Tom Stevenson

Our new issue 47.16 is now online, featuring:

@tomstevenson.bsky.social in El Salvador
Kasia Boddy on Dorothy Parker
Seamus Perry on Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce
Ruby Hamilton on David Lynch
and Emily Witt (@embits.bsky.social) on the manosphere.

Read online at lrb.co.uk

Tom Stevenson · The Mask Is Off: Bukele’s Prison State Giving the US access to El Salvador’s expanded prison system as an offshore gulag has made Nayib Bukele a darling of...

‘Calling himself the “coolest dictator in the world”, the restorer of the state monopoly on violence has replaced the state and seized the monopoly for himself.’

@tomstevenson.bsky.social on El Salvador under Nayib Bukele: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson · The Mask Is Off: Bukele’s Prison State Giving the US access to El Salvador’s expanded prison system as an offshore gulag has made Nayib Bukele a darling of...

In the new @LRB, I went to El Salvador, where Nayib Bukele has mopped up the gangs and set up Washington's favourite prison state. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Loubna Mrie · ‘We were tricked’: Assad and the Alawites For a long time, it had seemed that Assad might outlast everything. Then, almost overnight, it was over. And with his...

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Patricia Lockwood · Diary: Back to the Rectory It was our first visit to Kansas City since before the election and the rectory seemed to have grown smaller, darker,...

‘A friend was reading to me one day from 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴 and I misheard a line as “the senses have wind.” They did, they do.’

@tricialockwood.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson | Trump’s Midnight Hammer The US has declared an uncertain and messy end to its attack on Iran. Trump announced a ceasefire some hours before it...

Trump's Midnight Hammer www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

Iran's nuclear programme is mainly a diversionary justification for this attack - not a motive.

Tom Stevenson | Operation Rising Lion Israel’s codename for its attack on Iran, launched last Friday, was Operation Rising Lion, a pointed reference to...

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

Issue 47.11 is now online, featuring:

William Davies on right-wing TikTok
Andrew O’Hagan on Joan Didion
Tom Crewe on Ocean Vuong
Francesca Wade on the librarian Belle da Costa Greene
Jenny Turner on Olga Tokarczuk
and a cover by Lola Bunting.

Read online at
www.lrb.co.uk

Tom Stevenson | Across the Line of Control In 2019, a group of scientists led by Owen Toon, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of...

In 2019, a group of scientists led by Owen Toon, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, modelled the climatic effects of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan in 2025. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

Tom Stevenson | Condo Diplomacy The Trump court is a royal progress that moves between Palm Beach and the White House, for the most part in private...

On the Mar-a-Lago Secretary of State www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

Tom Stevenson · Beyond Mesopotamia: Linear Elamite Deciphered Decipherment has attracted more than its fair share of formidable scholars, enthusiastic amateurs and crackpots, all...

In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, I wrote about the decipherment of the 4000 year old Linear Elamite script by François Desset www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson · Illusions of Containment: Versions of Hamas Hamas was founded to pursue armed resistance against the occupation, but in practice violent confrontation was always in...

In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, I wrote about Hamas. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson · Assad’s Fall Assad’s legacy is the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. It is difficult to imagine how a working Syrian state...

In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, on Assad's fall, the post-Arab Spring era, and Turkey's and Israel's opportunism www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson | Road to Damascus Part of the reason for Assad’s rapid collapse is that his international backers – Russia, Iran, Hizbullah – were...

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/de...

Tom Stevenson · Exquisite Americana The problem with painting Trump as the harbinger of the end of an enlightened international order is that it prompts the...

‘The problem with painting Trump as the harbinger of the end of an enlightened international order is that it prompts the question of what that order is really like.’

Tom Stevenson on Trump and US power, online early from our next issue: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Tom Stevenson · Exquisite Americana The problem with painting Trump as the harbinger of the end of an enlightened international order is that it prompts the...

In the new LRB, I wrote about Trump, who has more in common with his domestic opponents than they like to admit.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In the new LRB, I wrote about how Israel has replaced much of Gaza with an uneven igneous landscape of black-grey mounds. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...