In a world where many currencies circulate, one of them invariably comes out on top. Great prestige accrues to the country that issues the dominant currency. The issuer enjoys other advantages besides, such as the ability to borrow at lower interest rates, and weaker constraints on how much it can borrow.

This is a truly wonderful book, erudite and fun. Karen R. Jones, a kind of alternative David Attenborough, explains her purpose: ‘Charismatic and amazing creatures are not only to be found in distant places. They are here.

The notion of the universe as a book, an ancient trope that Ernst Robert Curtius traced in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948), works in both directions. If the universe is a book, then the book is the universe, since (in scriptural terms) God is the Author of both.

In early May 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company that was waging a fierce battle for the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, posted a video tirade on social media showing himself walking through rows of corpses.

In early May 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company that was waging a fierce battle for the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, posted a video tirade on social media showing himself walking through rows of corpses.

In this interview with LSE Review of Books Managing Editor Anna D’Alton, Danny Dorling discusses his new book,The Next Crisis: What We Think About the Future which examines survey data on what worries the public most, finding that the answers can differ significantly from what’s in the headlines.

For those interested in how digital technology contributes to the general clusterfuck most of us are experiencing these days, here is a list of texts I read last year. These recommendations form a solid base with which to face the current wave of authoritarian tech bullshit, including the idea that there is or was ever anything inherently democratic in it.

We are fortunate that the three pillars of Tony Benn’s socialism — for the radical democratisation of politics, the Alternative Economic Strategy, and anti-war internationalism — were explored in so many of his articles, interviews, and speeches in Parliament, on demonstrations, at conferences, and on picket lines.

A recent piece of research commissioned by Channel 4 suggested that more than half of people aged between 13 and 27 would prefer the UK to be an authoritarian dictatorship.

During protests in the US in the middle of 2020, a Predator drone circled in the sky above Minneapolis. Some 20,000ft below, the cops got to play with their toys: Humvees, armoured carriers with turrets, stuff built for the military, used extensively in the Middle East and sold at knockdown prices to local sheriffs.