Short List
What to read this week, from Roger Rosenblatt’s new essays to books on Venice and the origins of humankind
French Leave
Nearly ten years ago Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of rape but managed to avoid jail. A new documentary recounts the incident and its aftermath
Candice Bergen Is No Dummy
What it’s like to work with Meryl Streep. And the man who turned her “to goo”
Zeina Durra
With Luxor, the British filmmaker brings romance to the ruins of the Egyptian Pharaohs
Home for the Holidays
Art, ballet, operas, carols: a cultural guide to a holiday season spent socially distanced and (mostly) at home
Night and Day
The centenarian Eddie Jaku, who survived Kristallnacht and Auschwitz, considers himself “the happiest man on Earth”
The Female Gaze
Alongside a show at Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery, a book re-evaluates the history of photography through the lens of the New Woman
Away with Words
Everybody’s talking, but what’s the point when we have these songs from Charles Mingus, Art Farmer, Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins, and more
Trump in Exile
Where on earth can a defeated, disgraced president go when his White House stint is finished?
He Keeps 007 in Gear
Good news: Ben Whishaw returns as Q in the new James Bond. Not good news: the film is still delayed
On Thin Ice
Confessions of a hockey dad
AIR MAIL’s 10 Best Books of 2020
Music, film, history, and its bad boys: holiday reading for every type
Hollywood Ending
History forgot Arthur Calder-Marshall, the popular writer whose novel was picked up by Orson Welles. Now his grandson plays Welles in David Fincher’s Mank
Just When You Thought He Was Out…
Francis Ford Coppola is pulling us back in with a new edit of The Godfather Part III, timed to the film’s 30th anniversary
The Populist and His Flock
The rise and fall of Father Coughlin, the Depression-era version of the departing president
Elliott Erwitt’s Paris
Photographs capture the romance of the City of Lights but also the whimsy of life on its streets
Groucho’s Dinner with T. S. Eliot
Comedy meets tragedy over roast beef in London
Hypnotized by Chess
Beth Harmon’s doe-eyed gaze reflects centuries of chess in art history
