Links tagged with “lrb”
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Tom Johnson · Diary: Strange Visitations
I didn’t expect to come across mention of a church just up the road from us in the LRB. (subscribers only)
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Tom Crewe · Carnival of Self-Harm: Good Riddance to the Tories
Even having lived through this mess, it’s shocking to read how badly successive Tory governments have screwed the country.
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William Davies · Antimarket: Capitalism Decarbonised
For the bit at the start about the difference between free markets and capitalism.
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Lucie Elven · Unblenched: Homage to Brigid Brophy
I do enjoy LRB articles about interesting 20th century authors I’ve never heard of.
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Rebecca Solnit · In the Shadow of Silicon Valley: Losing San Francisco
On San Fransisco, tech billionaires, and Solano County. “…tech is returning us to a kind of feudalism…” “You can’t really be in favour of both democracy and billionaires…”
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Jerome McGann · Umbah-Umbah
The first first review of Greil Marcus’s ‘Lipstick Traces’, from 1989.
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Gale Walden · Diary: David’s Presence
On being a partner and friend to, and remembering, David Foster Wallace.
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Joanne O’Leary · I was a coyote: Can you trust a horsewoman? · LRB 29 June 2023
Interesting review of a book that’s conversations with an Iowan racehorse trainer by Kathryn Scanlan.
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Owen Hatherley · Wild and Tattered Kingdom: Fassbinder and His Friends · LRB 29 June 2023
Hatherley writing about Ian Penman writing about Fassbinder (some of whose work I should really watch at some point).
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Colin Burrow · Algorithmic Fanboy: Thick Rules and Thin · LRB 1 June 2023
I found the distinction between “thick rules” (general guides) and “thin rules” (increasingly specific) useful.
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Jane Miller · Desert Hours · LRB 16 March 2023
A lovely piece, some reflections from a ninety-year-old.
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Adam Shatz · Beyond Borders: Adolfo Kaminsky’s Forgeries · LRB 16 February 2023
On the forger for the French Resistance and many anti-colonial struggles. Quite a life.
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Joe Moran · Gen Z and Me · LRB 16 February 2023
On Gen Z and generational change.
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Katherine Rundell · Consider the Hummingbird · LRB 3 November 2022
“…in 1888 an auction house in London sold 400,000 hummingbird skins in one single, bloody afternoon.”
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Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite · Chelseafication · LRB 22 September 2022
The social and property development of London in the 1960s and 1970s.
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Malcolm Gaskill · Like Oysters in Their Shells: The Death Trade · LRB 18 August 2022
Interesting review of a book about funerals, cremations, embalmers, grave diggers, etc.
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Bee Wilson · The Irreplaceable: Palm Oil Dependency · LRB 23 June 2022
On the rise of, and economics of, palm oil that “ended up in everything”.
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Deborah Friedell · A Piece of Pizza and a Beer: Who was Jane Roe? · LRB 23 June 2022
I did not know, or had forgotten, how Roe v. Wade came to be.
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Stephanie Burt · Diary: D&D · LRB 9 June 2022
Role-playing games, concluding an excellent issue of the LRB.
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William Davies · Destination Unknown: Sociology Gone Wrong · LRB 9 June 2022
On inequality, capitalism, sociology, nation states, colonialism.
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Jonathan Meades · Hatpin through the Brain: Closing Time for the Firm · LRB 9 June 2022
On the British monarchy.
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Simon Reynolds · Serious Mayhem: The McLaren Strand · LRB 10 March 2022
On the career of Malcolm McLaren.
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Clair Wills · Life Pushed Aside: The Last Asylums · LRB 18 November 2021
Very long and good history of a psychiatric hospital in the 20th century, outsider art, and the authors’ mother and grandparents who worked there. More interesting than I initially expected.
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Adam Tooze · Ecological Leninism: Drill, baby, drill · LRB 6 November 2021
A second article on Andreas Malm in the same issue. Makes me think I should read ‘White Skin, Black Fuel’ and/or ‘How to Blow up a Pipeline’.
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James Butler · A Coal Mine for Every Wildfire: Where are the ecoterrorists? · LRB 6 November 2021
On the climate crisis, Andreas Malm, direct action, “fossil fascism”, where we’re trying to get to, and how.
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Charles Glass · Hush-Hush Boom-Boom: Spymasters · LRB 12 August 2021
Interesting account of how the CIA was formed and quite how often it’s failed.
