Joshua Yaffa

Short reviews of recent releases.

Ben Whishaw: Paddington actor to star in Waiting for Godot. . . . Whishaw has previously played gadget guru Q in the James Bond films. — BBC.com.

On August 7, 1829, Felix Mendelssohn took a steamer from the Scottish mainland to the grandly rugged island of Mull, in the Inner Hebrides.

“Glory be to god for septic tanks, drainage pipes: / for conversions thermodynamic and of the soul.”

How Southern California became the epicenter of hype diets and twenty-dollar smoothies.

“S outh of Pico ,” by Kellie Jones—a 2017 book about a circle of Black artists in Los Angeles in the nineteen-sixties and seventies—is a landmark work and a great gift to contemporary art history.

Readers respond to Judith Thurman's essay about Simone Weil and Maggie Doherty's review of a volume of Seamus Heaney's letters.

Chris Martin, the band's front man, discusses reading Rumi, making music like an apple tree grows apples, and the band's new album, “Moon Music.”

Joshua Yaffa writes that the Trump Administration will likely take the lead in any negotiations to end the war—a development that Vladimir Putin would welcome.

As the Biden Administration approves new weaponry for Ukrainian forces, Putin has invoked Russia’s nuclear arsenal, but neither move is likely to significantly alter the trajectory of the war.