the importance of creative fulfilment (the ‘genius’ inside every one of us) and offered a kind of manual for finding it. From her earliest self-experiments through decades of psychoanalytic practice she took seriously the need to feel ‘real in living’, and tried to theorise the therapeutic potential of aesthetic experience, however minimal.
Deaths in Custody – Dani Garavelli
William had spent most of his life in the care of the state. His story was one of intergenerational trauma, common to many families in the West of Scotland, and of the lies Scotland tells itself about its treatment of its most vulnerable young people.
Merkel’s Two Lives – Christopher Clark
Angela Merkel’s low-key, unflappable persona makes it easy to overlook how extraordinary her story is. A life composed of such unlike elements has never been possible before and will never be so again, at least in Europe.
Messiaen’s Ecstasies – Adam Shatz
While few would question Messiaen’s importance in 20th-century music, his religious modernism has always been met with accusations of idolatry, inauthenticity and bad taste.
Times LIterary Supplement – February 14, 2025 Preview
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (February 13, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Real Ruins?’ = Mary Beard on what gets left behind; AI’s literary triumph; A Nobel laureate’s prose falls short; The price of woke and Kissinger’s boys…
The Peronist Pope
The Argentine pontiff who accepts his own fallibility By A. N. Wilson
Life writing
By Mary Beard
Country Life Magazine – February 12, 2025 Preview
COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE (February 11, 2025): ‘The Fine Art Issue’ features ‘What makes an Old Master?’….
Let the art rule the head
The UK’s status as a world leader in creative industries will be in peril if we fail to nurture art-and-design skills in our schools, argues Tristram Hunt
Let’s fall in love
Laura Parker investigates the boxing, croaking, crooning, dad dancing and even murder that passes for courtship ritual in the animal kingdom
Beauty and the blimp
Could a new airship designed in Britain deliver eco-friendly aviation, asks Charles Harris
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe picks out glass acts in world of garden rooms, greenhouses and orangeries
Soup-er charged
Tom Parker Bowles reveals how to beef up a boozy, hot-as-Hades French onion soup
A leap in the dark
The play of light and shade has long defined Western art. Michael Hall examines what Constable called ‘the chiaroscuro of nature’
The Duke of Richmond’s favourite painting
The owner of Goodwood picks a work that reflects the sporting history of the West Sussex estate
Three wishes for food and farming
Minette Batters calls for the UK to set a self-sufficiency target for producing its own food
Nature and nurture
In the final article of a three-part series, Tim Richardson ponders the innovation and imagination behind the wonderful grounds at Bramham Park, West Yorkshire
The legacy
Amie Elizabeth White applauds altruistic John Ritchie Findlay, who paved the way for Scotland’s National Portrait Gallery
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell backs a winner with a range of horseshoe jewellery
Light work
Tiffany Daneff is dazzled by the transformation of a dark London garden into a light-filled oasis
Foraging
Winter mushrooms are a rarity, but the striking velvet shank earns John Wright’s approval as a welcome addition to game pie
Arts & antiques
Carla Passino marvels at the masterpieces amassed by Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart as the works go on show in London
Wick me up before you go-go
The wick trimmer’s work was never done in candlelit times, discovers Matthew Dennison
The New Yorker Magazine – February 17, 2025
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE (February 10, 2025): The latest issue features Rea Irvin’s “Eustace Tilley” at One Hundred – The magazine celebrates its centenary.
The Editorial Battles That Made The New Yorker
The magazine has three golden rules: never write about writers, editors, or the magazine. On the occasion of our hundredth anniversary, we’re breaking them all. By Jill Lepore
Onward and Upward
Harold Ross founded The New Yorker as a comic weekly. A hundred years later, we’re doubling down on our commitment to the much richer publication it became. By David Remnick
The “Intactivists” Campaigning Against the Cut
New York’s biggest foreskin fans take their anti-circumcision message to the streets. By Diego Lasarte
The Nation Magazine – March 2025 Preview
THE NATION MAGAZINE (February 9, 2025): The latest issue features ‘The Supreme Trump Court’ – Donald Trump is poised to become the first president since FDR to appoint the majority of the high court’s justices. Their rulings may be among his most lasting legacies.
The Courts Can’t Stop the Trump-Musk Coup
While the lawsuits being filed against the Trump-Musk administration are righteous, they will not “save” us from this nightmare.
The Dehumanization Is the Point
You know things are bad when you end up nostalgic for Trump’s first term. Sasha Abramsky
Democrats Are Helping Trump Carry Out His Nativist Agenda
Trump and his white-nationalist allies are pursuing a shock-and-awe strategy against immigrants—and many Democrats seem all too eager to join him. Gaby Del Valle
The New York Times Book Review – February 9, 2025
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (February 8, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Stages Of Life’…
5 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
25 Years Ago, Joan Didion Kept a Diary. It’s About to Become Public.
The notes, taken after meetings with her psychiatrist, will be published in April as a book, “Notes to John.” They provide a raw account of her life, her work and her complex relationship with her daughter.
How Big Tech Mined Our Attention and Broke Our Politics
“Superbloom,” by Nicholas Carr, and “The Sirens’ Call,” by the MSNBC host Chris Hayes, argue that we are ill equipped to handle the infinite scroll of the information age.
