Bragging writes
Hope springs eternal even in the world of print publishing. Whether you’re interested in traveling the globe, improving the planet or boning up on religion, this crop of mag newcomers has you covered.
Bauer Publishing is taking a leap of faith with Simple Grace, a religious monthly that fits in the palm of your hand. The debut is teeming with truelife testimonials. This includes a woman wrongfully imprisoned for murder who, miraculously, gets her conviction overturned once she lets go of her anger toward God. Coincidence? Clearly, the editors don’t think so. But the stories, no matter how heartrending, start to sound the same after a while. A mother whose 5yearold daughter dies from leukemia goes to her empty room and discovers a picture her child drew of a rainbow leading to heaven. Lo and behold, the mother looks outside and sees a rainbow.
The first issue of Rodale’s
Organic Life leaves us puzzled, as there is little practical advice for those who want to lead a more organic lifestyle. Who cares if there are 43 different types of lettuce? And unless you want to change careers, we’re not sure what’s to be gained from reading about the new generation of florists. Aside from the annoyingly small type, the articles also start out with variations of this formula: “I was strolling through Brooklyn Heights and happened by this windowsill garden …”
The first issue of Smithsonian
Journeys is beautiful and easy on the eyes. This launch doesn’t take the path less traveled and instead heads to Paris, one of the world’s top tourist destinations. Despite this, we liked its indepth treatment, including a map with a walking tour of Paris like some of the city’s architects intended several hundred years ago. An article about two types of Parisians — the people who moved there and tell tourists about the hidden secrets and the natives who want tourists to leave— is wellwritten and resonates.
Harper’s is not new and is sure looking tired. A lead feature on “William Bratton and the New Police State” starts with an interesting premise: Police departments are using drones to spy on citizens. Fascinating! Never is it really addressed if the NYPD is using drones, or if Commissioner Bratton supports the idea. In fact, writer Petra Bartosiewicz interviews him but does not use his quotes until the very end. She backs into Bratton’s supposed role in intelligenceled policing by explaining that Seattle bought drones and then under public pressure sold them to the LAPD, led by Bratton’s handpicked successor. Harper’s also has a review examining early 1970s British folk rockers The Incredible String Band and their “Earthspan” record. Remember that one? Neither did we.
When Oliver Sacks revealed a couple of months ago he has terminal cancer, the “Awakenings” author said he was in the process of cranking out a handful of articles before he dies. One of them runs in this week’s
New Yorker, about the suicide of Spalding Gray. The story, with nary a mention of Sacks’ own impending death, is doubly riveting. Elsewhere, Sarah Stillman — who penned a great story in 2013 about lawenforcement hijinks around “civil forfeiture” — serves up an even more depressing story on migrant kidnapping and extortion rings along the Mexican border.
Kudos to New York architecture critic Justin Davidson for highlighting the fact that the new Whitney Museum down on the High Line, slated to open May 1, has huge windows all over it, commanding sweeping views of lower Manhattan and the Hudson River. “The new Whitney is a wonderful place for people who get easily bored by art,” Davidson writes. Don’t get us wrong — to us, the old Whitney was a grim and obnoxious cinder block leaning over Madison Avenue. Frequently, we even wished it would just fall over, already. But darling — the very idea that the Rothkos will be competing with views of New Jersey? Distasteful. Does anybody really care who
Time thinks are the 100 most influential people? This year we get Kanye West on the cover, as if he had simply willed himself there. Inside, none other than Elon Musk observes: “Kanye West would be the first to tell you he belongs on this list.” So the answer is, well, not really, but it still can be a good read. To our surprise, the political section zings this year. “Chickensht he is not,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak writes of current leader Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he has known since their army days. “But over time, while thoughtful and an avid reader of history, he developed a mindset at once pessimistic, passive and anxious.” We can’t wait to read what Bibi writes on Barak next year, but wait — that’s not going to happen, is it?