FROM THE MAGAZINE

August 2021

Business

Journalism’s class problem has gotten worse

When they arrive in newsrooms, privileged young people bring their values and priorities with them

By Jesse Singal

From the Magazine

Politics

The monsters we become

Nietzsche was the first to ‘own the libs’

By Dominic Green

From the Magazine

International

Why we need bullfighting

The art of the corrida teaches respect for mortality

By Christopher North

From the Magazine

Education

How to win the culture war

If the right will take a stand against the new racial obsessions, the American public stands ready to give its support

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Education

Read Ray Bradbury before he’s canceled

Frankly, it’s a wonder we are allowed to read him at all

By Rod Liddle

From the Magazine

Politics

Old Glory, new anger

America’s mood is somewhere between despondency and revolt

By Peter W. Wood

From the Magazine

Education

Critical father theory

Black and white America alike suffer from the failure of functional older men to socialize younger men

By Mary Eberstadt

From the Magazine

Politics

Anti-anti-crime policies are ruining American cities

Let’s get the myths out of the way: COVID wasn’t the main driver behind the recent crime surge

By Sohrab Ahmari

From the Magazine

Education

My role in our demographic disaster

Children and families are the hottest topics in politics — and I can’t help but feel left out

By Mary Kate Skehan

From the Magazine

Business

Let’s make it a Hot Bartender Summer

The summer gleams with potential — and once again the epithets have started to fly

By Matt Purple

From the Magazine

Politics

My country, right or left

Today, the Democratic version of patriotism seems to be an endless stream of resentment and self-loathing

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Middle East

Iran’s president is a mass murderer

Ebrahim Raisi was — and remains — Iran’s hanging judge

By Paul Wood

From the Magazine

International

Who owns the Benin bronzes?

African artifacts are too hot to handle

By Michael Mosbacher

From the Magazine

Politics

Lori Lightfoot’s inner Republican

Chicago is turning into New York, only with worse weather

By Ed Zotti

From the Magazine

Politics

The FBI has lost the plot

Who gave the Feds access to Twitter?

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

International

How the US military got rich from Afghanistan

Trillions of dollars have flowed through the Pentagon’s war budgets in the last two decades

By Andrew Cockburn

From the Magazine

Spectator Editorial

Give peace a chance

If America is to remain a superpower, the age of elective wars must end

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Politics

Marxism, soccer and Trump’s demise: Tom Holland and Francis Fukuyama in conversation

‘I do think that with the rise of this really crazy right, you have to turn to social psychology for an explanation’

By Tom Holland and Francis Fukuyama

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Podcasts

Into the Darknet Diaries

Nowhere does the gap between coverage and reality seem bigger than in the field of technology and the internet

By Jessa Crispin

From the Magazine

Book Review

The Browning version

Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Fiona Sampson reviewed

By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

From the Magazine

Television

I remember Halston

Halston made American sportswear as chic as anything Paris couture houses were turning out

By Bob Colacello

From the Magazine

Books

In search of Nirad Chaudhuri

The forgotten visionary of British India

By Sumantra Maitra

From the Magazine

Film

Yet more death in Venice

Björn Andrésen is now tall and painfully thin with long silver hair and a matching beard that belong on Merlin

By Michael Collins

From the Magazine

Music

The lost king of the blues

No one played the blues like Mike Bloomfield

By Ben Lazarus

From the Magazine

Book Review

Revolution and repression

The Republic of False Truths by Alaa Al Aswany reviewed

By Suzi Feay

From the Magazine

Film

Affluent white female killer

I Care a Lot reviewed

By Nicky Otis Smith

From the Magazine

Book Review

Brave new virtual world

The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam reviewed

By Lee Langley

From the Magazine

Book Review

A tender portrait of Leonora Carrington, painter, writer — and a mother who was not always there

The Invisible Painting: My Memoir of Leonora Carrington by Gabriel Weisz Carrington reviewed

By Clinton Heylin

From the Magazine

Music

A quiet revolution for our times may have begun

I hope more and more people will find the courage to speak the truth as they see it

By Winston Marshall

From the Magazine

Book Review

A divided city: the Big Three fall out in post-war Berlin

Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown that Shaped the Modern World by Giles Milton reviewed

By Adam Sisman

From the Magazine

Book Review

Good luck enjoying eating salmon ever again

How to Love Animals: In a Human-Shaped World by Henry Mance reviewed

By Emma Beddington

From the Magazine

Life

Home

The straitened situation of conservatism

The prevailing assumption has been that the natural historical trend is leftward

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Cars

Cruiser control

That test drive was bliss, something like the feeling of your first cigarette after your third drink

By Zack Christenson

From the Magazine

Language

What’s the difference between ‘gifting’ and ‘giving’?

I started at the word gifting like a horse shying at a plastic bag caught in the hedge. Why didn’t I like it?

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine

Home

I’m gypsy and proud

My great-grandfather George’s mother was from the fairground ‘Barkers’

By Melissa Kite

From the Magazine

High Life

The art of Dolly Parton’s bra

The fashion industry is as venal and corrupt as, say, the art world

By Taki

From the Magazine

Place

Walking to Byzantium

The lines that now smudge my map look more like the flight of a woozy bluebottle than the traces of a man with a plan

By Henry Hopwood-Phillips

From the Magazine

Tacitus and the hypocrisy of cancel culture

Vitriolic pamphlets directed against Augustus were initially met with written rebuttals

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Low Life

Jason Ricci is my mentor, guru and anointed one

Lately my afternoons are spent with America’s no. 1 blues harmonica player and his tongue-blocking techniques

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

Place

Place

Down Santiago way

The Camino de Santiago is no normal pilgrimage

By James Jeffrey

From the Magazine

Place

The Isles of Scilly, a botanist’s paradise

‘You can get away from everything,’ said Harold Wilson of the Isles of Scilly, ‘not only in distance but also in time’

By Joanna Rossiter

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Home

Coffee with Coleen

Few if any breakfasts equal those I’ve consumed at Coleen’s Kitchen

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Drink

A taste of heresy

The weight of history — a seemingly infinite vista of incident — hangs heavy in the Languedoc in the South of France

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Food

Lessons from a lobsterman

‘He’s a guy’s guy’, my father would say of Willard. Less known was that Willard was also a lobster gal’s guy

By Calla Jones Corner

From the Magazine

Food

The culinary wisdom of charity cookbooks

The Ladies’ Charity Cookbooks are neglected historical artifacts

By Timothy Jacobson

From the Magazine

Food

The man in the White Castle

From the pioneers of the bun to the cheek of Earl Butz

By Christopher Sandford

From the Magazine