Silicon Valley’s moral bankruptcy by Victor Davis Hanson
The Russian way of literature by Daniel J. Mahoney
China apologetics by Gordon G. Chang
Gillray: national lampooner by Myron Magnet
Arts & Culture: The New Criterion — May 2023
Tag Archives: Book Reviews
Book Reviews: ‘On The Origin Of Time – Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory’
Like his mentor and colleague Stephen Hawking, Thomas Hertog has never shied away from being ambitious in theorizing about the universe. This sweeping book provides an accessible overview of both what we know about cosmology, and some audacious ideas for moving into the unknown. It is an introduction to Hawking’s final theory, but also a glimpse into even grander theories yet to come.
Professor Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – April 14, 2023
Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (April 14, 2023) – This week’s issue features @TristramHuntVA on monuments; @nclarke14 on English caricature; @HettieJudah on Action, Gesture, Paint @_TheWhitechapel; @jntod on J. H. Prynne; @rinireg on the Trump indictment – and more.
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – April 7, 2023
Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (April 7, 2023) – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring the late Jane Maas on Philip Roth’s great love; David Throsby on consulting firms; an extract from The God Desire by @Baddiel; @LamornaAsh on Max Porter; @funesdamemorius on Mike Nelson; a new poem by Carl Dennis – and more.
Preview: Banshee Literary Journal – Spring 2023
Banshee Literary Journal – Spring/Summer 2023:
Issue 15 features poetry from @el_fodongo, Elizabeth McGeown, @JamieOHallo108, @MNSghost, @AnneTannam, @hmorganvl, @crownofpetals, @dogwithoutlegs, @yopopodawn and Derek JG Williams.
Preview: London Review Of Books – April 13, 2023
Let’s go to Croydon – Jonathan Meades
Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain
Its appeal is part of the recurrent cycle of the centripetal giving way to the lure of the burbs. Save that, in this instance, it’s not the lure that accounts for an invasion of beards and craft beer but the unaffordability of housing in East London. Let’s go to Croydon! For want of anywhere else.
Rewriting the Marcos Years – Sheila S. Coronel
Which archival sources are used and whose voices are silenced? The Marcoses have – for now – claimed the archive and seized the narrative. They tell the story of a golden age followed by a fall and a quest for redemption. In the Philippines, a deeply Catholic country, the story has a satisfying narrative arc.
Arts/Culture: Humanities Magazine – Spring 2023
Humanities Magazine – Spring 2023 Issue
Audubon in This Day and Age
The artist and his birds continue to challenge us
John James Audubon, dead for 172 years, has been in the news again. Disturbing facts known to his biographers—that, for example, when he kept a store in Henderson, Kentucky, he enslaved people—have gained new currency, although the National Audubon Society has, for now, held on to its name. For many, Audubon has become synonymous with an activity—call it science, ornithology, natural history, birding, love of the outdoors—that has, for the longest time, excluded people of color.
A Lot of What Is Known about Pirates Is Not True, and a Lot of What Is True Is Not Known.
In 1701, in Middletown, New Jersey, Moses Butterworth languished in a jail, accused of piracy. Like many young men based in England or her colonies, he had joined a crew that sailed the Indian Ocean intent on plundering ships of the Muslim Mughal Empire. Throughout the 1690s, these pirates marauded vessels laden with gold, jewels, silk, and calico on pilgrimage toward Mecca. After achieving great success, many of these men sailed back into the Atlantic via Madagascar to the North American seaboard, where they quietly disembarked in Charleston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Newport, and Boston, and made themselves at home.
Books: Literary Review Magazine – April 2023
Literary Review – April 2023 issue: The April issue of Literary Review is out now! In this month’s cover article, Kirsten Tambling looks at how Shakespeare’s Juliet has been reinterpreted and received through the ages.
Such Sweet Sorrow
Searching for Juliet: The Lives and Deaths of Shakespeare’s First Tragic Heroine – In 1611, the Somerset-born traveller Thomas Coryat described an Italian architectural novelty: a ‘very pleasant little tarrasse, that jutteth or butteth out from the maine building: the edge whereof is decked with many pretty little turned pillers … to leane over’.
One Day in October
Killing Thatcher: The IRA, the Manhunt and the Long War on the Crown
The New York Review Of Books – April 20, 2023
‘Binding and Building’ America
Maxine Hong Kingston: The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey, Hawai‘i One Summer, Other Writings edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Maxine Hong Kingston’s best work has a timeless quality, fresh, beautiful, horrifying, bursting with myth and fantasy and nagging reality.
The British Broadcasting Conundrum
The BBC: A Century on Air by David Hendy
This Is the BBC: Entertaining the Nation, Speaking for Britain? 1922–2022 by Simon J. Potter
World War II was the BBC’s finest hour, but its history since then reflects the corporation’s gradual loss of primacy in British life.
Refill the Swamp!
Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis by Annie Proulx
Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration by Laura J. Martin
Two recent books show that the concept of ecological restoration is a fuzzy one: even practitioners rarely agree on what is being restored, or to what end.
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement-March 31, 2023
Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (March 31, 2023) – This week’s @TheTLS features @Skye_Cleary on the Good Life; @David_Goodhart on the Tories post-Brexit; @PeterKGeoghegan on the UK’s finances; @DrCLaoutaris on Shakespeare’s lodger; @KatyaTaylor on L. M. Montgomery; @MirandaFrance1 on Javier Marías’s final novel – and more.
