FROM THE MAGAZINE

November 2024

Spectator Editorial

The 2024 Hobson’s choice

The 2024 election may come down to whether an electorate firmly in the acceptance stage of grief backslides into the second

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Diary

Why on earth is the 2024 election so nail-bitingly close?

One party seems to have been swallowed by its candidate; the other candidate appears to have been swallowed by her party

By Andrew Sullivan

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

Why Kamala Harris will lose

There will be no Covid to save Democrats this time. Nor will there be an ‘October surprise’ damaging enough to neutralize Trump

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

The turnout election: a tale of two ground games

Voters will determine who has the better strategy

By Amber Duke

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

Unpacking the race for the US Senate

When it comes to what a Trump or Harris presidency could achieve, the answer may be determined by a handful of extremely close senatorial elections

By Ben Domenech

From the Magazine

Education

The Greek guide to swearing an oath

Consider the ancient Greek understanding of the natural world

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

Is Tim Walz an ‘old friend’ of China?

The Democratic VP nominee’s ties leave unanswered questions

By Ian Williams

From the Magazine

Politics

The life and times of Sheldon Whitehouse, the last patrician liberal

The Scheme may not be of much interest, but it certainly tells its reader something about the man whose name is on the cover

By Declan Leary

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

Inside the frazzled mind of the undecided suburban mom voter

I still feel politically homeless, only it’s different: I don’t know which candidate terrifies me more

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Economics

The West faces a new type of housing crisis

Will new generations ever be able to afford a home?

By Joel Kotkin

From the Magazine

Health

The adult ADHD trap

Learn to spot the age-old huckster tricks

By Mary Wakefield

From the Magazine

Letters

Letters from Spectator readers, November 2024

Appalachia and assassination attempts

By The Spectator

From the Magazine

Education

The classroom panopticon

America’s elite has been cowardly and conformist for too long, with effects that are only too obvious

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Middle East

Inside the ‘next Gaza’

Fraught times on the ground in the West Bank

By Fin DePencier

From the Magazine

Middle East

How will history judge Netanyahu?

To be the Israeli Bismarck is no mean feat. But there may be a sting in Bibi’s tail

By Niall Ferguson and Jay Mens

From the Magazine

Politics

The endgame: Biden’s quest for a foreign policy legacy

Dreaming about being a statesman is one thing; being one is quite another

By Daniel DePetris

From the Magazine

China

China’s hostility to the Japanese is growing

The Chinese Communist Party is keen to foster the antagonism

By Cindy Yu

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Books and Arts

Bored of the rings: ‘wokery’ takes on Tolkien

The chief sin of Amazon’s The Rings of Power is that it is often simply dull

By J.S. Barnes

From the Magazine

Book Review

The powerful, brutal story of Polish resistance fighter Elżbieta Zawacka

In Agent Zo, Clare Mulley has written a thrilling, consistently tense page-turner

By Mark Piesing

From the Magazine

Book Review

How music can be weaponized

Rebel Sounds is an uplifting compendium of hidden histories of those who have produced, performed and distributed music in times of war

By Saffron Swire

From the Magazine

Book Review

The Position of Spoons is flawed but fascinating

Deborah Levy’s latest book is a sketch of the author in motion

By Esme Bright

From the Magazine

Book Review

Why Shakespeare remains the great playwright

Rhodri Lewis’s book offers so many fresh insights and well-turned phrases that I had to buy a new notebook to fit them all in

By Philip Womack

From the Magazine

Book Review

The real Kennedy men

Maureen Callahan challenges us to ask whether our American heroes are really who we think they are

By Josie Cox

From the Magazine

Film

How controversial is The Apprentice?

Abbasi’s heady weaving of the antic and the deadly serious may explain some of the criticism that’s been leveled at the film

By Laura Allsop

From the Magazine

Film

Twenty-five years of Fight Club and American Beauty

What the notorious films have to say about masculinity in crisis?

By Amelia Butler-Gallie

From the Magazine

Art

War, one artwork at a time

Ukrainian nationals and their allies have been working tirelessly to promote the voices of a people under siege

By Alexandra Bregman

From the Magazine

Art

A classic monument for World War One

Sabin Howard brings classicism back to the Mall

By William Newton

From the Magazine

Books and Arts

This month in culture: November 2024

What to watch this November

By The Spectator

From the Magazine

Life

Sports

The new worst team in baseball

Perhaps the Chicago White Sox’s swift decline was not the result of a calculated scheme but rather a classic case of Murphy’s Law

By Ryan Spaeder

From the Magazine

Life

Cacophony at the dinner table

The NIH operates a website called Noisy Planet. There you will learn that experts advise you to ‘move away from the noise’

By Billy McMorris

From the Magazine

London Life

How to know when to let friends go

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately because I recently turned seventy and was considering throwing a big birthday party

By Cosmo Landesman

From the Magazine

American Life

‘Democracy’ in New York State

Since democracy is dead in New York, I write in dead persons

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Prejudices

The joy of politics

Does the Old Republican Establishment really believe that it can resurrect, reassemble, recreate itself and run — and win — again?

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Cars

The joy of renting old cars

Simplicity is the point: to strip transportation down to its essence and forget you’re living in 2024

By Adrian Pascu-Tulbure

From the Magazine

Place

Place

A far out weekend at the Vegas Sphere

Dead shows, whether Grateful or & Company, bring a bunch of disparate people together

By Rich Cromwell

From the Magazine

Place

Old texts and Bacon’s Castle: a walk through Virginia history

What Bacon’s Castle looks like inside and out has about it the undeniable strangeness of the past

By Timothy Jacobson

From the Magazine

Place

There’s more to Bordeaux than fine wine

The French city is rich in history, culture and class of all kinds

By Alexander Larman

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Food

Dining with the Chinese food pioneers of New York

‘I feel like New York is the city that is always exploring new things. If you have a new idea, you put it here’

By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

From the Magazine

Food

Chicken soup for the souls: a feast for the dead

In Britain and Ireland, children and poor people would go door to door on November 2, singing and asking for soul cakes

By Jane Stannus

From the Magazine

Drink

A sip of the Vieux Carré

The cocktail is a love letter to the tangled, intoxicating spirit of New Orleans

By Marc Oestreich

From the Magazine

Drink

The objectively, subjectively, best vineyards in the world

Isn’t one’s taste in wine a classic instance of de gustibus non disputandum est? Well, yes and no

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

And Finally

And Finally

The origins of Venn diagrams

They’re the perfect tool for a politician: they make complex issues look simple

By Michael Simmons

From the Magazine

And Finally

The slippery meaning of ‘brat’

It might not define all that Americans want in a president

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine