FROM THE MAGAZINE

June 2024

Spectator Editorial

Why the Gaza protests are worrying

These encampments are remarkable not by their tactics but by what’s being said

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Diary

A Midwest road trip

The Notre Dame stadium exudes love and respect! Just look at it! What that stadium says about the infinite dignity of man!

By James Donald Forbes McCann

From the Magazine

Politics

The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare

Hercules had to undertake twelve supposedly impossible labors. Donald Trump is fast catching up

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

The Trump trial tedium

The plethora of cases across the country have combined to seal the former president’s hold on the GOP

By Ben Domenech

From the Magazine

Politics

Campus unrest is coming to a city near you

The activist far left are masters at appearing innocent to people who give them passing attention

By Julio Rosas

From the Magazine

Policy

Will Cherelle Parker become the next ‘America’s mayor’ in Philadelphia?

Philly’s Democratic mayor is putting anti-crime measures at the top of her agenda

By Richard Koenig

From the Magazine

Politics

Pennsylvania at the polls

The Keystone State remains a powerhouse, particularly when it comes to politics

By Teresa Mull

From the Magazine

China

How China spies

The intelligence community has its work cut out to counter CCP espionage

By Nigel Inkster

From the Magazine

Education

What was it like to be nouveau riche in Pompeii?

Frescoes are always the lead story in reports of the latest finds, but they are only a part of a much bigger picture

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Family

Dads rock

One sure sign of a great father: if he’s even aware of him at all, he’s unimpressed by Andrew Tate

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Diary

Where to find self-esteem

God understood that the Israelites created the golden calf out of a crisis of confidence

By Batya Ungar-Sargon

From the Magazine

Letters

Letters from Spectator readers, June 2024

Ballots, baseball and blue-collar jobs

By The Spectator

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

AI and the new way of war

The killer robots are coming

By Paul Wood

From the Magazine

Europe

Is Europe ready for Trump 2.0?

European leaders are operating as if the former president has already won, not wanting to be caught flat-footed yet again

By Daniel DePetris

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

Biden’s base rebels over Gaza

Progressives hate Trump. But they hate Israel’s war more

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Middle East

The fight among the olive trees

On the ground as fighting between Hezbollah and Israel intensifies

By Fin DePencier

From the Magazine

Policy

The case for cartel wars

The southern border is collapsing. The only way to reestablish it is to make war on those who actually control it

By John Daniel Davidson

From the Magazine

Politics

Meet Jon Davidson, chief of staff to the stars

Bill Clinton’s top aide doesn’t appear the slightest bit averse to using his boss’s power, fame and resources

By William D. Cohan

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Book Review

An incisive memoir of life in the cloisters

Catherine Coldstream refuses to be bitter and Cloistered is all the more beautiful, and holy, as a result

By Fergus Butler-Gallie

From the Magazine

Book Review

Nellie Bowles critiques progressivism and the media that covers it

One of many fascinating things to be learned from Morning After the Revolution is the process by which someone gets canceled

By Ed Zotti

From the Magazine

Book Review

A history of the LGBTQ+ aspects of the Boy Scout movement

Mike De Socio’s Morally Straight details how forty years of gay activism diversified the group for the better

By Mitchell Jackson

From the Magazine

Book Review

Salman Rushdie’s memoir is a devastating and powerful account of near-death

The writer remains strong, his determination to write a beacon for anyone who cares about freedom of thought and speech

By Philip Womack

From the Magazine

Book Review

A skillful retelling of one of World War Two’s most dramatic stories

Nahlah Ayed transports the reader to World War Two as experienced by the brave SOE agents who landed behind enemy lines

By Mark Piesing

From the Magazine

Books

Christopher Priest was a grievously underrated novelist

His career represented a sequence of missed opportunities for the world beyond his chosen genre to recognize his skill and quiet profundity

By J.S. Barnes

From the Magazine

Art

Was the psychedelic art movement worth it?

This month marks the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of hippie culture itself

By Amelia Butler-Gallie

From the Magazine

Music

The individualistic talents of the Pet Shop Boys

The eccentricity and idiosyncrasy of Britain’s most commercially successful duo should be cherished and extolled

By Alexander Larman

From the Magazine

Theater

The new revival of The Wiz is psychologically bland

The original cultural punch of the 1970s production has been replaced with gaudy, empty commercialism

By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

From the Magazine

Art

The digital Ozymandias: Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian on his mission to make Giza last forever

‘I’d like to say we’re trying to be the repository for Giza’s past, Giza’s present and Giza’s future’

By William Newton

From the Magazine

Books and Arts

This month in culture: June 2024

Our guide to what should be on your radar

By The Spectator

From the Magazine

Life

Life

The ins and outs of fatherhood

Our tolerance for panic blossoms alongside our progeny

By Billy McMorris

From the Magazine

London Life

How to be friends with young people

I never discuss my sex life or the state of my prostate with anyone under sixty

By Cosmo Landesman

From the Magazine

American Life

Gazing at the eclipse in Walt Whitman’s perfect silence

Is it possible to love a science, or any branch of knowledge, despite one’s abysmal ignorance thereof?

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Prejudices

Should elders be respected?

For the American people, the past is either dead or it is bunk, and the present, being unreformed and highly unsatisfactory, leaves them with only the future to believe in

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Place

Place

Loving Las Vegas

Food tastes so much better with jetlag

By Ross Anderson

From the Magazine

Place

On D-Day at eighty

All the sadness of lost youth hovers over Normandy

By Timothy Jacobson

From the Magazine

Place

A terrible tale of a French village

With the eightieth anniversary of the Oradour massacre this summer, the descendants of the victims are making sure they are not forgotten

By Calla Jones Corner

From the Magazine

Place

The Galápagos evolution even Darwin didn’t foresee

Is eco-tourism sustainable? The islands will tell

By Kevin Petersen

From the Magazine

Place

Dispatch from an unloved borough

Staten Island shouldn’t be overlooked

By Josie Cox

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Food

The plague of picky eating

What mother doesn’t worry about what her children eat?

By Hannah Moore

From the Magazine

Food

Summer flavor pairings

How do we work out which foods go together?

By Jane Stannus

From the Magazine

Drink

Loving and tweaking the Long Island Iced Tea

It’s not so much a drink as a chemical formula designed to make an enormous percentage of alcohol consumable in a single glass

By Ross Anderson

From the Magazine

Drink

The thoroughly underrated Pessac-Léognan

What makes the relative neglect regrettable as well as odd is the high quality of the wines from the region

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

And Finally

And Finally

Kippers could save your life

My wife won’t let me eat them at home, and they have become a rarity in restaurants

By Andrew Watts

From the Magazine

And Finally

We ought to banish more words

The phrase ‘Wait. What?’ is the verbal equivalent of a double take

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine