Reviews Archive | Los Angeles Review of Books

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Move to Where the Money Is: Tash Aw's Latest
Dale Carnegie in Shanghai: Jiayang Fan on Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire
Jiayang FanSep 8, 2013
The Last Company Town
Washington, DC’s profit-obsessed, personality-consumed culture is the last company town of the 21st century.
Matthew Brandon WolfsonSep 8, 2013
Outborough Destiny: Jonathan Lethem’s “Dissident Gardens”
Jonathan Lethem’s Dissident Gardens is an assured, expert literary performance by one of our most important writers.
Lee KonstantinouSep 8, 2013
Fairy Tale Physics and Poisoned Cocktails
Jim Baggott delivers a pummeling to “fairy-tale physics” in this effort to restore a through-line from science, research, and the curious public.
David KordahlSep 6, 2013
Second Acts: A Look at Second Books by Ai Ogawa and Kiki Petrosino
What is revealed as the poet makes a kind of jeté, a leap, an imprinting — the landing of a second foot?
Lisa Russ SpaarSep 6, 2013
A World With(out) Meaning: An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky
It is a self-contained and insular book, a metafiction through and through, but it’s also a novel about loss and abandonment with a generous emotional core.
Michael JauchenSep 5, 2013
Chain Reaction: Urban Politics in “the Age of the Bicycle”
Are bikes the future of green transportation or just an elite hobby, a way to lure the rich back from the suburbs to the city center?
Eric Peterson Sep 4, 2013
Words Matter: Marcia Coyle's "The Roberts Court"
Politics and the Supreme Court: words matter.
Jonathan ShapiroSep 3, 2013
No Girls Allowed: On “Queens of Noise”
The Runaways: punk icons, feminist icons, hard-rock icons.
Victoria PattersonSep 1, 2013
- Music
Rough Old World: Tom Drury’s "Pacific"
Things in Tom Drury’s novels are lost and sought and sometimes found, and sometimes lost again. It is a lot like life.
Leland de la DurantayeAug 31, 2013
Replicated Communities: Bianca Bosker’s “Original Copies”
Bianca Bosker has written a fascinating, nuanced, visually compelling, and extremely readable book about China's "duplitecture."
Evan SelingerAug 30, 2013
The Sins of Fathers: C.E. Poverman’s Psychological Thriller
A noir thriller with literary depth.
Rita WilliamsAug 29, 2013
Through A Glass Randomly: Matias Viegener’s “2500 Random Things About Me Too”
The first Facebook novel? Matias Viegener's new book, originally composed on Facebook, consists of 100 lists, 25 supposedly random items in each bouquet.
Wayne KoestenbaumAug 29, 2013
Hitting on Infinity: Mari Ruti’s “The Singularity of Being”
Mari Ruti’s "The Singularity of Being" focuses on what makes human life as we know it profoundly unintelligible, overwhelming, and strange.
Ronjaunee ChatterjeeAug 28, 2013
Dreams of Reason: Simon Morgan Wortham’s “The Poetics of Sleep”
In The Poetics of Sleep, Simon Morgan Wortham argues that sleep might constitute a limit for the philosophical imagination.
Marc FarrantAug 27, 2013
A Rage That Had No End: The Novels of Elena Ferrante
Invariably damaged, Ferrante’s narrators and protagonists suffer from injuries that tend to shift, disconcertingly, from the figurative to the literal.
Ivan KreilkampAug 27, 2013