Tag: London Review of Books

Moving from bustling, expensive Seattle to tiny Ashland, Oregon seemed like an improvement, until the forest fire season began.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Ijeoma Oluo, Patricia Lockwood, Michael Shaw, Mairead Small Staid, and Adriana Gallardo.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Tiffany Stanley, Raj Telhan, Alex Pareene, Nico Muhly, and Chris Heath.

This week, we’re sharing stories from John Lanchester, Bethany Barnes, Stephen Kearse, Warren Ellis, and Soraya Roberts.

This week, we’re sharing stories from Amanda Mull, Allegra Hobbs, Andrew O’Hagan, Andrew Kay, and Joe Veix.

“Everyone who died that night died above the tenth floor.”

While England’s National Health Service institutes large-scale reform, the country’s understaffed, overcrowded hospitals are in crisis.

What is Facebook *really* about? Surveillance and advertising, not about “the power to build community” as its new mission statement so disingenuously puts it.

A loving, fascinating, melancholy, rollicking look at how technology and globalization are transforming urban spaces.

In “Women in Power” Beard uses Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Herland” to look at why powerful women don’t appear in our collective imagination.

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *

There are a number of suggestive parallels between [Elon] Musk and the Wrights, beyond the obvious ones to do with an interest in flight. The [Wright brothers’ father] had very high standards and set no limits on the intellectual curiosity he encouraged in his children; Musk’s father had the same standards and the same insistence on […]

It has become harder over the last 130 years or so to see Van Gogh plain. It is practically harder in that our approach to his paintings in museums is often blocked by an urgent, excitable crescent of worldwide fans, iPhones aloft for the necessary selfie with Sunflowers. They are to be welcomed: the international reach […]

Like Senna’s, Winehouse’s family co-operated with Kapadia, but unlike them, they are displeased with the film, and it’s not hard to see why. As well as a welcome portrait of the frequently caricatured Winehouse as an (exceptional) artist and as a person, Amy is an indictment of those around her, especially her ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, […]

A historic Iran nuclear accord has been reached, promising to lift sanctions in exchange for the country reducing its nuclear ability. The agreement is expected to be published in the next few days and include the crucial mechanics related to nuclear inspectors’ access to sites. Scott Ritter, a former intelligence officer with the United States […]

Our favorite stories of the week, featuring, Seattle Met, London Review of Books, More Intelligent Life, Mother Jones, and Matter.

It was a famously cold winter. I’d come from a snowbound Hove, where I’d spent hours sitting and brooding, wrapped up but shivering on the frozen pebbled beach staring out at an icy sea, writing poetry about seagulls and loneliness (no longer extant, thank heavens, though that’s not to say that I wouldn’t write about […]

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *

We’d hardly got home before I said: ‘Well, I suppose I’m going to write a cancer diary.’ The only other thing I might have said was: ‘Well, I’m not going to write a cancer diary.’ Right there: a choice? I’m a writer, have been since I was small, and have earned my living at it […]

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *

We are expats and nomads. We are products of multiple countries. We run away from places that don’t feel quite right, only to never find where we belong. These stories celebrate the journey of returning to (or discovering) our roots, and the elusive, ever-evolving concept of home.

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. ***

Haltingly, apologetically, then with increasing fluency, the survivors spoke of the terror of the wave, the pain of bereavement and their fears for the future. They also talked about encounters with the supernatural. They described sightings of ghostly strangers, friends and neighbours, and dead loved ones. They reported hauntings at home, at work, in offices […]

I wrote through the night to assemble what we had. The thinness could become a kind of statement, I asserted; it could become a modernist autobiography. But the jokes wouldn’t hold and Julian, despite promising his publishers and me that he’d produce pages, paragraphs, even notes towards his book, produced nothing in all the months […]

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

Michael is the associate publisher at The Awl network. “Earlier this week, Vladislav Surkov—also known by his nickname, the ‘gray cardinal’—resigned (i.e. was fired) from his position as a leading cabinet official in Medvedev’s government. As a character, Surkov is endlessly fascinating. On one hand he’s a ruthless political operator whose genius maneuvers have drawn […]

A woman reflects on the virtues and limits of online dating: I went on a date with a classical composer who invited me to a John Cage concert at Juilliard. After the concert we looked for the bust of Béla Bartók on 57th Street. We couldn’t find it, but he told me how Bartók had […]

A review of new book Demon Fish and the truth about sharks—from their mating rituals to the real odds of being attacked:  There were 75 verified shark attacks last year, and 12 fatalities. Even in the US, a global hotspot, you are forty times more likely to be hospitalised by a Christmas tree ornament than […]

How does the U.S. define what groups are terrorist organizations, and what groups are potential allies? Questions around the Mujahedin e Khalq (MEK) in Iran: The story of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the Mujahedin e Khalq (MEK), is all about the way image management can enable a diehard enemy to become […]

What Marx got right—and wrong—about capitalism:  The most obvious mistake in his version of the world is to do with class. There is something like a classic Marxian proletariat dispersed through the world. But Marx foresaw that this proletariat would be an increasingly centralised and organised force: indeed, this was one of the reasons it […]