Category: REVIEW

When Israel Is Too Real

Could Fauda prove the clearest testament yet to the Palestinian question’s irreducible unsolvability?

Irreverent Shofet

Fresh off forming Israel’s most right-wing government ever, Bibi Netanyahu appears in his recently published memoir as the Jewish people’s shrewdest leader since King Solomon.

Plague Management: plus ça change

Orhan Pamuk is a masterful writer. His books all open in such a way that you know they are going to be hard to put down.

Evil and Idiocy in Johnson’s Glass Onion

Daniel Craig’s southern detective dressed like Cary Grant invokes the gravitas of tradition against postmodernity’s myth of the tech-disruptor, together with a heroine armed with a perfect disinterest in wealth.

A Matter of Death: Flemish Primitives Grapple with Mortality in Bruges Exhibit

A Matter of Death: Flemish Primitives Grapple with Mortality in Bruges Exhibit

“Face to Face with Death. Hugo van der Goes, Old Masters, New Looks” at Sint-Janshospitaal in Bruges is open for visitors until February 5th, 2023.

November 7, 2022
FORGOTTEN CLASSICS: <br>Horror, Evil, and Daphne du Maurier’s <i>Rebecca</i>

FORGOTTEN CLASSICS:
Horror, Evil, and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca

“We don’t need any more evil in the world. We need a lot more reckoning with it.”

October 30, 2022
Ever-Closer Disunion

Ever-Closer Disunion

The EU’s business model has been to put the age-old laws of politics to the test, argues Stefan Auer in his latest book. To survive, it needs to heed them instead.

Old Ottoman Habits Die Hard

Old Ottoman Habits Die Hard

Erdoğan either has the best of intentions for Turkey or is simply in love with power. The fact that he has altered the presidential voting system and extended his term of office in the process suggest the latter.

October 6, 2022
Renaissance Man: Raphael at the National Gallery, London

Renaissance Man: Raphael at the National Gallery, London

London’s National Gallery ventured to assemble what it described as the first exhibition outside Italy “to encompass all aspects of Raphael’s artistic activity across his career.”

September 27, 2022
More History, Less Prejudice:<br>“Juifs et musulmans de la France coloniale à nos jours”

More History, Less Prejudice:
“Juifs et musulmans de la France coloniale à nos jours”

In France, Jews and Arabs have been drifting apart over the past 50 years. A Paris exhibition commissioned by one of the country’s leading historians hoped to build bridges.

September 26, 2022
The Simple Secret of Top Gun: Maverick’s Success

The Simple Secret of Top Gun: Maverick’s Success

The movie is about aviators flying jets, success and failure, personal struggle in the face of obstacles, facing ghosts of the past, family, and ultimately about pushing oneself to the limits. Period.

September 25, 2022
FORGOTTEN CLASSICS: <br>Charlemagne on Nobility and Greeting the Foreigner

FORGOTTEN CLASSICS:
Charlemagne on Nobility and Greeting the Foreigner

When we find ourselves at an impasse, it can be very helpful to look to great figures from history for guidance. Today, we could learn a thing or two about cultivating political culture from a universally-known but rarely studied figure, Charles the Great, or Charlemagne.

September 24, 2022
Everyman’s Bill Buckley

Everyman’s Bill Buckley

Reagan’s election would be the ultimate test of the so-called Evans’ law: “whenever one of our people reaches a position of power where he can do us some good, he ceases to be one of our people.”

September 21, 2022
Is the Napkin Ring Right-Wing?

Is the Napkin Ring Right-Wing?

Richard de Sèze’s brilliant and light pen swirls around the impressions of everyday life to give us a delicious panorama of things that pass and things that do not.

September 18, 2022
Desperate Victory at the White City

Desperate Victory at the White City

Although the book is properly a mosaic of voices— two personalities dominate, both on the battlefield and in the documentation. The first is the heroic Christian military commander Hunyadi. The second figure is far less remembered today, the Franciscan friar Saint John of Capistrano, sometimes called the Soldier Saint although the only “weapons” he carried were a crucifix and a banner.

September 8, 2022
Strauss’s Shadow Over Munich: <em>Die Frau ohne Schatten</em> Overwhelms at Munich’s Opera Festival

Strauss’s Shadow Over Munich: Die Frau ohne Schatten Overwhelms at Munich’s Opera Festival

Warlikowski’s productions tend toward the visceral. His exploration of the opera’s mythological content led him to profound meditations on the fluidity of space and time, of the real and the unreal.

September 6, 2022