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Crime and Scandal
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April 2, 2022
The Best
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No. 142
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Edition
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In This Week’s Issue
Work-Life Balance?

Putin’s true motivation for his disastrous war? As Stuart Heritage theorizes, a man desperate to avoid a nagging wife, ex-mistresses, and numerous kids will create a distraction. Any distraction …

Moscow on the Thames

From London, Patrick Kidd wonders how it’s O.K. that a member of the House of Lords moonlighted as the top executive of Oleg Deripaska’s energy company …

General Deception

Christopher Buckley imagines the rather awkward conversations now taking place between Putin and his military leadership …

From The Vaults

From New York, Spike Carter unspools long-forgotten movie gems that have been made available to film-lovers everywhere …

Feel the Burn!

Forty years after Jane Fonda released her VHS workout tape, Linda Wells catches up with the woman who changed women’s fitness …

Learn From the Best

Michael Lewis, the man behind Moneyball and other masterpieces of cultural reporting, answers our Take Five questionnaire, sharing what he’s watching and reading right now …

But First …
Issue No. 142

The View from Here Extramarital affairs, multiple children, mysterious wealth—who is the man behind the Iron Drapes?

By Stuart Heritage
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Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook
Take Five

Michael Lewis The Moneyball, Blind Side, and Big Short author on what he’s seeing, reading, watching, and listening to—and why he’s finally coming around to his dog

Read On
Small Talk

Potemkin War Room Putin advisers tiptoe their way through the minefields in the Kremlin

By Christopher Buckley
Read On
Style

Full Circle Following a career as a model, and a marriage to music legend Jimmy Iovine, Liberty Ross is reimagining her family business by bringing roller-skating to Rockefeller Center

By Laura Craik
Read On
Best
Indulge Synful Eats Cookies are always a good idea, and even more so if they’re baked by chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants. Sydney and Michael Hursa… Listen Here I Are: Anatomy of a Marriage Told by the husband-and-wife team of Alex Belth and Emily Shapiro, this Audible Original is one… Watch X It’s 1979 and a girl (Mia Goth) who knows she’s beautiful goes to rural Texas with a director (who is also her boyfriend), two porn actors… Wear La Veste If you know us at all, you know we like terry cloth by the pool—in more than just our towels. So when La Veste, the kitschy Spanish brand… Apply Supergoop! Even those who religiously apply sunscreen to their face are prone to leaving the delicate skin around their eyes to languish in the sun… Clean Steamery Stockholm Three Swedish friends were dissatisfied with the way modern man treated his sweaters: … Indulge Synful Eats Cookies are always a good idea, and even more so if they’re baked by chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants. Sydney and Michael Hursa… Listen Here I Are: Anatomy of a Marriage Told by the husband-and-wife team of Alex Belth and Emily Shapiro, this Audible Original is one… Watch X It’s 1979 and a girl (Mia Goth) who knows she’s beautiful goes to rural Texas with a director (who is also her boyfriend), two porn actors… Wear La Veste If you know us at all, you know we like terry cloth by the pool—in more than just our towels. So when La Veste, the kitschy Spanish brand… Apply Supergoop! Even those who religiously apply sunscreen to their face are prone to leaving the delicate skin around their eyes to languish in the sun… Clean Steamery Stockholm Three Swedish friends were dissatisfied with the way modern man treated his sweaters: …
Little Britain

Moscow on the Thames How was a member of the House of Lords allowed to moonlight as the multi-millionaire head of oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s energy company?

