• LARB’s Top 25 Most Read Articles of 2014

    1. Young Adult Cancer Story by Briallen Hopper, July 16th, 2014

    Author John Green called it his “favorite essay on The Fault in Our Stars yet.”

    2. We Need To Talk About Tyrion: How HBO Failed George R. R. Martin’s Iconic Character by Ilana Teitelbaum, November 21st, 2014

    “What is most remarkable about this moment in the TV series is that the show gets it wrong.”

    3. Hitler, Continued: Afterword from the Updated Edition of “Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil” by Ron Rosenbaum, July 10th, 2014

    Ron Rosenbaum’s characteristically brilliant response to all the important updates that have occurred in Hitler studies in the past 15 years.

    1. Sarah Mesle on Texts from Jane Eyre by Sarah Mesle, November 6th, 2014

    Texts from Jane Eyre is not only a major work of bathroom humor reading, but also a significant contribution to feminist literary criticism.

    5. The Posthuman Scar-Jo by Sophia Nguyen, September 12th, 2014

    Scarlett Johansson in Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013), and Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014).

    6. The Two Abysses of the Soul by Costica Bradatan July 31st, 2014

    Costica Bradatan shows us how The Brothers Karamazov explains Russia’s current politics.

    7. American Loneliness by Emma Healey June 29th, 2014

    Emma Healey on MTV’s ‘Catfish’ and the state of modern love

    8. On Excess: Susan Sontag’s Born-Digital Archive by Jeremy Schmidt and Jacquelyn Ardam October 26th, 2014

    Susan Sontag’s entire digital life is now available to researchers. What should they do with it?

    9. “True Detective” Finale by Anne Helen Petersen and Lili Loofbourow and Evan Kindley and Phillip Maciak, March 11th, 2014

    Four very different reactions to the divisive ending of season one of HBO’s True Detective.

    10. “True Detective”: Down the Bayou (Far From Any Road) by Jacob Mikanowski, March 8th, 2014

    From The King in Yellow to H.P. Lovecraft, “all of a sudden the psychosphere is in the mainstream.”

    11. The Oldest Story: Toward a Theory of a Dead Girl Show by Alice Bolin, April 28th, 2014

    Alice Bolin theorizes on the commonality of the Dead Girl in Twin Peaks, True Detective, and Pretty Little Liars.

    12. Girls, Season 3: “Only Child” by Anne Helen Petersen, February 4th, 2014

    Girls, for all of its flaws, does speak truth to (most) power.

    13. David Winters on Elegy for Theoryby N. Rodowick by David Winters, January 16th, 2014

    If theory really is a thing of the past, its status as such could open it up for retrospective reconsideration.

    14. Mad Men, Season 7: “Field Trip” by Anne Helen Petersen, April 29th, 2014

    In Defense of Betty Draper.

    15. A. C. Grayling on Living with a Wild God by Barbara Ehrenreich by A.C. Grayling, July 2nd, 2014

    Why do we die and what is the purpose of life?

    16. Piety and Perversity: The Palms of Los Angeles by Victoria Dailey, July 14th, 2014

    A comprehensive look at the history — and the myth — of Los Angeles’s most potent symbol.

    17. Jonathan Freedman on The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish by Jonathan Freedman, April 22nd, 2014

    Deconstructing De Man in the Digital Age.

    18. Jedediah Purdy on Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty by Jedediah Purdy, April 24th, 2014 “To Have and Have Not”

    How unequal is the division of wealth and income? How did it get that way, and where is it going?

    19. Faking Galileo by Massimo Mazzotti June 25th, 2014

    A faked copy of Galileo’s landmark book Sidereus Nuncius has disarmed a generation of Galileo experts.

    20. Sleep’s Hidden Histories Benjamin Reiss on The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life, 24/7 : Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, Dangerously Sleepy: Overworked Americans and the Cult of Manly Wakefulness by Matthew J. Wolf-MeyerJonathan CraryAlan Derickson by Benjamin Reiss, February 15th, 2014

    Sleeping patterns and configurations vary from culture to culture and across time

    21. Who Killed Robert McCulloch’s Father? by Peter James Hudson September 18th, 2014

    The story behind the story of the prosecutor in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri.

    22. A Visit with Mary Beard by Annalisa Quinn August 13th, 2014

    Annalisa Quinn in conversation with Mary Beard, a one-of-a-kind classicist.

    23. Mourning Tongues: How Auden Was Modified in the Guts of the Living by Nina Martyris, January 28th, 2014

    One of the most extraordinary elegiac conversations of our time.

    24. Christopher Newfield on Aspiring Adults Adrift by Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum by Christopher Newfield, September 29th, 2014

    “Is College Still Worth It? ”

    25. Anders Behring Breivik and the Massacre on Utøya: on Aage Borchgrevink’s “A Norwegian Tragedy” by Rachel Monroe, May 12th, 2014

    When a person commits an atrocity, our immediate, stuttering questions are why and how? Can reading a mass murderer’s own account answer those questions?