Reviews

Review

What will remain of us if the machines take over?

The machine god could be no friend of ours. It's time we took the implications of AI development seriously.

Bryan Appleyard July 24, 2024

Review

Operetta’s world of invention

Operetta has multiple roots and many registers: it draws on pantomime, the stock horseplay of the commedia dell’arte, vaudevillian comedy, melodrama, as well as the symphonic sweep..

Benjamin Poore July 15, 2024

Review

Gardens for all

The transformative impact of suburbia on the British landscape between the wars is often viewed in negative terms. But the development of the suburban garden is indivisible from th..

Mathew Lyons July 10, 2024

Review

The Habsburg world we have lost

The Habsburg monarchy’s political culture persisted in odd and varied ways, following the disintegration of the Austria-Hungarian state. The failures and mendacity of the succeedin..

Luka Ivan Jukic July 9, 2024

Review

One family’s Chinese Odyssey

The clan saga is a common theme in Chinese literature and, in a new memoir, a journalist returns to his family's homeland and the history of China's turbulent 20th century.

Michael Sheridan July 8, 2024

Review

The medieval moment when England emerged from France

During the early years of the 13th century, Philip II of France tried to take the crown of England from a troubled and unpopular King John. The war that followed marked a crucial m..

Nicholas Morton July 2, 2024

Review

The true sources of Soviet conduct

The Soviet Union believed that they were manifestly destined to lead the world to a higher future yet that masked a profound insecurity about their status in the international orde..

Rodric Braithwaite July 1, 2024

Review

Nietzsche’s Italian connection

After his death, Nietzsche's work was mutilated by malign editing, imprecise interpretation and forever associated with 20th-century fascism. The German philosopher owes his more n..

Hugo Drochon June 26, 2024

Review

How not to fight a war in Russia

The Allied Intervention into the Russian Civil War contributed to America’s inter-war isolationism and intensified the Soviet Union's paranoid fear of encirclement.

Christopher Silvester June 26, 2024