LARB's Top 25 Most-Read Articles of 2014

January 18, 2015

LARB's Top 25 Most-Read Articles of 2014







































































































Fault in Our Stars

1. Young Adult Cancer Story by Briallen Hopper, July 16th, 2014


Author John Green called it, "the best review of the book I’ve read."


Tyrion

2. We Need To Talk About Tyrion: How HBO Failed George R.R. Martin’s Iconic Character by Ilana Teitelbaum, November 21st, 2014


“What is most remarkable about this moment in the TV series is that the show gets it wrong.”


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3. Hitler, Continued: Afterword from the Updated Edition of "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil" by Ron Rosenbaum, July 10th, 2014


Ron Rosenbaum’s characteristically brilliant response to all the important updates that have occurred in Hitler studies in the past 15 years.


Ortberg Cover

4. Srsly. by Sarah Mesle, November 6th, 2014


Texts from Jane Eyre is not only a major work of bathroom humor reading, but also a significant contribution to feminist literary criticism.


Scarlett Johansson

5. The Posthuman Scar-Jo by Sophia Nguyen, September 12th, 2014


Scarlett Johansson in Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013), and Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014).


Dostoevsky_1879

6. The Two Abysses of the Soul by Costica Bradatan, July 31st, 2014


Costica Bradatan shows us how The Brothers Karamazov explains Russia's current politics.


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7. American Loneliness by Emma Healey, June 29th, 2014


Emma Healey on MTV's Catfish and the state of modern love.


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8. On Excess: Susan Sontag’s Born-Digital Archive by Jeremy Schmidt and Jacquelyn Ardam, October 26th, 2014


Susan Sontag’s entire digital life is now available to researchers. What should they do with it?


DEARTVLOGO

9. "True Detective" Finale by Anne Helen Petersen and Lili Loofbourow and Evan Kindley and Phillip Maciak, March 11th, 2014


Four very different reactions to the divisive ending of season one of HBO’s True Detective.


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10. "True Detective": Down the Bayou (Far From Any Road) by Jacob Mikanowski, March 8th, 2014


From The King in Yellow to H.P. Lovecraft, “all of a sudden the psychosphere is in the mainstream.”


palmer

11. The Oldest Story: Toward a Theory of a Dead Girl Show by Alice Bolin, April 28th, 2014


Alice Bolin theorizes on the commonality of the Dead Girl in Twin Peaks, True Detective, and Pretty Little Liars.


DEARTVLOGO

12. Girls, Season 3: "Only Child" by Anne Helen Petersen, February 4th, 2014


Girls, for all of its flaws, does speak truth to (most) power. 


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13. Bye, Bye, Theory, Goodbye by David Winters, January 16th, 2014


If theory really is a thing of the past, its status as such could open it up for retrospective reconsideration. On Elegy for Theory by D.N. Rodowick.


DEARTVLOGO

14. Mad Men, Season 7: "Field Trip" by Anne Helen Petersen, April 29th, 2014


In Defense of Betty Draper.


Living with a Wild God

15. "Why Do We Die and What is the Purpose of Life?" by A.C. Grayling, July 2nd, 2014


On Living with a Wild God by Barbara Ehrenreich.


1.Flaunt Dailey Graphic 1 Palmstreet1925

16. Piety and Perversity: The Palms of Los Angeles by Victoria Dailey, July 14th, 2014


A comprehensive look at the history — and the myth — of Los Angeles’s most potent symbol.


DoubleLife

17. Deconstructing De Man in the Digital Age by Jonathan Freedman, April 22nd, 2014


On The Double Life of Paul de Man by Jonathan Freedman.


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18. To Have and Have Not by Jedediah Purdy, April 24th, 2014


How unequal is the division of wealth and income? How did it get that way, and where is it going? On Capital by Thomas Piketty. 


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19. Faking Galileo by Massimo Mazzotti, June 25th, 2014


A faked copy of Galileo’s landmark book Sidereus Nuncius has disarmed a generation of Galileo experts.


Dangerously Sleepy

20. Sleep's Hidden Histories by Benjamin Reiss, February 15th, 2014


Sleeping patterns and configurations vary from culture to culture and across time. On The Slumbering Masses by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, 24/7 by Jonathan Crary and Dangerously Sleepy by Alan Derickson. 


Paul McCullough

21. Who Killed Robert McCulloch’s Father? by Peter James Hudson, September 18th, 2014


The story behind the story of the prosecutor in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri.


Mary Beard

22. A Visit with Mary Beard by Annalisa Quinn, August 13th, 2014


Annalisa Quinn in conversation with Mary Beard, a one-of-a-kind classicist.


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23. Mourning Tongues: How Auden Was Modified in the Guts of the Living by Nina Martyris, January 28th, 2014


One of the most extraordinary elegiac conversations of our time.


aspiring

24. Is College Still Worth It? by Christopher Newfield, September 29th, 2014


On Aspiring Adults Adrift by Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum. 


Norwegian_Cover

25. Anders Behring Breivik and the Massacre on Utøya: on Aage Borchgrevink’s "A Norwegian Tragedy" by Rachel Monroe, May 12th, 2014


When a person commits an atrocity, our immediate, stuttering questions are why and how? Can reading a mass murderer’s own account answer those questions?



 

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