#londonreviewofbooks — Public Fediverse posts

“There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.” :blobcatgiggle:
#oddysey #movieReview #londonReviewOfBooks by #emilyWilson
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

the article i’ve been quoting seems to be available without lrb subscription:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n19/oliver-cussen/fish-in-the-wrong-place
#LondonReviewOfBooks

“More recently, and for obvious reasons, the idea that states have ever been able to exert control over complex natural systems has become less and less convincing. The latest scholarship argues that all forms of hydrological intervention are inherently unstable.”
Oliver Cussen, ‘Fish in the Wrong Place’, London Review of Books

#quotes #LondonReviewOfBooks

“There is a rich tradition of scholarship on the relationship between the control of water and the power of the state. In the 1950, Karl Wittfogel, a German Marxist turned anti-communist, proposed that the so-called ‘oriental despotisms’ of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and above all China had a common cause: in each case the state assumed the responsibility for large irrigation projects, which in turn had to be supervised by elaborate bureaucracies and centralised, authoritarian elites. Historians with very different ideological commitments have made similar claims about the way the irrigated state’s domination of nature has enabled its domination of people – in the American West, for instance, or on Caribbean plantations.”

Oliver Cussen, ‘Fish in the Wrong Place’, London Review of Books

#quotes #LondonReviewOfBooks

🎉 Welcome to the London Review of Books, where we expertly transform mundane topics into highbrow snooze fests! 🤓✨ Dive deep into intellectual abyss as David Runciman explores why #gamification is the existential threat we never knew we cared about. 📚💤
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n10/david-runciman/trivial-pursuits #LondonReviewOfBooks #intellectualDebate #DavidRunciman #existentialThreat #HackerNews #ngated

‘All They Will Find Is Sand’: #Israel’s Demolition of #Gaza
https://world-outlook.com/2026/04/19/all-they-will-find-is-sand-israels-demolition-of-gaza/

April 19, 2026
[article from #LondonReviewOfBooks with intro and photos by #WorldOutlook.]

The​ #UN Genocide Convention of 1948 lists five acts that constitute #genocide when committed with the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. The first two concern mass killing and serious bodily or mental harm...

The third prohibition ...forbids ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction’. This refers to indirect forms of killing, those that don’t target human bodies but the environment that sustains them. Sufficient ‘conditions of life’ require buildings, hospitals, ...sewage and water systems, power grids, agriculture. The intentional destruction or degradation of such structures undermines a people’s ability to survive, leading to a slower and more tortuous form of annihilation.

#StopGazaGenocide
#news #politics #Palestine

“I’m inclined to side with those who hold that Habermas at first revivified critical theory but ultimately ended it.” Nancy Fraser on Jürgen Habermas and her relation to his work in the LRB.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/march/after-habermas

#habermas #Obituaries #londonreviewofbooks #academia #philosophy #politicalphilosophy #foucault

https://www.europesays.com/uk/736885/ Was Jane Austen Gay? – The Actors’ Church, London #ActorsChurch #AnnaDennis #Britain #CityOfLondonSinfonia #ClaudieBlakley #Concert #England #GreatBritain #JamesMcVinnie #JaneAusten #JemimaRooper #london #LondonReviewOfBooks #RebeccaKnight #Review #RuthFunnell #SamKinchinSmith #Theatre #UK #UnitedKingdom #WasJaneAustenGay?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef6tlFVigsQ

#Art #Design #GraphicDesign #CoverDesign #LRB #LondonReviewOfBooks

Just finished off cleaning the downstairs windows by polishing them up with pages from an old #LondonReviewOfBooks.

#MiddleClassHousework

Podcast: #AndyBeckett and #ThomasJones · #PinochetAndTheNazis https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/pinochet-and-the-nazis

