"The model is the scripteur actualized." Alex McPhee-Browne explores the link between semiotics and LLMs: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/signifiers-differance-saussure-barthes-derrida-llm-ai-slop/

There are still tickets available for our event with PRS! Join us on July 26 for a night of readings celebrating the hidden gems and oddities that make L.A. endlessly fascinating. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/take-fountain-a-night-of-non-fiction-readings-presented-by-larb-tickets-1991876043867

"To her enormous discredit, she crosses the line into unethical journalism by defaming the innocent." Andrew Koppelman on Mollie Hemmingway's uncritical biography of Justice Samuel Alito: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/alito-conservative-justice-reshaped-supreme-court-mollie-hemingway/

"'Unidentified' combines suspense with social commentary, offering a glimpse into a world rarely portrayed on the screen." Radha Vatsal reviews Haifaa Al Mansour’s new film, “Unidentified”: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/haifaa-al-mansour-unidentified-saudi-arabia-noir-femicide/

“Television flow reorganized narrative time. Social media has radicalized it.” From our Traffic issue, Max L. Feldman on what the internet took from television: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/max-l-feldman-internet-television-flow-traffic/

"I think that you can tell that we had joy making these movies even at their ugliest." Conor Williams interviews John Waters about his films’ induction into the Criterion Collection: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/john-waters-criterion-collection-hairspray-desperate-living-baltimore/

"Grossman managed to produce first-rate journalism that is also of lasting quality as artful prose." Eric Vanderwall reviews Vasily Grossman's "From the Front Line": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/vasily-grossman-from-front-line-stalingrad-treblinka-reporting

Today's the day! Come help us prepare for our move by nabbing some gems from our archive. Join us at the Granada Buildings from 11-6 today to score some discounted magazines, LARB freebies, and more. Don't miss it! https://lareviewofbooks.org/event/backlist-sale/

“You have to use humor, it is the only way to fight.” John Waters talks to Conor Williams about his films entering the Criterion Collection: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/john-waters-criterion-collection-hairspray-desperate-living-baltimore/

On this week's #LARBRadioHour, ’Pemi Aguda joins to talk about her debut novel "One Leg on Earth." Listen now on our website or wherever you get your podcasts: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/pemi-aguda-one-leg-earth-interview-podcast/

Alexis Almeida talks about her new book, "Caetano": "I think narratives can also be places, because they can become familiar and played out, defamiliarized." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/caetano-alexis-almeida-poetry-repetition-memory-absence/

"'The Illuminated Man' seeks to trace out the roots of Ballard’s visionary fiction in his life, without reducing the former to the latter." Steven Shaviro on "The Illuminated Man": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jg-ballard-illuminated-man-christopher-priest-nina-allan/

"This beleaguered aspect of surrealist refusal and demand becomes more pronounced in the glaucous light of today's déjà vu of neo-fascisms." Abigail Susik on André Breton, surrealism, and necropolitics: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/andre-breton-nadja-magic-art-cavalier-perspective-pessimism/

"When woven together the novella evokes a place once imagined as a safe haven, now dissolving into an increasingly broken family and city." Teresa Xie reviews Dorothy Tse's "City Like Water":

“I had a lot of therapy at a really young age, and I learned a certain way of having conversations about one’s interior life.” Sam Axelrod interviews Rachel Aviv about her new book, "You Won’t Get Free of It": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/rachel-aviv-you-wont-get-free-mothers-daughters/

"If the (human) justice system is, as we are told, riddled with error and prejudice, then might a machine be better able to render impartial verdicts?" Travis Alexander on "Mercy": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mercy-artificial-intelligence-justice-system-chris-pratt-statistics/

"Maybe love is the decision to stay. To return. To pay attention. To let yourself be claimed, however imperfectly, by both the past and the future." Ash Sanders on how we've failed the Colorado River: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/ash-sanders-river-delta-water-border

"What noir helps sensitize us to, I think, is—to put it reductively—that justice already is a matter of artificial intelligence." Travis Alexander on the noir influences of "Mercy": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mercy-artificial-intelligence-justice-system-chris-pratt-statistics/

"Dictatorship is nothing but armed imagination, while the novel is imagination expressed through language. Hence the rivalry." Amany Alsiefy interviews Kamel Daoud about being tried for a novel: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/kamel-daoud-french-algerian-exile-postcolonial-censorship-houris/

"By inviting us all to embrace the Declaration as our own, it also erases the actual history of the text itself." Jeffrey C. Isaac explores Danielle Allen's re-released "Our Declaration": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/our-declaration-independence-america-defense-equality-danielle-allen/

Want to keep up with everything LARB? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest on all our events, writing, book clubs, and more. https://lareviewofbooks.org/about/newsletter/

"The novel depicts Apachería as a landscape in transition from one state to another, like the goo a caterpillar dissolves into before emerging from its chrysalis." Nick Roberts on "Now I Surrender": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/now-i-surrender-alvaro-enrigue-geronimo-apacheria-displacement/

“The response, they said, suggested that for many workers, silence was no longer worth it.” On Hollywood, Gaza, and the invisible blacklist: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hollywood-gaza-blacklist-palestine-israel-larb-quarterly-traffic/

Celebrate the holiday by supporting independent media. Help keep LARB going by donating today: https://lareviewofbooks.org/donate?utm_source=bsky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=independenceday_donate_2026

On this week's #LARBRadioHour, Medaya Ocher, Kate Wolf, and Eric Newman come together for a special episode about aging. What is the difference between growing older and aging, and how do we mark those differences? Listen now: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/podcast-aging-beauty-body-discussion/

"Glionna has managed to preserve people and places otherwise lost to time." Reannon Muth on John Glionna's "Rebels and Outliers: Real Stories of the American West": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/rebels-outliers-real-stories-american-west-glionna-desert

"Gage is (unsurprisingly) good at depicting the ways in which history has repeatedly been rewritten and repurposed." Alice Kelly on Beverly Gage's "This Land is Your Land": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/this-land-is-your-land-beverly-gage-history/

"I was never a punk, but the ethos was the same." Andy Brown talks to Colin Beineke about Canadian comics publishing and 30 years of Conundrum Press: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/andy-brown-conundrum-press-canada-montreal-comics-publishing

"I had one foot in New York City and one foot far out; it felt kind of like I was on the edge of the earth." David Fishkind on writing his new novel, “Don’t Step Into My Office": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dont-step-into-my-office-david-fishkind-novel

"Given the deprivations she chronicles, Ward’s successful struggle to achieve a writer’s vocation becomes even more impressive." J.W. Bonner reviews Jesmyn Ward's "On Witness and Respair": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/witness-respair-essays-jesmyn-ward-southern-racism-poverty/