The Monthly Digest: December 2017

Top 10

It’s December 1, 2017, and our readers have spoken. Below are the 10 — 11, actually — most popular articles to have appeared on our site in 2017. They range over a variety of subjects, including politics, intellectual legacies, deep readings of film and television, questions of spirituality and religion, and regional studies. Taken together, they reflect the diversity of our readers’ interests — and, one hopes, our ability to respond to these interests in new and challenging ways. — LARB Editorial

The Pets’ War: On Hilda Kean’s “The Great Cat and Dog Massacre”
Colin Dickey on Hilda Kean’s “The Great Cat and Dog Massacre: The Real Story of World War Two’s Unknown Tragedy.”
Apr 30, 2017
Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post”
Ron Rosenbaum on what the media can learn from the prescient "Munich Post."
Feb 5, 2017
Why Arendt Matters: Revisiting “The Origins of Totalitarianism”
Roger Berkowitz reviews Hannah Arendt’s landmark “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” framing the book within the context of contemporary politics.
Mar 18, 2017
The Blathering Superego at the End of History
Emmett Rensin offers a psychoanalysis of managerial liberalism as superego and asks: What happens when the id of liberalism can't be controlled?
Jun 18, 2017
Goodbye, Eastern Europe!
Jacob Mikanowski shares a few lessons about a vanishing Eastern Europe.
Jan 27, 2017
Art in the Age of Masculinist Hollywood: Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land”
“La La Land” is in all ways a sunny film, and one that wants badly to please.
Jan 2, 2017
Game of Thrones: Season 7, “Beyond the Wall”
JON SNOW: I would like to be excluded from this narrative. GAME OF THRONES: NOPE.
Aug 21, 2017
Game of Thrones: Season 7, "Eastwatch"
That bowl of fermented crab seems sort of unsteady; how do you keep it from spilling if you’re taking that little rowboat on the ocean? Invest in...
Aug 14, 2017
Lost in Trumpslation: An Interview with Bérengère Viennot
Robert Zaretsky interviews Bérengère Viennot, who is tasked with translating Donald Trump’s speeches into French, broken syntax and all.
Jan 16, 2017
The Awful Pleasures of Spiritual Pornography
A scholar of religion — attacked by conservative Christian authors — tries to understand their pique.
May 29, 2017
In Praise of Slowness
Henry Martyn Lloyd on "The Slow Professor" and "Slow Philosophy."
Apr 2, 2017
Deprovincializing Philosophy
Peter Adamson’s “Philosophy in the Islamic World” marks a revolution: it redraws the map of the history of philosophy in a fundamental way.
Jul 29, 2017