A Half-Serious Man
Boris Johnson got a couple of critical things right, but he never could or would have become a good prime minister.
John Lloyd
· 12 min read
Review
A collection of 128 posts
Populists Before Trump
John Ganz’s lively new book provides a valuable account of the intellectual origins of Trumpism.
Leon Hadar
· 9 min read
New York Narcissism
Nikkitha Bakshani’s debut novel ‘Ghost Chilli’ is an ideologically confused work that seems to endorse the racial essentialism it purports to satirise.
Brad Strotten
· 5 min read
Totems and Taboos
A cancelled academic has produced a fine new book about the threat posed by progressive pieties.
John Lloyd
· 9 min read
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Richard Morton Jack’s comprehensive new biography of Nick Drake offers a glimpse of a brilliant but troubled soul.
Matt Hanson
· 10 min read
Sin and Social Science
Glenn Loury’s startlingly frank confessional memoir offers a complex portrait of a brilliant scholar and a profoundly flawed man.
John Lloyd
· 14 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
What We’re Reading in May
Discover new reads hand-picked by our editors.
Quillette
· 6 min read
Misadventures of a Stalinist Stooge
Benn Steil’s engrossing new biography of Henry A. Wallace is a timely cautionary tale and a masterpiece of 20th-century American history.
Ronald Radosh
· 23 min read
The Prophet of October 7?
Frantz Fanon’s defenders try to distance him from the of ethos of violence he advocated, even as they embrace his anti-colonialist rhetoric to promote anti-Zionism.
Leon Hadar
· 12 min read
Mystic Without a Church
Werner Herzog’s new memoir provides a look back on the magisterial and occasionally maddening career of a cinematic visionary.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 17 min read
What Is the Labour Party For?
Sir Keir Starmer looks likely to become Britain’s next prime minister at a time when the democratic centre-left everywhere is facing a crisis of definition.
John Lloyd
· 8 min read
A Moronic Inferno
America First and the looming spectre of an illiberal international.
Jeffrey Herf
· 15 min read
Getting Better All the Time
Hannah Ritchie’s new book offers reasons to be cheerful about the present and the future.
Sean Welsh
· 12 min read
Bestseller Reparations
In ‘American Fiction,’ director Cord Jefferson brings a devil-may-care effrontery to bear on the culture of self-censorship, progressive pieties, and artistic hypocrisy.
Thomas Larson
· 7 min read