By Patrick Kidd
Read On
Air Supply

Bahama Breeze

Set your out-of-office message and ease into vacation mode with sunny delights worthy of any spring-break suitcase
Shop
Photo: Popperfoto/Getty Images (beachgoers)
Guest Edit

My Favorite Things Victoria Lampley’s lifelong love of fine jewelry has informed her career in fashion. Now, with her new consultancy firm, the Stax Advisory, she helps bauble-lovers of all varieties curate collections of their own. Here, her favorite jewels with personality

By Victoria Lampley
Shop
Small Talk
“And do you, Brian, pledge to listen attentively and offer no analysis or solutions of any kind, unless explicitly asked to do so?”
“And do you, Brian, pledge to listen attentively and offer no analysis or solutions of any kind, unless explicitly asked to do so?”
Beauty and Wellness

Eye of the Beholder Thanks to Jane Fonda’s Workout, leotards and leg lifts became enduring cultural phenomena. Forty years after the video’s debut, Fonda is still astonished that it worked

By Linda Wells
Read On
Film

A New Gold Mine for Movie-Lovers Fun City Editions gives fans access to long-out-of-circulation treasures

By Spike Carter
Read On

The Garbo Modigliani

One of Greta Garbo’s favorite paintings was Modigliani’s Portrait of a Girl, believed to be a depiction of his lover Beatrice Hastings. “Garbo would enjoy it with her evening scotch and a Nat Sherman Cigarettello that she held so elegantly with her gemstone-encrusted Van Cleef & Arpels holder,” Gray Horan, Garbo’s grandniece, tells me. The painting, an oil on cardboard, 14 inches by 10 inches, circa 1915, is part of a Modigliani exhibition that will open next week at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, in Osaka, Japan. READ ON

Amedeo Modigliani’s Portrait of a Girl, which was bought by Greta Garbo.

Read On
Discover

Click here to visit

Don’t Miss
Salzburg

Catch it while you can: a selection of rarely exhibited works by Robert Rauschenberg steals the spotlight at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac …

Seoul

Get surreal: Lehmann Maupin displays Lari Pittman’s Surrealist paintings of advertisements …

Sydney

The Tolstoy twist: a ballet based on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina takes the stage at the Sydney Opera House …

Wakefield

Old threads: more than 70 woven works made by Sheila Hicks go on view at the Hepworth Wakefield, in the English countryside …

Online

Heart of Glass: ahead of its return to the Met stage, a 2019 performance of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten streams on the Metropolitan Opera Web site …

Ukraine

Churchill with an iPhone Ukrainian president Zelensky handles his end of the war the way he ran his TV business—as a show-runner

By Jonathan Freedland
Read On
Listen

Can Love Actually Explain Putin’s Behavior? How a rom-com just might help us understand a very troubled man …

Read On
Small Talk
“Hello, ma’am! Have you ever looked at other shark owners and thought, ‘Why not me?’ … ”
“Hello, ma’am! Have you ever looked at other shark owners and thought, ‘Why not me?’ … ”
Air Mail Diary

Emmanuel Macron Gets Some Very Expensive Advice And other strange news about these curious days …

By George Kalogerakis
Read On
Close-up

India Ennenga and Sebastian Clark The duo sending pocket-size books—collaborations with artists and writers—to people around the world

By Elena Clavarino
Read On
Small Talk
“I sympathize. It’s weird for me, too.”
“I sympathize. It’s weird for me, too.”
Modern Times

A Starbucks for the Next-Gen Set The fast-growing, tech-bro-funded Blank Street aims to be a younger, cooler version of staid coffee chains. It may have misjudged its customers

By Jensen Davis
Read On
Air Mail Jr.
Read On
Travel

Now That’s Wild At Kasiiya Papagayo, in Costa Rica, nature and nurturing collide in unexpected ways

By Catherine Fairweather
Read On
Open Book

“Hold It Right There … ” With a devoted following among the fashion crowd—and a girlfriend in Kate Moss—Nikolai von Bismarck is London’s photographer of the moment

By Vassi Chamberlain
7
Lila Grace Moss Hack, photographed by Nikolai von Bismarck for his new book, The Fendi Set.
Kesewa Aboah
Top, a haunting tableau; above, the interior of Charleston House, featuring Standing Male Nude (1935), by Duncan Grant.
Leonetta Luciano Fendi
Cara Delevingne
Miriam Sánchez, photographed at the spring-summer ’21 Fendi haute couture show in Paris.
Von Bismarck has a special affinity for landscapes.
Read On
Books

