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2 days ago | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | John McWhorter |Jeffrey Anderson |Christopher Caldwell |Andrew E. Busch
Download There is a rhyme in Ira Gershwin’s lyric for “Someone to Watch Over Me” that is easily missed when the song is sung in a rhythmically flexible ballad style, as it usually is today:Although he may not be the man someGirls think of as handsomeTo my heart he’ll carry the key. That level of quiet yet fierce craft is classic Ira Gershwin, and yet it is no surprise that Michael Owen’s Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words is the first full-length biography of him.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Michael Evans |Jacob Heilbrunn |Christopher Caldwell |Lisa Haseldine
With all the good news coming out of the Jeddah talks about a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, there’s only one question that needs to be answered: Will President Putin be interested in any kind of deal right now? President Trump is convinced that Putin wants peace.
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2 months ago | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Barry Strauss |Christopher Caldwell |Andrew E. Busch |Daniel Mahoney
Ptolemaic Egypt is a paradox. The kingdom was founded by Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s generals. It lasted for about three centuries, from 305 to 30 B.C.—roughly the length of the Hellenistic period that followed Alexander’s death in 323 B.C. Its long-term contribution to civilization was enormous.
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2 months ago | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Christopher Caldwell |Kyle Smith |Charles Kesler |William Voegeli
The amazing thing about Donald Trump’s arrival in office for his second term has been the sheer consequentiality of it. What felt like an inflection has proved a revolution. Dreams that seemed alive to some people just six months ago—transcending binary sexuality, for example—are dead and discredited. So are the state mechanisms by which such dreams were imposed—affirmative action, speech codes, and so on.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
newstatesman.com | Christopher Caldwell
In late November, a California judge rejected a demand by several women’s volleyball teams to disqualify a transgender player for San Jose State before this year’s tournament. Six opponents have forfeited games against the team this year rather than collude in what they see as cheating. The larger question of transgender athletes in college sports will be decided later, but the judge is defending a lost cause.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Christopher Caldwell |Craig Kennedy |Martha Bayles |William Voegeli
Three days before his sweeping victory this fall, Donald Trump promised a crowd in Salem, Virginia that Election Day 2024 would be the most important day in the history of our country. What are we to make of that statement? On the one hand, it’s nonsense: Had this year’s election taken place in April 1865, it might not even have qualified as runner-up for most important day of the week.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
tribalcollegejournal.org | Brianna Reed |Madison Weingust |Markus Altaha |Christopher Caldwell
Posoh Netaehnaehwamakank (greetings to all my relatives). I volunteered to write the introduction for this edition of the TCJ on artificial intelligence (AI) because it was an opportunity to learn more about this highly relevant technology. When I first started thinking about AI, much of my understanding was based on older movies I grew up with, like Blade Runner, The Terminator, or The Matrix.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | Christopher Caldwell
For American politicians, all wars are two-front wars. There is a hot battlefield somewhere in the Middle East or the South China Sea, and there’s a political battlefield in Washington, D.C. The domestic contest is decisive. The same goes for Europe. With Joe Biden riding into the sunset and the presidential campaign drawing to a close, American interest in Ukraine is winding down, too.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Christopher Caldwell
For American politicians, all wars are two-front wars. There is a hot battlefield somewhere in the Middle East or the South China Sea, and there’s a political battlefield in Washington, D.C. The domestic contest is decisive. The same goes for Europe. With Joe Biden riding into the sunset and the presidential campaign drawing to a close, American interest in Ukraine is winding down, too. Europeans talking tough about ‘standing up’ to Russia had better be prepared to do so on their own.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
claremontreviewofbooks.com | Daniel Mahoney |Will Thibeau |Douglas A. Jeffrey |Christopher Caldwell
Simone Weil (1909–1943) was one of the great souls of the 20th century. She was flawed in many respects, but she possessed a rare and admirable sensitivity to things of the spirit. Though she came from a comfortably bourgeois family of French Jews and graduated from the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, she deeply sympathized with the afflictions of the poor.
