Midterm mania | The Spectator

How Fatima Bhutto’s dog saved her from a toxic relationship

Americans who are concerned with heightened levels of political violence should understand that we are fortunate compared with Pakistan, whose most visible political family, the Bhuttos, have a history that makes even that of the Kennedys look tame. One survivor, journalist Fatima Bhutto, born in 1982, encapsulates the family tragedies. Her grandfather, the charismatic prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was executed under trumped-up charges by the government serving the man who deposed him, army chief Zia-ul-Haq. Her uncle, Shahnawaz Bhutto, died in mysterious circumstances, possibly murdered, at the age of 26.

Maria Albano

George Saunders’s thoroughly Dickensian novella

George Saunders’s luminous new novella Vigil begins with a fall of a kind – lower-key, sinless and very funny: “What a lovely home I found myself plummeting toward, acquiring, as I fell, arms, hands, legs, feet, all of which, as usual, became more substantial with each passing second.” With the fallen narrator landing headfirst, ass “in the air and fresh new legs cycling energetically,” the story’s tone is set. Though explicitly modeled after Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Vigil is quintessentially Saunders in its combination of user-friendly stylistic innovation, straight-faced satire and a deep dive into Big Moral Questions.

Alexander Larman

Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg’s outsized impact on 1970s cinema

For any serious lover of cinema, the 1970s were both a golden decade and the beginning of the end of film as an art form. After the permissiveness and countercultural impact of the 1960s, a whole generation of new filmmakers emerged, many of whom remain household names. These men – and they were almost exclusively men – produced work that shook up expected norms and took the medium in new, thrilling directions. It is impossible to list all the pictures and their directors who made this difference, but there are good reasons why they remain celebrated today. And then Star Wars came along in 1977 and changed the trajectory of the industry forever.

John Mac Ghlionn

This Tucker Carlson biography is a chronicle of an era

Tucker Carlson may be the most divisive man in America, a human tuning fork vibrating at frequencies that delight half of the country and drive the other half demented. Few public figures inspire such simultaneous loyalty and loathing. To his admirers, he’s a truth-teller with a preternatural instinct for cultural anxiety. To his critics, he’s a fabulist with a talent for setting fires and selling the smoke. This tension – this strange mix of menace and magnetism – is what Jason Zengerle captures in Hated by All the Right People, a biography that becomes, almost inevitably, a portrait of the contemporary conservative movement itself.

Mark Piesing

The inside story of how America got to the Moon

On March 16, 1966, Neil Armstrong and David Scott became the first astronauts ever to dock with another spacecraft when they linked their Gemini 8 capsule to the uncrewed Agena target ship. However, the cheers had barely died down at Mission Control Houston when Scott realized they had a problem. The conjoined spacecraft had begun a gentle leftward pitch. Armstrong and Scott watched in horror as the capsule’s gentle pitch became a tumbling motion that increased, turning the craft into a centrifuge. In desperation, Scott undocked the two ships before gravity ripped them apart. But Gemini 8 continued to spin faster. At 60 revolutions per minute, the astronauts began to slip into unconsciousness.

J. Scott Turner

How mediocrity took over the Grammys

Is music getting worse? Rick Beato is a musician, producer and critic with more than five million YouTube subscribers. His answer would be: yes, pretty much. In a recent video, he compares the 2026 Grammy Song of the Year nominees to those of 1984. There are a few bright sparks among the slate of new songs, but Beato regards most of them as derivative, unoriginal and unlikely to be remembered past the end of the awards show. In contrast, 42 years on, all the 1984 nominees – Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” among them – are firmly embedded in the popular music canon. One could ask the same question about science: has it gotten worse? My answer, I have to say, reflects Beato’s for music.

Diane Cole

A vibrant, partial look at Gabriele Münter

Recognition can be late in coming for many artists, but perhaps especially so for women whose originality and talents too often become overshadowed by their more famous romantic partners. Museums are often eager to put on shows making this very argument as women artists are rediscovered. Sometimes the thesis succeeds; other times, it does not. The latest of these is the case of the German artist Gabriele Münter (1877-1962), whose reputation, until recent decades, rested less on her own body of work than on her long-time connection to her mentor and lover, the Russian expressionist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). The Guggenheim Museum’s exhibition, Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World, attempts to rectify the imbalance.

Germán Saucedo

Marty Supreme mirrors Timothée Chalamet’s desire

Recently, Timothée Chalamet gave the world a refreshing show of ambition when, after winning a SAG award, he said that “the truth is I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats.” Ambition perhaps turned into arrogance when, during an interview for his new film, Marty Supreme, Chalamet noted that during the last few years, he’s been handing in “top-of-the-line performances... I don’t want people to take it for granted. This is really some top-level shit.

Deborah Ross

The cruelty of H is for Hawk

H is for Hawk is an adaptation of the bestselling memoir by Helen Macdonald who, following the sudden death of her beloved father, channels her grief through the training of a goshawk, Mabel. The film stars Claire Foy, who is superb, as is the nature photography, but is it right, keeping a wild animal captive, and depriving it of its natural behaviors because it helps you in some way? What’s in it for this gorgeous bird, I kept wondering. The cruelty is never addressed. This is solely about human need. We’re not even told who plays Mabel, so I can’t say what she has been in before or whether she has won any awards. (I would hope so; she is magnificent.

Alexander Larman

The golden years of David Bowie

This year marks the anniversaries of two of David Bowie’s most compelling and powerful albums: 1976’s Station to Station and 2016’s Blackstar. Given that they are often – rightly – described as Bowie’s crowning artistic achievements, amid severe competition from his other releases, they also have the intriguing fillip that both were originally released in January: a fortunate time for the musician, who was born on January 8, 1947, even if it was also the month in which he finally departed this Earth. Yet the comparisons between Station to Station and Blackstar, which came out 40 years apart, are far more pervasive – and persuasive – than the serendipity of their release dates.

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