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James Meek · Who holds the welding rod? Our Turbine Futures · LRB 15 July 2021
Long article on making wind turbine towers and the international labour market (which maybe makes it sound duller than it is).
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Gill Partington · Your hat sucks: UbuWeb · LRB 1 April 2021
About UbuWeb and Kenneth Goldsmith.
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Chloe Aridjis · At the HKW: Aby Warburg · LRB 5 November 2020
I hadn’t heard of Warburg’s ‘Bilderatlas Mnemosyne’ before. A “display of almost a thousand images … an attempt to create something like a flowchart of Western civilisation“.
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Patricia Lockwood · Eat butterflies with me? · LRB 5 November 2020
On Nabokov, entertaining.
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Peter Geoghegan · Cronyism and Clientelism · LRB 5 November 2020
Depressing piece from November on the UK’s kleptocracy.
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Alex Abramovich · Even When It’s a Big Fat Lie: ‘Country Music’ · LRB 8 October 2020
Good, critical review of Ken Burns’ ‘Country Music’ and the rest.
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Andrew O’Hagan · I’m being a singer: Dandy Highwaymen · LRB 8 October 2020
On the New Romantics. “It turns out that the inheritors of punk were not those little indie bands I loved … Male indie kids were completely conventional, scrubbed boys, who went to the same barbers as their fathers, supported the same football teams, and wore the same aftershave.”
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Jenny Turner · Dark Emotions: The Women’s Liberation Movement · LRB 24 September 2020
Interesting look back at (mostly) 1970s feminism.
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James Lasdun · Bats on the Ceiling: The Gospel of St Karen · LRB 24 September 2020
This was a good read about a con involving some ancient, supposedly biblical, papyrus.
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Ian Penman · Vorsprung durch Techno · LRB 10 September 2020
I’m always pleased to see an Ian Penman article in the LRB and I liked this ambivalent one about Kraftwerk.
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Tom Crewe · A Girl Called Retina: You’ll like it when you get there · LRB 13 August 2020
The first half of this especially good, full of jolly entertaining anecdotes about mid 20th century girls’ boarding schools.
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Amia Srinivasan · He, She, One, They, Ho, Hus, Hum, Ita: How Should I Refer to You? · LRB 2 July 2020
I had no idea there had been quite so many attempts to come up with gender-neutral pronouns for quite so long.
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Andrew O’Hagan · Seventy Years in a Colourful Trade: The Soho Alphabet · LRB 16 July 2020
I enjoyed this portrait of a Soho despite, or because of, being unfamiliar with that world.
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Ange Mlinko · Just a Diphthong Away: Gary Lutz · LRB 7 May 2020
Lots of great lines quoted from Lutz’s short stories here.
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Erin Maglaque · Inclined to Putrefaction: In Quarantine · LRB 9 February 2020
Published in February, this review of a book about how 17th century Florence coped with the plague now seems very knowing.
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Jenny Turner · Who Are They?: The Institute of Ideas · LRB 8 July 2010
Nine years ago: “One day, the conditions would be right and they [the RCP/LM/IoI crowd] would be ready: public-sector cuts, rising unemployment, the collapsing Euro, a Tory government, more or less.” (Subscribers only)
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How bad can it get? (London Review of Books)
Good, but not much hope about UK politics. But I learned an excellent word: “rhodomontade”, extravagant boasting. Word of the year.
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Francis Gooding reviews ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ by David Wallace-Wells · LRB 1 August 2019
On the plus side, I’ll be dead by 2100. I suspect my 80s+ won’t be great though. Sometimes I wonder why young people and folks with kids aren’t demonstrating *all the time*. (No, I know why.)
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John Lanchester · Good New Idea: Universal Basic Income · LRB 18 July 2019
Seems like a decent overview of the options, nicely written as ever.
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Patricia Lockwood · The Communal Mind: The Internet and Me · LRB 21 February 2019
A lovely piece about what it’s like to be online, “in the portal”, these days.
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Alice Spawls · On the Sofa: ‘Killing Eve’ · LRB 8 November 2018
The show wasn’t perfect, but this is good on what was good about it.
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Stefan Collini reviews ‘The Tyranny of Metrics’ by Jerry Z. Muller and ‘The Metric Tide’ by James Wilsdon et al · LRB 8 November 2018
On the unintended consequences of performance metrics. (Subscribers only.)