Brainspotting The world-renowned neurologist A. J. Lees is on a mission to humanize doctors

By George Pendle
Read On
Small Talk
“We find the defendant guilty of gaslighting, lovebombing, and first-degree breadcrumbing.”
“We find the defendant guilty of gaslighting, lovebombing, and first-degree breadcrumbing.”
Books
Roger Lewis On

Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II

by Robert Hardman
Read On
Thomas Mallon On

Young Mungo

by Douglas Stuart
Read On

Murder, They Wrote

by Lisa Henricksson
Read On
Air Play

Prized Scores

Here’s to the music that makes films swing, from Philip Glass, Nino Rota, Alexandre Desplat, and others

By Randall Poster
View on Spotify
Read On
Pamela Sztybel’s Sketchbook
13
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I started creating a daily illustration based on news headlines from reliable sources. I thought I was done after a year, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last month, I was compelled to begin my project again. This is personal for me—my paternal grandmother was born in Kyiv. She fled to Poland during the Russian Revolution and was forced to flee again, with my grandfather and my then 12-year-old father, three days after the Nazis invaded Poland, in 1939. I wouldn’t be here today, safe, brush in hand, without their courage and the kindness of strangers. Chef José Andrés exemplifies that kindness: his World Central Kitchen is providing hot meals to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border. You can support his efforts here.
Is Edited By

Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley

Deputy Editors

Ashley Baker Chris Garrett Michael Hainey Nathan King Julia Vitale

Design Director

Angela Panichi

Chief Technology Officer

John Tornow

Books Editor

Jim Kelly

Arts Intel Report Editor

Laura Jacobs

Features Editor

Ash Carter

Executive Editor

David Foxley

Consulting Editor

Brendan Burford

Photo Director

Ann Schneider

Associate Editors

Elena Clavarino Jensen Davis Coco Paul-Henriot Jacob Robbins Elinor Schneider Roxy Solis

Art Director

Paloma Huerre

Columnists

Cazzie David Emma Freud Lisa Henricksson
Walter Isaacson Pico Iyer Rachel Johnson
John Lahr Jonathan Margolis Douglas McGrath
Linda Wells James Wolcott

Writers at Large

Lili Anolik Joseph Bullmore Vassi Chamberlain William D. Cohan Rich Cohen Stuart Heritage George Kalogerakis Sam Kashner James Kirchick Alexander Lobrano Alexandra Marshall

Contributing Artists

Monica Ahanonu Barry Blitt André Carrilho Paul Davis David Downton Andrea Ferolla Josh Gosfield Cathy Graham Duncan Hannah Eric Hanson Angelica Hicks Pip Johnson Hilary Knight Danielle Kosann Michael Lindsay-Hogg Ross MacDonald Joe McKendry James McMullan Donald Robertson Charles Dare Scheips Grant Shaffer Ed Sorel Ralph Steadman

International Editor

Isabelle Harvie-Watt

London Editor

Bridget Arsenault

Architectural Consultant

Basil Walter

Communications Director

Monika Camara Batista

Head of Audience Development

Rachel LeSage

Cartoon Editor

Bob Mankoff

Music Supervisor

Randall Poster

Copy Editor

Adam Nadler

Research & Legal Editor

Matt Kapp

Photo Editor

Emine Gozde Sevim

Production Editor

H. Scott Jolley

Designer

Zoé Gillette

Technology

Brooks Oakley Justin Rubaloff Sade Singleton

Intern

Gasper Tringale-White

Chief Operating Officer

Bill Keenan

Chief Marketing Officer

Emily Davis

Shop General Manager and Brand Partnerships

Anjali Lewis

Advertising Director

Michael Pescuma

European Sales Director

Selim Mataraci

Integrated Marketing Producer

Alex Dickerson

Integrated Marketing Manager

Georgia Karakostas

Financial & Business Operations

Marc Leyer

Chief Strategy Adviser

Adam Mendelsohn

In Memoriam

Richard David Story Peter Bogdanovich André Leon Talley

Issue No. 142
April 2, 2022
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Issue No. 142
April 2, 2022
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