#LondonReviewOfBooks

InPublishing: The London Review of Books chooses Exact Editions. “Exact Editions says it offers an immersive reading experience, with a fidelity that replicates the visual impact and design integrity of the print edition but allows for seamless navigation, full-text search and accessibility features. This new digital subscription to the London Review of Books provides all the benefits of a […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/05/16/inpublishing-the-london-review-of-books-chooses-exact-editions/

re: Compost

“There’s a eucharistic mystery to the biochemical transformations that follow. Things fall apart. They decompose and recompose. Thermophilic microbes foment anarchy in the pile…I make my own compost so that I can convince myself that even when the world seems socially and ecologically broken there are still mechanisms for recovery: it shows that change is possible. Composting is a simple habit of composition or gathering together that integrates past fragments into a future whole“

by Fraser MacDonald in London Review of Books

#compost #LondonReviewOfBooks #seaweed

O man, away for a week, mail got delivered:

this is so great 🍸😺

#newyorkreviewofbooks #LondonReviewofBooks

from #WorldOutlook
Author #AdamShatz on ‘#Israel’s Descent’ (part 3 of 3)

Linked article below gives an introduction and link to an article that appeared in the June 20, 2024, issue of the #LondonReviewOfBooks (#LRB), a magazine based in the #UnitedKingdom.

Shatz addresses the false conflation of #antiZionism with #antisemitism by #USA politicians and others. He explains that argument is not new, and it has never been shared by all #Jews. The books he reviews in this essay single out #Jewish voices that were sharply critical of the main leaders of #Zionism in the years before Israel was established, as well as after 1948.

#SolidarityWithPalestine is #NotAntisemitism
#CeasefireNow #EndUSAidToIsrael #DivestFromIsrael
#StopGazaGenocide
#Gaza #Palestine #USPolitics
#news #press @palestine @israel

https://world-outlook.com/2024/06/29/author-adam-shatz-on-israels-descent-iii/

from #WorldOutlook
Author #AdamShatz on ‘#Israel’s Descent’ (part 2 of 3)

Linked article below gives an introduction and link to an article that appeared in the June 20, 2024, issue of the #LondonReviewOfBooks (#LRB), a magazine based in the #UnitedKingdom.

Shatz addresses the false conflation of #antiZionism with #antisemitism by #USA politicians and others. He explains that argument is not new, and it has never been shared by all #Jews. The books he reviews in this essay single out #Jewish voices that were sharply critical of the main leaders of #Zionism in the years before Israel was established, as well as after 1948.

#SolidarityWithPalestine is #NotAntisemitism
#CeasefireNow #EndUSAidToIsrael #DivestFromIsrael
#StopGazaGenocide
#Gaza #Palestine #USPolitics
#news #press @palestine @israel

https://world-outlook.com/2024/06/28/author-adam-shatz-on-israels-descent-ii/

from #WorldOutlook
Author #AdamShatz on ‘#Israel’s Descent’ (I)

Linked article below gives an introduction and link to an article that appeared in the June 20, 2024, issue of the #LondonReviewOfBooks (#LRB), a magazine based in the #UnitedKingdom.

Shatz addresses the false conflation of #antiZionism with #antisemitism by #USA politicians and others. He explains that argument is not new, and it has never been shared by all #Jews. The books he reviews in this essay single out #Jewish voices that were sharply critical of the main leaders of #Zionism in the years before Israel was established, as well as after 1948.

#SolidarityWithPalestine is #NotAntisemitism
#CeasefireNow #EndUSAidToIsrael #DivestFromIsrael
#StopGazaGenocide
#Gaza #Palestine #USPolitics
#news #press @palestine @israel

https://world-outlook.com/2024/06/27/author-adam-shatz-on-israels-descent-i/

This is appalling: 'Since October, Indian Telegram chats with more than fifty thousand members have been sharing, commenting and clicking “like” on indiscriminate images of the torture and death of Palestinian men, women and children.’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/february/think-about-the-nation

#LondonReviewOfBooks #Gaza #India #WarCrimes

A piece from a fellow person who does not own a smartphone: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/february/necessity-or-compulsion

#londonreviewofbooks #lrb #smartphones #phones #addiction #technology #elaineglaser #parenting

#IsraelUSAHamasWar / Rubble from Bone: Tom Stevenson writes about Operation Iron Swords

[…] Israeli tactics have little in common with standard counterinsurgency doctrine or rules of engagement. The war on #Gaza is at its core retributive: an act of collective punishment. Like all punishment, to ask whether or not it ‘works’ misses the point that punishment is often an end in itself. But the conduct of the war also has an orgiastic quality. The celebrations of the killing by Israel’s political leaders; the fantastic schemes for the removal of Palestinians to Sinai, or Europe, or Congo; the public figures signing bombs to be dropped on what’s left of Gaza; the gleeful recordings made by individual soldiers – all combine malice and mirth.

