This study brings together literary and philological criticism to offer a reading of Job 28 as poetry. The heart of the study consists of two major sections. The first is an interpretation of the poem
A portrait―by turns celebratory, skeptical, and surprisingly moving―of an iconic American institution, from an author who “might be the most influential design critic writing now” (LARB).Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as the American mall. Since its birth around the turn of the 1950s, it has loomed large as a temple of commerce and agora of the suburbs. In its prime, it proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers from Joan Didion to Ray Bradbury to George Romero, who understood its appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era’s defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?In her acclaimed The Design of Childhood, Alexandra Lange uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and p
