Literary Review – November 2, 2024: The latest issue features ‘The Making of Handel’s Messiah’; Another Side of Plath; Legends of El Cid; Germany Stalls and Smiley Returns…
Books: Literary Review Magazine – November 2024
Category Archives: Reviews
Culture: The Hedgehog Review – Fall 2024 Issue
THE HEDGEHOG REVIEW (FALL 2024): This issue’s theme is “In Need of Repair,” and it includes contributions from James Davison Hunter, Nicholas Carr, Martha Bayles, Olivier Zunz, Elias Crim, Aaron Horvath, Paul Scherz, Firmin DeBrabander, and John J. Lennon, as well as other reviews and essays from such contributors as Eugene McCarraher, Alan Jacobs, Paul Nedelisky, Rita Koganzon, Matthew Milliner, and Richard Hughes Gibson.
In Need of Repair
At the bottom of each of our system dysfunctions is a distinctive cultural disorder emerging from the many pressures of our rapidly modernizing world.
Supply Chain Sublime
The Material World is no place for humans. By Richard Hughes Gibson
Culture Wars: The Endgame
Nihilism’s Grip on American Democracy by James Davison Hunter
The Age of the Average
All the Little Data
The Pathologies of Precision Medicine
The Economist Magazine – November 2, 2024 Preview
A second Trump term comes with unacceptable risks
If The Economist had a vote, we would cast it for Kamala Harris
The British budget—big numbers, narrow vision
A bigger state but an irrational way to fund it
Does China need more stimulus?
The Communist Party may be hoarding fiscal firepower to offset a possible trade war
Focusing on ADHD
It should not be treated as a disorder
The Telegram: a new column on world affairs
The old order is dying. Our geopolitics columnist will tell you what’s coming next
Read full edition
The New York Review Of Books – November 21, 2024
The Crime of Human Movement
Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.
Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the “Criminal Alien” by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States by Ana Raquel Minian
Life in the Ruins
Two new books consider the delusion of the human quest to be free from the constraints of nature.
The Burning Earth: A History by Sunil Amrith
A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places by Christopher Brown
Iran Exposed
The Islamic Republic’s sordid proxy war with the West may now be leaving it open to an all-out attack as Israel attempts to eliminate its enemies throughout the region.
Politics: The Guardian Weekly – November 1, 2024
The Guardian Weekly (October 31, 2024) – The new issue features ‘The Balance Of Power’ – What the U.S. election could mean for the world…
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
1
Spotlight | Israel and Iran’s war comes out of the shadows
The Observer’s Simon Tisdall considers the consequences for the region of Israel’s weekend missile strikes on Iran
2
Environment | The Colombian warlord who reneged on deforestation
As the Cop16 nature summit in Colombia comes to a close, Luke Taylor tells a story that highlights the country’s complex relationship between environmental aspiration and political will
3
Feature | The brain collector
Using cutting-edge methods, Alexandra Morton-Hayward is unravelling the extraordinary mysteries of grey matter – even as hers betrays her. By Kermit Pattison
4
Opinion | It’s time to tell it how it is: Trump has fascist instincts
Those who know him best use the F-word to describe the former president. Every warning light is flashing red, argues Jonathan Freedland
5
Culture | The intersection of art and war in Ukraine
Poets, artists, playwrights and musicians are fighting and dying in Ukraine, and their work is capturing the horror and emotion of the conflict, finds Charlotte Higgins
Research Preview: Nature Magazine-October 31, 2024
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Atomic smash-ups hold promise of record-breaking elements
Laboratory collisions that create the superheavy element livermorium could help scientists to discover new elements.
This plankton balloons in size to soar upwards through the water
A single-celled alga takes water into a bladder, allowing it to migrate to the sea’s sunlit surface zone.
Giant Turkish quake shifted the ground hundreds of kilometres away
The deadly earthquake led to unexpectedly large deformations some 700 kilometres from the epicentre.
Country Life Magazine – October 30, 2024 Preview
Country Life Magazine (October 30, 2024): The latest issue features…
Zandra Rhodes’s favourite painting
The fashion designer chooses a colourful, cheering scene.
A home reborn
Magnificent Knowsley Hall, Lancashire, has been rescued from institutional use through an admirable restoration project and is once again a home, discovers John Martin Robinson.
The Legacy
Amie Elizabeth White dons a Blue Peter badge to salute the show’s creator, John Hunter Blair.
Heal the land, heal the waters
Our precious rivers hold myriad life forms, yet have been sullied by the hands of humans. John Lewis-Stempel urges us to take care of them.
You’ve got peemail
Dogs, bats and other creatures keep up with the news through sniffing and sensing. Laura Parker reports on the animal kingdom’s telegraph system.
The ghost hunters
Deep in a glad or underwater, our rarest plants defy discovery. Peter Marren joins the quest.
Let Nature never be forgot
A cornucopia of delights awaits Tiffany Daneff in Alan Titchmarsh’s Hampshire garden, with secluded seats, ponds and plenty of space for wildlife.
The Renaissance men
Well-educated and curious, the British tourists with an eye for art laid the foundations of our great collections, finds Michael Hall.
Return to the steppe
Teresa Levonian-Cole boards the Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express to traverse Uzbekistan, a land brimming with art, history and caviar.
And, as always, much much more, including luxury, recipes, interior inspiration and gardens.
London Review Of Books – November 7, 2024 Preview
Jenny Turner
Love’s Work by Gillian Rose – Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory by Gillian Rose, edited by Robert Lucas Scott and James Gordon Finlayson
Josephine Quinn – At the British Museum: ‘Silk Roads’
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite – The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain and Their Many Enemies by Andy BeckettA Woman like Me by Diane AbbottKeir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin
Current Affairs: Prospect Magazine – December 2024
Make no mistake: Donald Trump is a demagogue
The Republican candidate has already damaged American democracy and the wider liberal order. Worse is to come by Francis Fukuyama\
‘You wouldn’t let a dog suffer like this’: should assisted dying be legal?
Temporary accommodation nation
The women who hate feminism
The punch-up
The Glasgow doctor on the front line in Beirut
My friendship with a robin works magic on my health
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Nov. 1, 2024
Times Literary Supplement (October 30, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Scare Stories’ – On modern horror. Asked why he liked horror films, or terror films as he preferred to call them, Kingsley Amis wrote: “like Mark Twain on a dissimilar occasion, I have an answer to that: I don’t know”. He viewed horror as purely “harmless” entertainment. That explanation might satisfy teenage addicts, but moralists, psychologists and literary critics are inclined to examine the bloody entrails of the genre to divine deeper truths.
Dynamic, not doomed
Taking the British Revolution out of the Restoration’s shadow By Jonathan Fitzgibbons
Fiction for geeks and freaks
The decades before horror became respectable By Mark Storey
Married to amazement
How Mary Oliver ‘encourages us to believe’ By Rory Waterman
Green terror
An Australian vision of the eco-apocalypse By Tom Seymour Evans
