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Issue No. 26

The View from Here

Our fearless leader didn’t waste any time in lacquering the dawn of 2020 with his trademark carroty-orange stain…

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The Jeffrey Epstein of Paris Why did the Café de Flore set protect the pedophile who was abusing their children?

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Small Talk
“Well, well. Look who’s back from trying to make it in the big city.”

Throne Out Are Meghan and Harry the new Wallis and Prince of Wales?

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Letter from Cairo In Egypt, a bad feeling about what the fallout from the Soleimani assassination might bring

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Best

Why WeWork WeTanked It is arguably the greatest business flameout of the past decade. How did a company lose $20 billion in valuation in four weeks?

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The Godfather of Comedy After The Death of Stalin and Veep, Armando Iannucci brings a new comedy to HBO, and a new David Copperfield to the screen

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Must-See Events

America’s Storyteller

“I paint the American scene,” said the artist Jacob Lawrence. That dramatic story encompassed the American Revolution, the building of the Erie Canal, the Civil War, Sacagawea, Paul Revere, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown. It also included the Great Migration north from the Jim Crow South, the lives of everyday New Yorkers, and Lawrence’s stint, during W.W. II, in the first fully racially integrated U.S. Coast Guard crew. READ ON

One of 30 paintings in Lawrence’s “Struggle” series, re-united for a national tour that arrives at New York’s Metropolitan Museum on August 29.

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Discover

Pantries in a Twist At 60, the glamorous gourmande Nigella Lawson has taken herself off the boil

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Small Talk
“Next, I will attempt to escape a sentence that begins ‘I’m not racist, but…’”

All Fact-Checked on the Western Front How much in Sam Mendes’s film 1917 is actually true?

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Style

Designing the Future A new generation will upend how the billion-dollar luxury brands do business—and what you wear

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Small Talk
“Latte for name withheld.”

Up in Flames Are Australia’s fires evidence we’ve crossed a tipping point?

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Achtweet! Useful German words for these difficult modern times

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Natural High

When Arturo Toscanini, that most exacting of maestros, spoke the words “the voice of an angel,” he had in mind the matchless Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi. These days, wordsmiths are lavishing the same compliment on the Frenchman Philippe Jaroussky, a countertenor currently on tour with the pianist Jérôme Ducros, stopping next at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, in Valencia. Might Toscanini, who died in 1957, ever have encountered the likes of such a beast? READ ON

The countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, whose tour with pianist Jérôme Ducros stops at Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia tomorrow, is something of a superstar in his native France. Here, he attends the unveiling of his waxwork at the Musée Grévin, in Paris.

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Discover
Small Talk
“You can be whatever you want to be, but you’ll probably turn out like me.”

The Off-Road Ahead Authenticity doesn’t get more authentic than the venerable Land Rover Defender, now (finally) updated to the point of James Bond–worthiness

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How to Be Cool and Warm at Once The irreplaceable publisher Sonny Mehta, who died on December 30, possessed the rare ability to unite style and sincerity

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Small Talk
“Don’t, son—once they cross over into meats, they’re out of our jurisdiction.”

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Leslie Jamison On the books worth obsessing over

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Books

Eight Days at Yalta: How Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin Shaped the Post-War World

by Diana Preston
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Will

by Will Self
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Why We’re Polarized

by Ezra Klein
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The North Korean Job The author of the first English-language book on Kim Jong Un explains the dotard-trolling dictator’s mysterious rise

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Small Talk
“Either it’s a toad trapped in a cement mixer, or Tom Waits is ordering room service.”

Maurice Bailey Lost at sea with his wife in 1973. The couple survived on a raft for 117 days

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Lola Rykiel

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Ask Richard

This winter, I want to do something different with the family that’s a little more adventurous than lolling on the beach in Anguilla or downhilling at Beaver Creek. We’re not very sporty, mind you, but we do like the occasional hike.

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He’s Got Swing

Tasked with inventing the world’s most intimidating musician, a novelist could do worse than to create Anthony Braxton. If the name alone—building rhythmically toward that spiky, algebraic x—fails to daunt, consider this sentence from his voluminous writings: “Composition No. 105B is a material and principle generating structural world that establishes a multiple construction structural identity in its principal material identity (sense) as well as a medium tempo constructed sensibility in its extended sense.”

Note that rather than name his compositions, Braxton numbers them; he also “titles” them with schematic doodles that look like Feynman diagrams rendered by Keith Haring. READ ON

MacArthur-crowned composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton celebrates his 75th birthday with a standard quartet at London’s Cafe Oto (January 19 through 21).

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Discover

Is Edited By

Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

Deputy Editors

Chris Garrett Michael Hainey George Kalogerakis Nathan King

Design Director

Angela Panichi

Chief Technology Officer

John Tornow

Books Editor

Jim Kelly

Arts Intel Report Editor

Laura Jacobs

Style Editor

Ashley Baker

Articles Editor

Ash Carter

Senior Editor

Julia Vitale

Columnists

Cazzie David Emma Freud Walter Isaacson
Pico Iyer John Lahr James Wolcott

Photo Director

Ann Schneider

Cartoon Editor

Bob Mankoff

Music Supervisor

Randall Poster

Assistant Editors

Elena Clavarino Clementine Ford Alex Oliveira

International Editor

Isabelle Harvie-Watt

London Editor

Bridget Arsenault

Copy Editor

Adam Nadler

Photo Editor

Emine Gozde Sevim

Production Editor

H. Scott Jolley

Associate Editor

Elinor Schneider

Chief Operating Officer

Bill Keenan

Chief Marketing Officer

Emily Davis

Brand Partnerships

Anjali Lewis

Financial & Business Operations

Marc Leyer

Integrated Marketing Manager

Madeline Spates

Issue No. 26
January 11, 2020
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Issue No. 26
January 11, 2020

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