What We Are Reading Today: The Global Age by Ian Kershaw

Updated 27 May 2019
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What We Are Reading Today: The Global Age by Ian Kershaw

  • In this remarkable book, Ian Kershaw has created a grand panorama of the world we live in and where it came from

This is the final chapter in the Penguin History of Europe series from the acclaimed scholar and author of To Hell and Back.

In this remarkable book, Ian Kershaw has created a grand panorama of the world we live in and where it came from. 

Drawing on examples from all across Europe, The Global Age is a fascinating portrait of the recent past and present, and a cautious look into our future.

Kershaw’s theory of agency in the making of history allows for a range of possibilities about the Continent’s future, critic Michael A. McFaul said in a review for The New York Times.

McFaul said European leaders “should read The Global Age to be reminded of the incredible progress of the last 70 years — and told that such progress is something they have the power to sustain through their individual actions.”

American leaders “should also read this book to learn how much better off we have been and could continue to be in concert with a continent of free, secure and prosperous allies,” said the critic. 

McFaul is a professor of political science at Stanford University and the author, most recently, of From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.


Bella Hadid leaves Paris for Los Angeles launch event

Updated 11 March 2026
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Bella Hadid leaves Paris for Los Angeles launch event

DUBAI: Supermodel Bella Hadid jetted from Paris to Los Angeles this week to launch her latest campaign with US fashion retailer Revolve.

The Palestinian US Dutch model was on hand in France earlier in the week, where she hit the runway at the Saint Laurent show during Paris Fashion Week.

She then flew across to Los Angeles to launch a campaign with Los Angeles-founded retailer Revolve, which was set up in 2003 by Michael Mente and Mike Karanikolas.

Hadid fronts a campaign launching the e-commerce department store’s first-ever in-house brand, Revolve Los Angeles.

“Born from a deep understanding of the modern woman and inspired by the city where it all began, our eponymous fashion house is a new expression of effortless glamor,” the new fashion label posted on Instagram alongside black-and-white images of Hadid in a selection of looks.

Prior to her trip to Los Angeles, the model showed off French label Saint Laurent’s latest collection in Paris.

Creative Director Anthony Vaccarello, marking his own 10th anniversary at the helm, sent out a parade of razor-sharp Smokings — the house term for its iconic women’s tuxedo — with plunging necklines and elongated silhouettes that crackled with the same transgressive energy founder Yves Saint Laurent unleashed in the 1960s, the Associated Press reported.

But Vaccarello didn’t stop at evening wear.

He extended the same sensual, body-skimming tailoring into daytime suits in fluid pinstripe fabrics with almost no interlining, effectively arguing that the tuxedo silhouette belongs in a woman’s life around the clock.

Plenty of brands in Milan showed strong black pantsuits this season, but the Saint Laurent version still occupies its own territory — sleeker, sharper, more loaded with meaning.

The other half of Vaccarello’s equation was lace, stiffened with latex and tailored into structured cardigan-like jackets and straight skirts.

It was lace with backbone — tough, not delicate.

Paired with smoky eyes, chunky gold jewelry and slingback heels, the collection made a case that Saint Laurent’s codes are as potent as ever.