England’s Daydreaming
Robyn Hitchcock’s new memoir takes us back to 1967—a year the British singer-songwriter never outgrew.
Dave Thompson
· 12 min read
France’s Founding Fathers: A Review of ‘House of Lilies’
In a new book, Justine Firnhaber-Baker tells the story of the Capetian dynasty (987–1328), whose rulers stitched a set of medieval duchies and counties into a single kingdom.
Charlotte Allen
· 20 min read
The Roots of Progressive Radicalism: Nellie Bowles vs. Musa al-Gharbi
In two new books, a journalist and an academic offer competing explanations for the extremist ideological tendencies within left-wing cultural, academic, activist, and political institutions.
Jonathan Kay
· 16 min read
Recycling Plastic Is a Dangerous Waste of Time
The recycling industry—and the world at large—has yet to fully reckon with a bombshell study that dropped last year.
Frank Celia
· 17 min read
Too Much Chocolate
Fifty years of Robert Cormier’s “classic” young-adult novel is more than enough.
Kevin Mims
· 9 min read
Roger Corman: A Filmmaker’s Filmmaker
An account of all the lives Corman touched, the careers he helped to jump-start, and the genres he pioneered would fill several books.
Jacob Bielecki
· 12 min read
George Orwell’s Error
Had he lived long enough to witness the fruits of liberal capitalism, perhaps Orwell would finally have accepted the failure of socialism.
Christopher J. Snowdon
· 13 min read
Blood, Sweat, and Gasoline
The story of Hollywood’s most unlikely blockbuster franchise, Mad Max.
Allan Stratton
· 21 min read
The Perfect Trifecta
The new attention economy will always privilege the lowest common denominator in performance art, as it does in everything else.
Julia Friedman
· 8 min read
Unbowed but Gravely Wounded
Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, ‘Knife,’ describes the assassination attempt its author survived and offers a moving contemplation of mortality.
Paul Berman
· 15 min read
The Future of the Space Industry
The privatisation of space travel is cutting the cost of rocket launches and powering innovation.
Rainer Zitelmann
· 12 min read
The Problem with Utopias
The history of utopian fiction proves that we can’t even imagine a better world.
Ewan Morrison
· 15 min read
Imposing Order on Grief
Rob Henderson's 'Troubled' is a disjointed book, but provides valuable testimony to the importance of a stable childhood.
Iona Italia
· 23 min read
ChatGPT’s Moral Compass
We hear much talk of “aligning AI with human values” but relatively little delineation of what these values are.
Sean Welsh
· 15 min read
A History of Stunts
Ryan Gosling’s new film is a love letter to an under-appreciated art.
Allan Stratton
· 9 min read