FROM THE MAGAZINE

September 2022

Education

The Roman roots of ‘colony’

The Greeks are better thought of as overseas settlers, often driven by land hunger, starvation, commerce or simply the search for a better life.

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Spectator Editorial

Biden’s border blues

The administration has had plenty of time to end this crisis

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

How to start a university

It’s awe-inspiring to watch the UATX taking shape

By Pano Kanelos

From the Magazine

Culture

A hazy afternoon with Bill Maher

‘The young people are the prudes and don’t find anything funny’

By James Kirchick

From the Magazine

Culture

Shane Gillis is going places

He’s perhaps the greatest rising comedian, a beer drinker who understands Trump’s appeal

By Ben Domenech

From the Magazine

Culture

Why I’ll never make it in stand-up

It’s the hardest, most unforgiving performance medium on the planet

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Business

How Netflix saved comedy

It saturated the market with comics who are on opposite sides of the culture wars

By Art Tavana

From the Magazine

Politics

DeSantis is a Republican establishment win-win

The populist heart may want Trump, but many heads are for the Florida governor

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Politics

Is the right about to backslide on gay rights?

It’s been dismaying to see anti-gay sentiment bubbling up

By Bruce Bawer

From the Magazine

Europe

Ukraine is the first streaming service war

It debuted to a burst of attention only for everyone to lose interest

By Matt Purple

From the Magazine

Policy

My New York nightmare

I’m back in a city where you can’t walk alone after dark. Thank you, Democrats!

By Ann Coulter

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

The strange effort to ‘decolonize’ global health

Some are unctuously eager to respect non-Western premises about medicine

By Peter W. Wood

From the Magazine

Education

The lost boys of Covid

School closures have set off a devastating domino effect

By Bethany Mandel

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

The trouble with Tavistock

Abuse is heaped on anyone who has questioned the trend toward carelessness in youth gender medicine

By Jesse Singal

From the Magazine

Business

The scissor sisters

I hate to break it to you, ladies, but no man wants a woman barber

By Chadwick Moore

From the Magazine

Internet

Taylor Lorenz is a crybully

She mines outrage and attention by crusading against the ethically unenlightened

By Ashley Rindsberg

From the Magazine

Politics

The real motivation for the FBI raid

It wasn’t to collect classified documents

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Economics

The revenge of the analog economy

Digital fantasies have collided with analog reality

By Joel Kotkin

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Book Review

No stone unturned

Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, has written a very bad book

By Russ Smith

From the Magazine

Book Review

Porn again

There’s no reconciling the clash between the sex positivity movement and chastity

By Madeleine Kearns

From the Magazine

Books

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at 100

A century after its first publication, the poem still defies easy categorization

By Alexander Larman

From the Magazine

Book Review

Paul Theroux’s family values

He’s never been averse to writing about toxic family relationships

By Philip Womack

From the Magazine

Book Review

A.M. Homes’s state of paranoia

Her latest leaves us stranded between serious fiction and a particularly extreme Reddit forum

By Francesca Peacock

From the Magazine

Book Review

The faulty towers of higher education

The college system is broken — can it be fixed?

By Christopher J. Scalia

From the Magazine

Book Review

Frank Buckley’s right direction

Can a socially conservative, economically centrist GOP win elections?

By William Murchison

From the Magazine

Television

The time trap of Irma Vep

The HBO Max miniseries shows a rare interest in the present moment

By Nicky Otis Smith

From the Magazine

Music

Country music finds its independent streak

New singers are bucking bro-country and reconnecting with their roots

By Amber Duke

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

Chroma chameleon

The Met brings out its bread and butter: stunning galleries devoted to Greek and Roman art

By Mario Naves

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

Not your average Jo

Joanna Hiffernan is now at the center of The Woman in White, an exhibition at the NGA

By Jane Coombs

From the Magazine

Television

Closing the curtain on Norm Macdonald’s comedy

He was willing to pulverize all we hold dear in modern America

By Billy McMorris

From the Magazine

Film

Crimes of the Future is David Cronenberg at his best

Which scenes will cause you to walk out or flee in disgust? Caveat emptor

By Gavin Smith

From the Magazine

Life

Place

From Moscow to Kyiv and back again

War and revolution have trailed me like banshees

By Vijai Maheshwari

From the Magazine

Place

A Joycean odyssey

In search of the Irish author’s Swiss resting place

By David Marcus

From the Magazine

High Life

How Monte Carlo went to hell

It’s overbuilt, overcrowded, and straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting

By Taki

From the Magazine

Low Life

The power of prayerful washing-up

I’ve failed to cheer myself with strong alcohol, CBD and speed, so I went to the local nuns

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

London Life

Getting in touch with my inner groupie

Wonder what sort of a sad sack asks for a selfie with someone famous? Answer: me

By Cosmo Landesman

From the Magazine

American Life

The downfall of Niagara Falls

The city, not the waterfall, which remains a source of utter befuddlement

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Prejudices

Politicians are not ‘just like us’

At least Trump won’t go down in the history books as ‘Don’ or ‘Donnie’

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Drink

In praise of liquor stores

Where else can one encounter such diversity?

By Teresa Mull

From the Magazine

Food

Eating well at a time of inflation

Cooking is a duty, a vocation and an adventure, requiring grace and wisdom as much as ingredients and recipes

By Mary Kate Skehan

From the Magazine

Food

On constant gardening

Nature, in the firm hands of the gardener, is trained up to produce food for people

By Jane Stannus

From the Magazine

Food

Spending Labor Day on the Cape

This time of year always makes me nostalgic for the New England coast

By Calla Jones Corner

From the Magazine

Drink

The bucolic Beaujolais

There is a time for every wine

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

And Finally

And Finally

Thinking about baby names

Why do Americans insist on using last names as first names?

By Matt McDonald

From the Magazine

And Finally

The etymological ingredients of ‘flageons’

It’s useful to have a name ready when the family asks at dinner: “What’s this?”

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine