Los Angeles Review of Books

here I am (Kristin lol)— in LARB. Thanks to the sheltering families who were so generous with their stories. ❤️

The cover of Feminism, Young Women, and Cultural Studies

"Reading Angela McRobbie again feels closer to retrospection than nostalgia."

Rose Higham-Stainton on Angela McRobbie’s vision of girlhood: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/angela-mcrobbie-feminism-young-women-cultural-studies-girlhood/

"Solitude is an elemental necessity of intellectual life, but it has been replaced by a technocratic vision of learning."

Joshua Hall on the work of literary critic Mark Edmundson: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mark-edmundson-literary-criticism-american-university-humanities-essay/

"Discussion is not the enemy of collective healing; according to Pagani, it’s the whole point."

Noemí Fierros revisits a Hannah Howard piece from the LARB archives: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/hannah-howard-feast-archive-susan-pragani-eating-disorders/

The cover of This if For Everyone

Nicholas Carr on Tim Berners-Lee’s “This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web”: "The qualities of the web he celebrates unquestioningly are the very qualities we should be questioning." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/tim-berners-lee-unfinished-story-world-wide-web/

Co-curator Béatrice Grenier narrates a tour of the new Jean Nouvel–designed Fondation Cartier building and its inaugural exhibition: "Rather than imposing form, he orchestrates conditions."

https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/fondation-cartier-jean-nouvel-beatrice-grenier-architecture-video/

It Really Can Happen Here | Los Angeles Review of Books What the transnational links among fascist movements in the 1930s can tell us about the Far Right today.

"Fascism doesn’t just cross borders—it’s been everywhere all along. It can happen here."

Juliette Britan on what we can learn from fascist movements in the 1930s: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/transnational-fascism-united-states-nazis-hungary-yugoslavia-germany/

A flier on a window that says "The Wrong ICE is melting"

"It’s a battle for the public—who gets to be in public, how the public is imagined and narrativized, and how they are cared for or punished with public money."

Kate Collier on Minneapolis: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/minneapolis-operation-metro-surge-immigration-authoritarian-mutual-aid/

Literature Is Not a Vibe: On ChatGPT and the Humanities | Los Angeles Review of Books Rachele Dini discusses OpenAI’s “A Machine-Shaped Hand” and an academic sector in crisis.

"The framing of LLMs as preserving the lives of those we have lost distracts from the lost livelihoods, and worsened material conditions, of a generation of writers on whose work the technology of LLM feeds."
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/literature-is-not-a-vibe-on-chatgpt-and-the-humanities/

Sweating It Out | Los Angeles Review of Books The history of experiencing life as a sweaty body in steamy queer spaces.

"There are places where I’m ready to engage with the inevitable conflicts of human difference, but baths aren’t one. Ideally, baths are havens."

Calvin Gimpelevich experiencing life as a sweaty body: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/calvin-gimpelevich-bath-houses-saunas-queer-trans-spaces/

"Fascism doesn’t just cross borders—it’s been everywhere all along. It can happen here."

Juliette Bretan on what fascist movements in the 1930s can tell us about the Far Right today: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/transnational-fascism-united-states-nazis-hungary-yugoslavia-germany/

Man-su raising a potted plant above his head in a still from No Other Choice

"'No Other Choice,' in Park’s knowing hands, turns technological isolation into text, constantly emphasizing the screens that 'connect' us without bringing us closer."

Zosha Millman on "No Other Choice": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/no-other-choice-park-chan-wook-unemployment-murder/

The cover of This is for Everyone

"The web wasn’t corrupted by outside forces. The corruption was there from the start, latent in its design.”

Nicholas Carr on Tim Berners-Lee’s “This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/tim-berners-lee-unfinished-story-world-wide-web/

"Central to Nouvel’s sensibility is an understanding of architecture as a perceptual experience rather than a fixed object."

A narrated tour of the new Jean Nouvel–designed Fondation Cartier building: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/fondation-cartier-jean-nouvel-beatrice-grenier-architecture-video/

A collage of a woman's figure made up by vegetables, leaning on a fork. Below is a graphic that says "LARB Archive"

"Pagani invites us to remember that shame is the enemy of healing and progress, but also not to silence our voices on the topic."

Noemí Fierros revisits "Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen": https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/hannah-howard-feast-archive-susan-pragani-eating-disorders/

Anthony Curtis Adler on "The Master of Contradictions": "Jensen doesn’t so much explain the novel through Mann’s life as explain Mann through the novel. There’s a risk in this, however." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/thomas-mann-magic-mountain-master-contradictions-jensen-review/

A b/w headshot of Lauren Groff with the text "Listen now!" overlaid

Lauren Groff joins this week's #LARBRadioHour to talk about her new short story collection "Brawler." Listen now on our site, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/lauren-groffs-brawler-interview-podcast/

A Sojourn into the Stephen King Archive: ‘The Dark Half’ | Los Angeles Review of Books Typescript drafts on view in the newly opened archive reframe the horror maestro’s relationship with his alter ego, Richard Bachman.

"At the core of these alternate endings is control." Andy Hageman on going to Stephen King's newly opened archive and reframing the horror maestro’s relationship with his alter ego, Richard Bachman: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/stephen-king-dark-half-revisited-archives-richard-bachman/

My essay for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social on transnational links among fascist movements in the 1930s, and their legacies and lessons today:

From the LARB archive: When Ulysses Jenkins joined the #LARBRadioHour to talk about his first retrospective: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/kate-wolf-speaks-to-john-markoffwhole-earth-the-many-lives-of-stewart-brand-ulysses-jenkins/

The cover of Bill Callahan's My Days of 58

Sebastian Langdell on Bill Callahan's latest album, exploring fatherhood, time, and forgiveness: "He gets to the heart of a certain kind of gratitude that can befall a man on an ordinary day in middle life."

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/bill-callahan-my-days-58-album-review-songwriter/

“There were no special toilets for women because women, in particular those of the upper class, had no public needs.”

"Fascist ideas were hiding in plain sight."

Juliette Bretan on what transnational links among fascist movements in the 1930s can tell us about the Far Right today: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/transnational-fascism-united-states-nazis-hungary-yugoslavia-germany/

Sweating It Out | Los Angeles Review of Books The history of experiencing life as a sweaty body in steamy queer spaces.

Calvin Gimpelevich on enjoying the sauna: "I could feel the eyes of queer people on me in the baths and realized it didn’t matter, really, how I thought of myself or what anyone’s rhetoric was."

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/calvin-gimpelevich-bath-houses-saunas-queer-trans-spaces/

The cover of The Master of Contradictions

"It is perhaps a critical failure of Jensen’s book, admirable in so many ways, that it allows the myth of genius to conceal an all too-human truth."

Anthony Adler on “The Master of Contradictions.” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/thomas-mann-magic-mountain-master-contradictions-jensen-review/

"The guitar can be a megaphone calling outwards or a carapace behind which you hide."

Sebastian Langdell on Bill Callahan’s "My Days of 58": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/bill-callahan-my-days-58-album-review-songwriter/

A graphic showing the application details for the LARB Publishing Workship 2026 (runs June 22-July 24, and people should apply by March 15)

Applications are still open for the 10th @larb-workshop.bsky.social! Join LARB staff and 60+ publishers this summer for an intensive online workshop and start your career in publishing in 2026.

Apply today! https://lareviewofbooks.org/publishing-workshop/

Kaya Genç on "One Thousand and One Kisses": "These vivid glimpses of Istanbul are invaluable to all curious readers, depicting the mores of a bygone age, much as 'Sex and the City' did with New York City." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/istanbul-anonymous-erotic-stories-one-thousand-one-kisses/

Tim Hirschel-Burns on Nicolas Niarchos’ “The Elements of Power”: "In Niarchos’s coverage, everything comes down to power—and those with the least of it are the ones digging up the elements."

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/elements-power-nicolas-niarchos-cobalt-exploitation

Colin Marshall on three books about Bowie, and what they tell us about him: "We miss David Bowie, but perhaps we miss even more the conditions that could give rise to David Bowie." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/david-bowie-books-morley-ormerod-larman-rock-star