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Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook

The Great (Culture) War

In 2023, while some cities celebrated femininity with Taylor Swift and Barbie, others pivoted toward angry country music. Do universal pop-culture trends even exist anymore?

Succession, Royals-Style

On Top of the World

A new coffee-table book offers a delightful guide to Alpine travel across France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany

Could You Be an Attention Whore?

On this week’s podcast, the keeper of our Attention-Whore Index reveals the worst of this year’s worst

Boomers vs. Gen Z–ers

Did the baby-boomers have more style? Are Gen Z–ers less reprehensible? Find out in our battle of the generations!

These Hills Are Made for Stalkin’

Visiting Scotland’s Letterewe Estate is like stepping back in time

Postcard New England

The early days of skiing in the United States were wild and woolly, with rope tows, aristocratic instructors, and five-to-a-room boarding houses

For the Ages

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made 24 bold and imaginative films before falling out of favor. Now the duo that Martin Scorsese and Tilda Swinton credit as influences are getting their due

In Search of Misspent Youth

Hormones, horsepower, and hamburgers: the making of American Graffiti

The Real “Danish Girl”?

Lucia Lucas, baritone, walks the walk as the transgender trailblazer Lili Elbe

Side Effects

Neuroscientist Candace Pert’s pioneering medical research was meant to help end drug addiction. Instead, Big Pharma used it to create opioids

English History on LSD

Christmas Eve at the Alberses

The director of the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation recalls re-creating the Berlin holidays of Anni’s youth—complete with beluga caviar and rock lobster—Stateside

The Iceman Cometh

By land, air, and sea, Sir Hubert Wilkins explored the earth’s harshest polar regions—and the hidden depths of the human mind

The Ginsberg Files

Soviet Sojourn

A new coffee-table book collects photographs of dachas, colorful cottages that have dotted the Russian countryside since the 18th century

A Man Out of Time

How Robert Altman and a down-on-his-luck Elliott Gould re-invented the detective movie

Black Emanuelle Matters

A saucy sexploitation-movie series is being re-assessed as a groundbreaking feminist work in an exhaustive new boxed set

The Amsterdam Diaries

The 12 Years a Slave director, Steve McQueen, and his partner, Bianca Stigter, discuss the making of Occupied City, a new documentary about Nazi-era Amsterdam

Why Was the “Indiana Jones of Lost Movies” Accused of Manslaughter?

On this week’s podcast, John von Sothen reports from Paris on a trial fit to be a film

Marguerite Humeau

For her latest exhibition, the French artist has installed nearly 90 sculptures across Colorado’s San Luis Valley

Dispatch from Dickens World

A Lasting Tango in Paris

The homes of 20th-century artists Chana Orloff, Jean Cocteau, Jean Tinguely, Louis Carré, and Serge Gainsbourg, all open to the public, offer escapes into another time