Reviews

Review

The West is an idea

There has never been a single concept of the West, which helps explain its potency as an idea.

Jeremy Jennings March 12, 2026

Review

How the United States lost Iran

Behind Washington’s failure to predict the Iranian Revolution of 1979 lay a long history of hubris, strategic miscalculations and delusional thinking.

Sergey Radchenko March 9, 2026

Review

The god-fearing women of the 17th century

Amid civil war and regicide, a group of women claimed the right to speak directly for God, asserting spiritual authority in a society that denied them a voice.

Katherine Harvey March 4, 2026

Review

Venice and the fate of the Jews

The history of the Venetian Ghetto complicates the notion that Jewish history is merely a chronicle of suffering.

Samuel Rubinstein March 3, 2026

Review

Gerhard Richter, between past and present

The work of the 94-year-old German artist, now retired, tests the limits of memory and the image itself.

Jared Marcel Pollen February 27, 2026

Review

The strange death of the nation state

Nation states were never a natural or immutable part of our world order, and their decline and displacement through technological transformation may ultimately be a positive story.

Bryan Appleyard February 26, 2026

Review

The visions of Harald Voetmann

Rich, brutal, and darkly funny, the Danish novelist's harrowing trilogy concludes with a portrait of the 11th-century scholar Othlo of St Emmeram, exploring humanity’s efforts to d..

Daniel Skeffington February 19, 2026

Review

Strindberg’s study of a marriage

In 'The Dance of Death', August Strindberg imagines marriage as a sealed citadel of resentment and mutual destruction.

Malcolm Forbes February 18, 2026

Review

Charles III’s philosophy of harmony

The monarch's philosophy of ‘harmony’ is a theistic vision rooted in Renaissance humanism and natural law, seeking to reconcile unity and diversity in an ordered cosmos.

Esmé Partridge February 17, 2026