Is London Really Falling? Bethanne Patrick on Patrick Radden Keefe, Freya India and the Collapse of Book Reviewing

Keen On — Bethanne Patrick
Recorded April 30, 2026

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We're into 2026 already. It's May. The New York Times came out with the best books of the year so far. And one of the books is one that I've read, and that I know my guest today — the best-read woman in America, Bethanne Patrick, book critic of the New York Times — also wanted to discuss. It's one of her books of May 2026, London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe. The Times says it's a portrait of an ambitious London teenager consumed by a desire for extreme wealth. In other words, it's a book about both the anxieties of childhood and the extremes of neoliberalism. Is that a fair way of putting it, Bethanne?

00:01:24 Bethanne Patrick: I would say it's a fair way of putting it. I think you might have said that I'm a critic for The New York Times, and I just wanna make sure—

00:01:31 Andrew Keen: That was a Freudian error. Los Angeles Times.

00:01:35 Bethanne Patrick: That's right. That's right. But Radden Keefe's book is on that New York Times list, and you and I have already discussed how much we both love this book. And I do think that's a fair assessment. One of the things I think is most interesting about London Falling — which is, of course, about this teenager, Zach Brettler, who went by Zach Ismailov in some of the circles he ran in. No spoilers here, okay? But I think it's really interesting that people, let's say, twenty, thirty years ago were constantly talking about, quote unquote, London as a third-world country, and worrying about immigrants. Guess what? The immigrants you were worrying about — those are the people who are the great citizens of London today, the people who run small businesses, who send their children to schools, who are teachers and police officers and civil servants. The immigrants you needed to worry about were the oligarchs, and that's what we see in London Falling. We see that oligarchs from Russia and people from other countries who have millions and sometimes billions of dollars are really changing the city of London. And I know "the City" itself is a very strictly defined term. But, Andrew, London itself, London the metropolis, London the world capital, has been changed by this influx of money from overseas.

00:03:31 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And full disclosure on this book — I actually know the Brettler family. I grew up with Matthew Brettler, who's the father, who's maybe the central character in the book. His son is tragically no longer alive. So this book resonated for me partially because of that, and also because I'm from London. I have to admit, it's a very good book. Keefe is an excellent writer, but I'm not convinced by the thesis of new money. There was a very good op-ed by Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times about what he calls the return of Londonophobia, which fears capitalism in London — when Ganesh argues that London's always been distinguished by its capitalism. So, what did you think of the book?

00:04:29 Bethanne Patrick: I thought the book was really excellent in terms of showing how confidence people — con men in this case — con each other. And I thought that its weakest point perhaps was the story of the Brettler family — not because they do anything wrong. Matthew and Rachel, or Rachelle, Brettler are really lovely people, it seems, in many, many ways. What struck me about their story is that there simply wasn't that much to hang on to. And I think Keefe comes to that in his conclusion: that basically this is a sad story of a very bright, very manipulative kid who got in above his head and wound up dying because he was at a very scary juncture. So that was the part of the book that was least interesting to me, even though I found the Brettlers enormously sympathetic and thought that their story was truly interesting. The story of both sides of the family — both sides were deeply affected by the Holocaust, and have a lot, as you—

00:06:14 Andrew Keen: Say. Yeah. And that throws another element into the book, which is always something that people pick up books about in airport bookstores, for example: the Holocaust. So you put together: boys' insecurity, the excesses of neoliberalism — yes — Russian thugs, drugs, of course...

00:06:38 Bethanne Patrick: Yes. And...

00:06:41 Andrew Keen: ...and the last thing, which you just mentioned — I've forgotten now. What was...

00:06:46 Bethanne Patrick: All right. Well, there's the question in the book of what could have saved Zach Brettler. What could have stopped this? And we'll talk about this with another one of the titles I have on my list today, but I'm someone who has written about mental illness. I have a mental illness. I am a depressive. And I also know from family experience that sometimes mental illnesses can be addressed and helped, and sometimes sadly they can't. And that was what I thought was really difficult: amid the scary parts of the book where you have these characters, Akbar Shamji and Varinda Sharma, these two men who are really involved in the underworld in London — they didn't care about Zach's mental wellness, but I don't know if his family could have done anything. One of the parts that really drew my attention was Radden Keefe's interview with Joe Brettler, Zach's older brother, because Joe, I think, realizes in ways that his parents can't take in that there was probably no saving Zach once he had started, as a teenager, down this path. He was a teenager when he died as well, but this started for him in his adolescence, and he simply kept making up ideas and facts about his identity and representing himself as someone with a lot of money and a lot of influence — and that was definitely false. Was it also delusional? That's what's difficult to tell, I think, sometimes in London Falling.