#LondonReviewOfBooks https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n03/tom-stevenson/rubble-from-bone

H/t @julieofthespirits

@israel
@palestine
#WarCrimes
#Israel

#PatriciaLockwood meets the Pope.

Some gorgeous phantasmic writing

#londonreviewofbooks #rome
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n23/patricia-lockwood/diary

This short #LondonReviewOfBooks article on the absurd bureaucracy of the British armed forces during the First World War is absolutely fascinating. Reminds me of Gilliam’s “Brazil”.

"In Good-Bye to All That (1929), Robert Graves complained about the ‘army forms marked “Urgent”’ which ‘constantly arrived from headquarters’ and were ‘all contradictory’. These forms were prefixed ‘AF’ and indexed with a number and a ‘class’ letter, which in 1917 ran from A to W. The class letter indicated the general subject or the branch that had issued the form. Class A forms were ‘General Forms’, such as ‘A. 6 Wounded in Action – Nominal List of’, or ‘A. 2000 Horse Return’. Class B, ‘Regiments and Corps’ forms, ran through topics such as ‘B. 4 Leave of Absence Officers’ or ‘B. 258 Weekly Church Parade States’, and ended with ‘B. 5103 Medal Entitlement’. “

(may be paywalled)

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n13/jonathan-sawday/fill-in-the-blanks

Iain Sinclair’s piece for the #LondonReviewOfBooks June weather diary is so wonderfully written.

"I think it was on the day of the Westminster coronation, a sorry stroll through a resolutely unfestive city, that I realised there was no more weather. That reflex topic of British conversation had finally abdicated. Weather had withdrawn the accepted metaphors on which civic and poetic life depend. The ancient bond between king, subjects and sky was dissolved.”

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/june/the-weather-in-london-abdicates

#ClimateCrisis

I have been enjoying reading about "Chips" Channon in the LRB, who seems to have been a hilariously awful human being.

#LondonReviewOfBooks #LRB

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n02/geoffrey-wheatcroft/not-even-a-might-have-been

"This is a remarkable story and Morgan tells it well."—Review of A NATION OF DESCENDENTS: Politics and the Practice of Geneology in US History by Francesca Morgan in the 30 March 2023 #LondonReviewofBooks | The Pocahontas Exception
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n07/thomas-laqueur/the-pocahontas-exception#

This piece in the LRB by William Davies on “The Reaction Economy” is just superb. It’s a long, wide ranging read - covering everything from youtube reaction videos to modern politics to psychology to social media to eduction. There are almost too many quotable points he makes to choose one in particular, but…

"Fromm was concerned by the way mid-20th-century educational norms sought to eradicate the ‘spontaneity’ of the child in favour of discipline. Emotional responses were trained out of the child altogether. Today, with so much talk of mental health and ‘wellbeing’, we may believe we’ve moved on from this, while at the same time being mystified as to the reason our society generates such vast anxiety among young people.”

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/william-davies/the-reaction-economy

#LondonReviewOfBooks #SocialMedia #Psychology #Politics

A rather beautiful bitter-sweet return visit to Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eyes” by Anne Enright.

"Reading does, in some way, hold us together. According to the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, it is connective across various neural circuits and involves large areas of the brain. Our understanding is predictive and feels instantaneous; it can also be metacognitive, co-creative and generative. My mother taught me how to do all this, using those same patterns of mimicry and hesitation, when I was three years old. Or she taught me how to start all this: reading is an evolving skill which begins with simple decoding and ends, according to Wolf, with empathy and those ‘blessed moments’ afforded by immersion in which we attain insight, or new levels of understanding."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n01/anne-enright/eyes-that-bite

#LondonReviewOfBooks #Books

This is an astonishing review by Andrew O'Hagan of Prince Harry's book 'Spare'.
"There has never been a book like this, with its parcelling out of epic, one-sided truths. Most royal biographies, even the lively ones ... were made airless by vapid writing, spurious genuflections before royal protocol, cringing vanity masquerading as public service."
#LRB
#LondonReviewofBooks
#PrinceHarry
#Journalism
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n03/andrew-o-hagan/off-his-royal-tits

This, from Michael Kulikowski’s review of two volumes on numismatics in the current issue of #LondonReviewOfBooks (45/3, p. 25), is so true. Heraldry and genealogy have been central to my own prosopographical work: armorial dissemination can contribute much to our understanding of networks within the military community and society at large. As for numismatics: the coinage in medieval Europe offers evidence of mind-boggling variety and richness (the reviewer stresses this for the ancient world).

