Review 31 was launched in October 2011 with a simple mission: to provide intelligent, nuanced reviews of the most interesting new books, in an accessible and web-friendly format. Our contributors are a diverse mix of accomplished intellectuals: journalists, writers and academics.
While there will always be a place for the ‘long-form’ review essay, the online medium is arguably better suited to a more compact sort of piece. Most of our reviews are therefore somewhat shorter than what you might find in the New York Review or the LRB, while retaining the intellectual rigour you would expect from an essay-length review.
The site itself has been designed with the reader very much in mind: there is a distinct and deliberate lack of frills, pop-ups and other distractions, in favour of a sleek simplicity that we hope is conducive to a pleasant reading experience.
What we review
Our coverage is mainly focused on non-fiction titles published by academic presses and independent publishers, although we will occasionally dabble in ‘trade’ books. Our principal areas of interest are humanities-related: politics, current affairs, history, art & culture. We have taken care to select from the most thought-provoking and topical books for review.
Our first 12 months threw up a wonderfully varied array of articles: educationalist Tom Steele has critically dissected the Tory-led government’s higher education policy; journalist Zoe Williams has explored the morally fraught political economy of the domestic care industry; on the political theory front, there have been telling contributions from academics Nina Power and Benjamin Noys - the latter, most recently, in a searching examination of the ethics of ‘political theology’ as discussed in Simon Critchley’s new book; Jeremy Spencer, Rosa Ainley and Luke White have all written insightfully on the subject of art, architecture and modernism. In August 2012 we also began publishing reviews of literary fiction.
Editors
Houman Barekat, Mark Sheridan (politics & current affairs, history)
Alison Hugill, Marc Farrant (arts & culture, philosophy, theory)
Luke Neima (literary fiction)
Tom Cutterham (interviews)
Andrew Key (academic non-fiction)
Melissa Tricoire (publicity)
Click here for a list of contributors
Credits
Review 31 is © 2011-2013 Sulaco Publishing Company Ltd.
Site built by Theo Graham-Brown and Tim Coyle.
Logo by Tim Coyle.
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All book cover images are reproduced with the permission of the relevant publisher.
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