AYOUSH LAZIKANI introduces her guide to the many ways in which the Moon was interpreted in medieval times
Trump and the US tradition of despotic presidents
EMMA SHORTIS applauds a history of the US that demonstrates the historical precedents for presidential authoritarianism
Cartoon by Steven Ashman
An analysis of the choices facing the US left has to reach beyond the confines of the Democrat party, suggests RON JACOBS
FRANCIS BECKETT introduces his new play that aims to give its audience a taste of what a far-right triumph would be
KENNY MACASKILL welcomes an outstanding biography that gives full context to the life of Scotland’s greatest early 20th century novelist
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Ackroyd & Harvey: The Art of Activism, The Lost Bus, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, and Happyend
MARY CONWAY relishes the spectacle of a domestic implosion in a setting strangely divorced from any social, political or cultural context
The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself
Nick Bryant, Bloomsbury, £25
IF you select “virtually any date in US history, it would be possible to find the same poisonous ingredients [that] percolated violently to the surface on January 6, 2021,” writes journalist and historian Nick Bryant in his new book, The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.
Donald Trump, and the movement behind him, is both new and old; times are unprecedented but also, to historians of the US, frighteningly familiar. Bryant, a historian by training, meticulously makes sense of these contradictions, methodically unpicking the mythology of US history to clearly argue that Trump — and his support — is the product of that history.
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