@redfrog For a really thorough critique of McKinsey see this in #LondonReviewOfBooks
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n24/laleh-khalili/in-clover

The LRB's latest report for the World Weather Network, courtesy of A.E. Stallings in Greece.

"There’s a term in Greek for a spell of fine weather in the middle of winter, the halcyon days (alkyonides meres), after the kingfisher, which, according to legend, must nest and raise its brood floating on calm waters. These days tend to occur for a week or two from mid-January, but can start any time from the solstice through to 15 February. Perhaps for that reason, the exceptionally mild weather over the twelve days of Christmas did not call forth the same climate anxiety as, for instance, the heat waves of the summer, and the ever worsening and elongating fire season. It’s just the halcyon days, we tell ourselves, and marvel at the blue skies and soft spring-like air."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/january/halcyon-days-in-the-saronic-gulf

#LondonReviewOfBooks #climate

"The primary product sold by all management consultants – both software developers and strategic organisers – is the theology of capital. This holds that workers are expendable. They can be replaced by machines, or by harder-working employees" Thorough critique of McKinsey, Deloitte, E&Y, KPMG, PwC, Boston Consulting Group, Andersen Consulting. By the wonderful Laleh Khalili in #LondonReviewOfBooks
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n24/laleh-khalili/in-clover
#ManagementConsultants
#Corruption #Bribery #StateCapture

Have noticed that some academics care a great deal about various "X Review of Books" and "X Literary Supplement" magazines.

Does anyone have a story about the role of these culturally? Who do these publications tend to speak to? I didn't really realize they existed until very specific genre of professor asked if I'd read an essay in a recent issue and wondered "what is this and am I supposed to be reading them too???"

#LondonReviewOfBooks #ReviewOfBooks
#Academic #AcademicPhilosophy #PhD

Realised I should have added some #hashtags, so
#StuartHall
#culturalstudies
#londonreviewofbooks
#KilburnManifesto
#UKLeftPolitics
#thatcherism
#OptimismOfTheWill
#utopias
#speculativefiction
#resistance
#AlternativeSecurity

https://archive.org/details/shitty-men-in-media

Shitty Men In Media by Moira Donegan; crowdsourced

Topics #shittymeninmedia, #shittymediamen, #abusers, #abuse, #misogyny, #patriarchy, #columbiauniversity, #theparisreview, #thenewrepublic, #newyorkmagazine, #londonreviewofbooks, #nymag, #lrb, #harpersmagazine, #harpers, #nplus1magazine, #nplus1, #riverheadbooks, #thebaffler, #thenation, #losangelestimes, #latimes, #thenewyorker, #powellsbooks, #tinhouse, #versobooks, #verso, #wendyssubway, #mcnallyjackson, #bleacherreport, #thetrumpscorecard, #gq, #condénast, #vocativ, #vicesports, #vicemedia, #fsg, #farrarstrausandgiroux, #kissingsuzykolber, #cnbc, #wallstreetjournal, #wsj, #breitbart, #valleywag, #wiredmagazine, #guernica, #brooklynpubliclibrary, #medium, #villagevoice, #fastcompany, #thebatsegundoshow, #batsegundo, #thehuffingtonpost, #huffpo, #politico, #deadspin, #newyorktimes, #nyt, #aeon, #simonandschuster, #harpercollins, #esquire, #gawker, #theintercept, #techcrunch, #buzzfeed, #grantland, #ratter, #quartz, #penguinyoungreaders, #philomel, #fivethirtyeight, #theguardian, #rollingstone, #dailydot, #thedailydot, #macmillan, #motherjones, #pitchfork, #chicagoreader, #nationalgeographic, #slate, #slatemagazine, #mic, #cbs, #cracked, #electronicbeats, #thedailyshow, #euromoney, #nomadcinema, #newyorkmedia