A roundup of the most engaging recent pieces on the web read by the Pittsburgh Review of Books this week.
“Pittsburgh, I love you” from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette
“When I first arrived in Pittsburgh almost 20 years ago, I intended to stay for exactly three years.”
“Sitting Apart” from the Los Angeles Review of Books
“The prose earns its place alongside the argument. Beckerman writes in a register that oscillates between the elevated and the colloquial, with enough control that the oscillations feel purposeful.”
“Pete Hegseth’s holy war: the militant Christian theology animating the US attack on Iran” from The Guardian
“Could the bellicose, belligerent and braying Hegseth – with his Crusader tattoos, his disdain for diplomacy, and his evident taste for violent domination – have convinced Trump to start a war to complete the unfinished business of the Crusades?”
“Humanity on the Page” from Commonweal Magazine
“If a machine wrote this, I thought, we are truly screwed.“
“Why were the ’90s So Good?” from Tablet
“It was like something from 20 or 30 years ago, I marveled.”
“Michael Is Not Rooted in Reality” from Jacobin
“And this is happening in the era of Jeffrey Epstein, when indignation at the way privileged and powerful people get away with systematic rape and pedophilic abuse has been foaming over. So my question in response to all this unequivocal Michael Jackson love is: ‘Are you all crazy?’”
“Why Does Music in Science Fiction Sound Like That?” from JSTOR Daily
“As entertaining as they might be, most of these pieces of music ‘conjure up an image of what audiences of the day thought the future should sound like.’”
“The Uncomfortable Lightness of Dark Academia” from Public Books
“At a moment when working in higher education often feels like being strapped into a driverless Tesla with tires that keep slashing themselves, it can take multiple fictions to get through the day.”
