FROM THE MAGAZINE

July 2021

Mar-a-Lago nights with Donald Trump

Since the election last November, Mar-a-Lago has taken on a new significance

By Nigel Farage

From the Magazine

Is hugging important to health?

A study by Carnegie Mellon University published in the journal Psychological Science in 2015 claimed so

By The Spectator

From the Magazine

Politics

Is J.D. Vance the right man for the right?

The author’s prospective Senate bid is interesting as more than just a test of Trumpism without Trump

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Politics

Time to end the MAGA madness

The Republicans need to separate the MAGA from the message

By Dominic Green

From the Magazine

International

Why the West is best

Western civilization may not be perfect, we haven’t seen anything like it anywhere else in human history

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

From the Magazine

Politics

A party and a half

The current political disposition of the United States is at most a one-and-a-half party system

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Politics

Is New York coming back?

P.J. Clarke’s is open again, the masks are off, the brews are cold, the regulars are back

By Sohrab Ahmari

From the Magazine

Middle East

What happens when your currency collapses?

The Lebanese are living through a terrible economic experiment

By Paul Wood

From the Magazine

Politics

How to fight with your family

We should aspire to a better quality of family argument

By Mary Kate Skehan

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

When do vaccine incentives become coercive?

The technocrats are nudging us into a dystopia

By Laura Dodsworth

From the Magazine

Politics

The DeSantis doctrine

DeSantis is perfectly positioned to become the next Republican leader — if Trump steps aside

By Amber Duke

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

The return of the UFOs

Roughly a third of American adults believe that some UFOs are alien spacecraft

By Andrew Stuttaford

From the Magazine

International

Will the right save Julian Assange?

If the United States succeeds in its case against Assange, it will set a chilling precedent

By Phoebe Greenwood

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

What the media gets wrong on gender reassignment

The media is guilty of gross negligence on gender reassignment reporting

By Jesse Singal

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

A matter of life and death

The space between a biopsy and the results

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Spectator Editorial

America isn’t back. Global grandstanding is

Don’t expect any meaningful solutions to the world’s biggest problems

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Politics

Identity crisis: how the politics of race will wreck America

Advocating double standards for people on top and everyone else is a bad idea

By Charles Murray

From the Magazine

Politics

Can Mike Pence win in 2024?

‘Rush Limbaugh on decaf’ doesn’t seem right for this political moment

By Matt Purple

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Film

Watching The Woman in the Window

The Woman in the Window reviewed

By Nicky Otis Smith

From the Magazine

Podcasts

Mind of a murderer

Podcasting rose on the true crime boom — and it’s still the easiest way to build a show and an audience

By Jessa Crispin

From the Magazine

Music

No success like failure

Why does no one talk about how most artistic careers end in failure?

By Rosie Millard

From the Magazine

Dance

The dark history of dance marathons

The craze that swept the US in the Roaring Twenties became a theater of cruelty that fed on the desperation of Depression-era Americans

By Stuart Jeffries

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

Girls on film

New Woman Behind the Camera brings together the whimsical and the confrontational to show how modernism shaped photography

By Katrina Gulliver

From the Magazine

Books

Is caste the American class system?

Only in fiction did Faulkner dare to reveal what he knew about the code of caste

By Carl Rollyson

From the Magazine

Book Review

Clive Bell: apostle of modernism

Clive Bell and the Making of Modernism by Mark Hussey reviewed

By Tom Williams

From the Magazine

Book Review

Men of letters

The Crichel Boys: Scenes from England’s Last Literary Salon by Simon Fenwick reviewed

By Peter Parker

From the Magazine

Music

The legend of forgotten musical genius Mieczyslaw Weinberg

Dismissed as a dime-store Shostakovich, then praised as a major modern composer

By Damian Thompson

From the Magazine

Book Review

Unsuitable attachments

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne reviewed

By Philip Hensher

From the Magazine

Film

Vacation time

The enduring popularity of the Vacation series reflects not just the American appetite for travel, but also that old American virtue of gung-ho optimism

By Peter Tonguette

From the Magazine

Book Review

Napoleon, the constant gardener

Napoleon: A Life Told in Gardens and Shadows by Ruth Scurr reviewed

By David Crane

From the Magazine

Life

Home

The error of idealism

Idealism comes naturally to liberal societies because it has no inherent principles and no rules to follow

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Home

In the footsteps of Shoeless Joe

Greenville’s favorite son is the poetically tragic Shoeless Joe Jackson, the illiterate millhand whom Babe Ruth called ‘the greatest hitter I had ever seen’

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Language

The hijacking of the Scots language

Scots has been used as a spoken and a literary language

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine

Low Life

The curse of surgical stockings

As I wrestled with mine, my ward mate hung his head in shame

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

Home

Thirty years ago, I saw the rebels take Addis Ababa

I was the only foreign correspondent there — and it was the best day of my life

By Aidan Hartley

From the Magazine

Home

In defense of Spirit Airlines

For too long has Spirit been the punchline of hastily written Saturday Night Live jokes

By Matt McDonald

From the Magazine

High Life

The new nights of New York

As the city reopens, one thing is for sure. The glamour days of Studio 54, Xenon and other fleshpots are not about to return

By Taki

From the Magazine

Home

Prince Charles’s dilemma

Charles, Prince of Wales, is having a little trouble with his son Harry

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Place

Gibraltar rocks on

Gibraltar is no longer a colonial outpost. It feels modern, cosmopolitan

By William Cook

From the Magazine

Style

The season for seersucker

As the milk and sugar of summer, seersucker is best enjoyed full gulp

By James Panero

From the Magazine

Place

Place

Memo from Montecito

Trading places with Meghan and Harry

By Calla Jones Corner

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Drink

The need for mead

Whence comes this mead madness?

By Jane Stannus

From the Magazine

Drink

The dark side of energy drinks

Are energy drinks the work of the Devil?

By Ben Sixsmith

From the Magazine

Food

My night at the Cheesecake Factory

The Cheesecake Factory is what a fashionable French writer would create in a novel if he needed a restaurant to embody American food excesses

By Zack Christenson

From the Magazine

Drink

The green, green wines of Portugal

Grab a case before setting out on your next boat trip or barbecue

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine