Essays Archive | Los Angeles Review of Books

All Essays

The Manipulators: Facebook’s Social Engineering Project
The revelation that Facebook manipulates user experience to study human behavior heralds a new stage in the history of the Internet.
Nicholas CarrSep 14, 2014
- Science & Technology
The Posthuman Scar-Jo
"Scarlett Johansson is a human actress; Scar-Jo is her brand name."
Sophia NguyenSep 12, 2014
Even the Toothbrush Has More than Two Paths: An Interview with Joseph O’Neill
Joseph O'Neill: "Writing fiction is just an elaborate way of putting to death, or maybe chloroforming into limpness, my ideas about the world."
Matthew Hart, Nico IsraelSep 11, 2014
A Tale of Two Summers
Following the News in 1900 and 2014
Jeffrey WasserstromSep 10, 2014
Adventures in Cultural Appropriation
As white pop stars like Taylor Swift continue their excursions into the fantasy of racial drag, the backlash fails to recognize the deeper structural inequity from which such music emerges. It also ceases to appreciate how cultural appropriation may be liberatory.
En Liang KhongSep 9, 2014
- Music
The Ephemeral Real, Part II: The Passenger
The ephemeral real and real film, real murder.
Drew JohnsonSep 9, 2014
After the Train Leaves Town: A Report from Ferguson
What happens to a town racked by racial violence when the media and the public move on?
Emmett RensinSep 9, 2014
Football: The Lure of the Game
Violence and grace; freedom and exploitation; glory and ignominy: terrible beauty — football is America now.
Mark EdmundsonSep 8, 2014
- Sports
Killing It
Local parsnips are nice, but artisanal killing is the food movement’s perfection.
Jedediah PurdySep 7, 2014
- Food & Drink
Blackout: Independent Journalism in Egypt Today, and the Case of Mahmoud Abu Zeid
New from "Around the World"
Patrick KeddieSep 7, 2014
Truth and Permanence in the Comics of Bishakh Som
“I’M NOT INTERESTED IN TELLING THE TRUTH,” Bishakh Som says.
Adam McGovernSep 6, 2014
- Comics
When the War Is Over
On Merwin and the Language of War
Matthew ZapruderSep 5, 2014
- Poetry
The Rabbi Who Knew Too Much
The 50th anniversary of the Rabbi Small series.
Adam RosenSep 4, 2014
- Noir
In the Wake of the British Boom: The 72nd World Science Fiction Convention
Martin PettoSep 1, 2014
Corporate Noir, or This Job Is Killing Me
Every era gets the noir it deserves.
Julia IngallsAug 30, 2014
- Noir
Whiteness Visible: Three Poets Explore the Grammar of Racism
What is the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it? Three white poets explore and confront the implicit ways racism is bound up in the daily transactions, judgments, and assumptions of their everyday lives.
Tess TaylorAug 30, 2014
- Poetry