FROM THE MAGAZINE

August 2022

Spectator Editorial

Why ESG is sinister

There’s a long overdue backlash brewing

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

The ugly end of Boris Johnson

It will take some time to reassure the world that the UK is a model of self-government

By Conrad Black

From the Magazine

Culture

The crisis of Generation Z

The kids are not all right, and the experts have been sounding alarms for years

By Jesse Singal

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

The ‘conversion therapy’ canard

Biden is doing trans activists’ bidding and young Americans will suffer

By Madeleine Kearns

From the Magazine

Education

The true birth of communism

For Aristophanes, communism was one long, uproarious joke

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Education

Why I joined the college exodus

Gen Z is realizing that approval from a fancy university isn’t the only path to success

By Rikki Schlott

From the Magazine

Culture

It’s time for feminists to say #MenToo

The great emancipation of women has brought the great emasculation of our brothers

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

From the Magazine

Politics

Life after liberalism

As its institutional order rots, will the American right be ascendant?

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Business

Vince McMahon’s final act

To say he’s the most indefatigable promoter that ever lived is an understatement

By Art Tavana

From the Magazine

Politics

Dobbs has changed America forever

Abortion once scrambled the country’s politics. It will do so again

By Ben Domenech

From the Magazine

Culture

I apologize for my white baby

How can I extol the virtues of anti-racism while birthing another white person?

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Policy

The coldness of K Street

A bootblack is a bootblack in the eyes of the lobbyists and lawyers

By Billy McMorris

From the Magazine

Politics

Henry Kissinger on Ukraine and China

The foreign policy guru sits down with The Spectator

By Andrew Roberts and Henry Kissinger

From the Magazine

International

Walking Hanoi

I’m in Hanoi for a month as part of my Walking the World project

By Chris Arnade

From the Magazine

Politics

What John Durham has proved

The special counsel exploded a ‘resistance’ myth

By Eli Lake

From the Magazine

Economics

Inflation is the great destroyer

Joe Biden, take note: you’re no Ronald Reagan

By Matt Purple

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

How LSD helped me find God

Historically, many psychedelics were used as divinatory tools

By Birdie Hall

From the Magazine

Politics

The great White House replacement

Joe Biden is an errand boy, a figurehead, and he has outlived his plausibility

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Politics

Asking a rabbi about abortion

Perhaps surprisingly, Judaism does not have a black-and-white stance on the issue

By Daniella Greenbaum Davis

From the Magazine

Law

The cost of decarceration

Sometimes our criminal justice system isn’t harsh enough

By Rafael A. Mangual

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Books

Evelyn Waugh’s sincerest form of flattery

He had a major but unsung inspiration: the now-neglected novelist William Gerhardie

By William Boyd

From the Magazine

Book Review

Henry Kissinger’s likely last book is on leadership

And his biographies of great lives sparkle nicely

By James Snell

From the Magazine

Book Review

Heat 2 is a classic of the crime genre

Narco-states, rogue oil kingdoms… this sequel novel has it all

By Zack Christenson

From the Magazine

Books

Mary Gaitskill and the body electric

Why do we find the dark side of sexuality so terrifying?

By Francesca Peacock

From the Magazine

Book Review

Berlin as the unreal city

A new book makes you ask, somewhat apprehensively, what will happen there next

By Andrew Stuttaford

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

Philip Guston in the padded room

After a controversial postponement, the Philip Guston retrospective has landed in Boston

By Andrew L. Shea

From the Magazine

Film

Sinking into the pixels

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is an important film about the internet

By Nicky Otis Smith

From the Magazine

Film

Ukraine in black and white

Recalling the moral clarity of Lillian Hellman’s The North Star

By Timothy Jacobson

From the Magazine

Music

Arcade Fire: the last of the art-rockers?

The band’s return is not just welcome but overdue

By Alexander Larman

From the Magazine

Music

The underrated Kenny Dorham

On the fiftieth anniversary of his death, it’s well worth revisiting his remarkable career

By Jacob Heilbrunn

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

SoHo’s downtown drawings

Cultural mavens shouldn’t miss out on a knockout exhibition curated by Emily King

By Mario Naves

From the Magazine

Life

High Life

The magic of black and white films

Switch, alas, to the present: surgery as spectacle stretches the limits of disgust

By Taki

From the Magazine

Low Life

In praise of a solidly, wonderfully French hotel

There was a wall of books, ashtrays from the golden age of smoking and an air of greater liberty

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

London Life

My Tina Brown fantasy

I waited twenty years for the Tina call — but alas I suspect I’ve got a lot more waiting to do

By Cosmo Landesman

From the Magazine

American Life

The selfishness of rich socialists

Albert Brisbane somehow avoided sharing the wealth with his neighbors

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Prejudices

From modernism to totalitarianism

Postmodern man is characterized by an obsession with technique and technology

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Place

Place

Christ stopped at Oberammergau

The Passion Play was political, and not even particularly religious

By Roger Lewis

From the Magazine

Place

My encounters with the Mayans

The people are still here but their great cities have been swallowed by the jungle

By Lesley Downer

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Drink

Beware the cocktail bore

We live in the era of the overmarketed, oversweetened, overpriced and overexplained cocktail

By Zoe Strimpel

From the Magazine

Food

The little joys of growing corn in Connecticut

Plus a recipe for Saugatuck Succotash

By Calla Jones Corner

From the Magazine

Food

Thai-celand: how southeast Asian cuisine took over Reykjavik

It’s up there with the best New York and London have to offer

By Hannah Moore

From the Magazine

Drink

English wine’s surprising sparkle

A little ‘global warming’ has done wonders for England’s wine harvests

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

And Finally

And Finally

What is junk, exactly?

And is collecting it on private property a civil right?

By Teresa Mull

From the Magazine

And Finally

The not-so-sweet roots of ‘nice’

Nice, as in ‘a nice cup of tea,’ was a word loathed by my schoolmistresses

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine