Los Angeles Review Of Books – Winter 2024-2025
Category Archives: Essays
The Atlantic Magazine – December 2024 Preview
How the Ivy League Broke America
The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new. By David Brooks
How One Woman Became the Scapegoat for America’s Reading Crisis
Lucy Calkins was an education superstar. Now she’s cast as the reason a generation of students struggles to read. Can she reclaim her good name?
The Exhibit That Will Change How You See Impressionism
The National Gallery’s “Paris 1874” explores the movement’s dark origins.
Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – December 2024
The Painted Protest
How politics destroyed contemporary art by Dean Kissick
In the Rockets’ Red Glare
The past and future of hot-rodding in America by Rachel Kushner
After the Deluge
A small town faces down climate disaster by Gary Greenberg
Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – November 2024
Revenge Plot
The GOP’s identity crisis by Lauren Oyler
The Seventy Percent
On minor characters and human possibility by Yiyun Li
The Thing Itself
From Mysticism, which was published last month by New York Review Books. by Simon Critchley
The Atlantic Magazine – November 2024 Preview
The Moment of Truth
The reelection of Donald Trump would mark the end of George Washington’s vision for the presidency—and the United States.By Tom Nichols
The Trump Believability Gap
Voters detest the things that Trump wants to do. But they just don’t believe he’ll follow through.By David A. Graham
Why Politicians Lie
And how to get them to stopBy Bill Adair
Israel and Hamas Are Kidding Themselves
Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – October 2024
The Antitrust Revolution
Liberal democracy’s last stand against Big Tech by Barry C. Lynn
In 1609, James I lectured the English people on his rights and responsibilities as king. It was his duty to “make and unmake” them, he said. Kings have the “power of raising and casting down, of life and of death; judges over all their subjects, and in all causes.”
The Fever Called Living
On the plight of environmental-illness refugees
The Hindutva Lobby
How Hindu nationalism spreads in America
Arts/Politics: The Atlantic Magazine – October 2024
Hypocrisy, Spinelessness, and the Triumph of Donald Trump
He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.
Trump Promises a ‘Bloody Story’
His latest comments about mass deportation are a revelation about how he feels—and a troubling reminder of the sources of his appeal.
Finding Philanthropy’s Forgotten Founder
Julius Rosenwald understood that charity is not just about giving, but about fixing the inequalities that make giving necessary.
Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – September 2024
The Thin Purple Line
The dubious rise of the private-security industry by Jasper Craven
For millennia, the figure of the guard has inspired as much derision as demand. An early antecedent to the modern security guard can be found in ancient Egypt. Nobles employed “doorkeepers” to protect palaces and tombs. The performance of such duties was accorded a measure of reverence even as guards were often cast as apathetic or incompetent. Some hieroglyphs depict doorkeepers as those “who ward off all evil ones”; others show them as sleepy, drunk, or blind.
Many still believe in this image of guards as feckless agents in spaces not in need of protecting. And yet, in a moment of peculiarly American volatility, certain places that guards patrol—like schools, bars, grocery stores, and retail outlets—are increasingly prone to seeing outbursts of violence. These trends might justify a guard’s usefulness if not for the fact that most guards lack the training or legal authority to do much of anything.
Poison Ivy
From Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis, which will be published this month by Dey Street. by Ryann Liebenthal
The Instant Monet Enters the Studio
From L’instant précis où Monet entre dans l’atelier, which was published in 2022 by Éditions de Minuit. Translated from the French in May by Pauline Cochran. by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Literary Preview: n+1 Magazine – Fall 2024
@nplusonemag (August 16, 2024): The ‘Inside Job’ issue features Pope Fiction, My AI Could Paint That, Literal Death Drive, Raven Leilani on Grief Writing; Biden – A Retrospective and A Satire by Saidiya Hartman…
Los Angeles Review Of Books – Summer 2024
Rhian Sasseen swipes right on behalf of a fictional porn addict;
Francesca Peacock roots through the archives for a deeper understanding of scandal and speech;
Ruth Madievsky closes the gate on her college rumor mill;
and Emmeline Clein recounts an “American Icarus story” spelled out in diet pills and rhinestones.
Gossip as a Literary Genre, or Gossip as “L’Écriture feminine”?
Francesca Peacock roots through the archives for a deeper understanding of scandal and speech in an essay from the LARB Quarterly issue no. 42, “Gossip.”
Boomers Daily 