Links tagged with “lrb”
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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.)
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Eliot Weinberger · Ten Typical Days in Trump’s America · LRB 25 October 2018
If you want to be thankful that our mess is only the size of Brexit, this might help? (Sorry America)
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James Meek · Brexit and Myths of Englishness: For England and St George · LRB 11 October 2018
Good on stuff about Brexit, around the politics: beliefs, myths, personal hypocrisies.
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Tom Crewe reviews ‘How to Survive a Plague’ … · LRB 27 September 2018
If you were too young, straight, insulated or ignorant to fully grasp what Aids meant and means, this is a long and sobering read.
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Bee Wilson reviews ‘The Littlehampton Libels’ by Christopher Hilliard · LRB 8 February 2018
A lovely article about a woman writing very sweary anonymous letters to her neighbours in Littlehampton in the 1920s.
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The Playboy of West 29th Street (London Review of Books)
Colm Tóibín on John Butler Yeats. For the unrequited, long-distance love in old age and the perpetually almost-but-never finished artwork. (Subscribers only)
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George Duoblys · One, Two, Three, Eyes on Me! · LRB 5 October 2017
On the “efficient” teaching and disciplinary methods used in some London secondary schools. Sounds grim.
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Merely an Empire - London Review of Books
Good on Ken Burns’ ‘The Vietnam War’. “We cannot make a movie that will save us.”
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London Review of Books - You Are the Product
John Lanchester on Facebook.
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Owen Hatherley reviews ‘Eyes on the Street’ by Robert Kanigel and ‘Vital Little Plans’ edited by Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring · LRB 27 July 2017
Good on Jane Jacobs’ good and bad, and all that in relation to British cities. (Subscribers only)
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James Wolcott reviews ‘Making It’ by Norman Podhoretz · LRB 18 May 2017
A very fun, lively-written read, even though most of the people mentioned mean little to me. Reminded me of reading The Modern Review, how I enjoyed it without understanding so many of the references.
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Tom Crewe · What will be left?: Labour’s Prospects · LRB 18 May 2017
Slightly out of date opinion poll-wise, but I liked this as a summary of where Labour is and how we, as a country, got here.
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The Last London - London Review of Books
I usually find Iain Sinclair a bit much, too grouchy, but the start of this is very good on modern London, around Shoreditch, Spitalfields and Liverpool Street.
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The Strange Death of Municipal England (London Review of Books)
A good read, especially if you’re feeling all full of optimism about a new year and need to be brought crashing back to earth.
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Snob Cuts (London Review of Books)
A fun, brief piece about snobbery and class.
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They Could Have Picked… (London Review of Books)
Eliot Weinberger on all the Republican presidential candidates other than Trump. At this point it’s become easy to forget that they were *all* nutjobs. Still, makes me thankful to live in the UK.