Join

The Monthly Digest: January 2020

Most Popular of 2019

The Monthly Digest: January 2020

As we greet the new year and enter the second decade of LARB’s existence, we honor our annual tradition: our own version of the People’s Choice Awards. Below are the 15 most popular articles to have appeared on our site in 2019. As usual, it is the great diversity of topics represented in the list that gratifies us most. We thank you, dear readers, for inspiring us to think ever more creatively, and we vow to keep broadening our horizons in the years and decades to come! — LARB Editorial

Is There a Crisis of Truth?
Historian of Science Steven Shapin turns the screw on the notion that “truth” is in crisis.
Dec 2, 2019
Kompromat: Or, Revelations from the Unpublished Portions of Andrea Manafort’s Hacked Texts
In 2016 or early 2017, Paul Manafort’s 32-year-old daughter’s cell phone was hacked. What do the texts reveal, and why aren't we talking about them?
Feb 18, 2019
Game of Thrones: Season 8, "The Bells"
For Dear Television, Aaron Bady, Sarah Mesle, and Phil Maciak consider the relative madness of the queen(s) on Game of Thrones.
May 13, 2019
Pinker’s Pollyannish Philosophy and Its Perfidious Politics
Jessica Riskin challenges Steven Pinker’s take on the Enlightenment.
Dec 15, 2019
Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism
Whatever its imperfections, Shoshana Zuboff's "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" is an original and brilliant work, and it arrives at a crucial...
Jan 15, 2019
On Outgrowing David Foster Wallace
"Why does David Foster Wallace read differently to me now? Why am I ashamed of him? Maybe his work is limited in ways I didn’t see before." A DFW guy...
Sep 15, 2018
LACMA: Suicide by Architecture
Joseph Giovannini scrutinizes LACMA director Michael Govan's failures and deceptions surrounding the museum's renovations.
Apr 5, 2019
Benjamin Moser and the Smallest Woman in the World
Magdalena Edwards tells of her experience with Benjamin Moser, author of the forthcoming “Sontag: Her Life and Work.”
Aug 16, 2019
The Final Treasure from the Tolkien Hoard
Christopher Tolkien wraps up a four-decade curation of his father’s legacy.
Mar 23, 2019
Comping White
Laura B. McGrath looks at the data to find out why the publishing industry is still so white.
Jan 21, 2019
Walter Benjamin’s Last Work
Samantha Rose Hill considers the continent-spanning turmoil that has marked the publication of Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History...
Dec 9, 2019
Motion Sickness: Disavowing “Succession”
Jorge Cotte explores the queasy, wobbly, ethically ambiguous experience of being close to the billionaire children of HBO's Succession.
Oct 24, 2019
Who Needs Literature?
LARB presents an essay by Isaac Bashevis Singer, translated from the Yiddish by David Stromberg.
Nov 11, 2019
The Vanishing Indians of “These Truths”
A popular history of the United States has a notable omission.
Jan 10, 2019
The Singular Power of Writing: A Conversation with Thomas Chatterton Williams
Otis Houston speaks to Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of “Losing My Cool” and “Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race.”
Apr 12, 2019
A Deeper South
A road trip through the Old South reveals uncomfortable family truths.
Mar 10, 2019