00:08:59 Andrew Keen: This book's done incredibly well. I think it was number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Maybe it's not number one anymore. He's gotten a huge amount of press. It's a very dark book. I wouldn't say a depressing book in the way you talk about depression, but it's a dark, sad book about the death of a very promising teenager. What does this tell us, do you think, about the book-buying public, Bethanne? Patrick Radden Keefe seems a bellwether of maybe reading tastes or writing tastes. There's something rather depressing, I think, about — I wouldn't say the success of the book, because he deserves it, he's an excellent writer — but the fact that books like this do so well.

00:09:48 Bethanne Patrick: Well, I was thinking when I was preparing for this show, Andrew, that Patrick Radden Keefe is kind of the modern-day equivalent — well, not equivalent, but his colleague — Erik Larson. We all know Erik Larson's books, Devil in the White City. Midnight in the Garden — not the John Berendt book, the one about the Nazi regime, the title's escaping me at the moment. But Larson deals with historical dramas. Patrick Radden Keefe hews a little more closely to the present. Of course, his huge bestseller Say Nothing, which has been adapted into a film now, about the IRA and about Northern Ireland, is also a very, very dark book. And one of the things I think it shows is that people want to hear these stories because it does give them drama in their lives. True crime is such a time suck for so many people, and it's so fascinating. I might trace it back to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but I have a feeling, knowing Americans — and I'd be interested to know if you agree — that we've had a taste for true crime long before Capote. People like to read about this kind of thing and know that it's not touching them, or they think that it's not touching them. And they think that this is giving them a window into a part of life that they'll never know about. I dare say if most of us scratch the surfaces of our lives, we have more connections to things that are unsavory than we would really be comfortable admitting.

00:11:47 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And it brings together the true crime of a family tragedy and, of course, the true crime — at least in the way it's presented in London Falling and so many other books — the crimes of neoliberalism over the last fifty years. One of the other best books in The New York Times "best books of the year so far" is by Heather Ann Thompson — Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shooting, and the Rebirth of White Rage. She was on my show a couple of months ago. So — listen, I wanna move on from this, but it's not a very challenging thesis, isn't it? These are the types of books that simply confirm what everyone fears and believes.

00:12:34 Bethanne Patrick: I would agree with that, and I would add — in terms of the idea of neoliberalism — that there are many out there, including the very well-known and acclaimed UC Irvine professor Catherine Liu, who argues that the left really needs to regain its militant side instead of constantly pandering to white progressives and thinking about the kind of people who can sit back, like me, with London Falling and feel like, "Okay, I've closed that, that doesn't affect me." That we need to be in politics as liberals — and I'm not claiming that you are in there with me necessarily, Andrew. I'm only speaking for myself. But we need to be there for people who do not have the same privileges. And one of the things I think that's difficult about London Falling is that this is not a book about Zach Brettler falling prey, as Zach Brettler, to any kind of unfair treatment, or anyone angry about his real identity. This is about someone who made himself up out of whole cloth. And, yes, he was someone's child. He is someone's child. He has parents—

00:14:20 Andrew Keen: Right.

00:14:22 Bethanne Patrick: Yeah. Loving—

00:14:23 Andrew Keen: This is a book about a boy who had every privilege from a very prosperous, loving, united family — who not just messed up his own life, which of course ended tragically young, but also ruined the lives of his parents and his brother and the rest of the family. Going from boys to girls: this is supposed to be the age of anxiety, not just of young men. We've done lots of shows on that, of course. Richard Reeves's Of Boys and Men is a bestseller. Yep. Your second book is on girls — Gen Z and the commodification of everything. It's called Girls, by Freya India. Tell us about this book. Is it the parallel book to Radden Keefe's London Falling — about the crisis of young women as opposed to young men in our supposedly neoliberal age?

00:15:23 Bethanne Patrick: In some ways, it is. India emphasizes the fact that girls have been girls and girls will be girls. They have been since time immemorial, and will continue into the future to be girls. But our world has changed, and specifically technology has changed our world so much that it is starting to affect young women and girls. I have two daughters. One is a very young millennial, and the other is, I guess, an older Gen Z. She's about one or two years older than India herself, who I believe was born in 1999. And one of the things I've noticed — so my younger daughter, who is Gen Z, is really talented. She was summa cum laude in economics, so she's no slouch. Yet her absolute favorite way to relax is reality shows, and specifically the reality shows that are about the commodification of female appearance and beauty, which India talks a lot about, of course, because there are so many anxieties for young women already in our society and culture about the way you look and the way you dress and the way you approach your body and your wellness. But India says this has been made so many thousands of times worse because digital technology and AI are allowing for face-tuning and influencers and more and more targeted advertising that makes young women and girls feel inadequate just twenty-four-seven. And, of course, any of us who have children who grew up right around the time of social media know that online bullying has had a really deleterious effect on these girls that India is writing about. So it's a very smart book that does not place the girls themselves at blame, but instead says, look what we're doing. Look what we're pushing on them. That's why it's called Girls instead of "young women" or "Gen Z females." These are girls. These are children that she's talking about.

00:18:12 Andrew Keen: So more misery for the well-to-do. Is that right?

00:18:17 Bethanne Patrick: Yeah. And...

00:18:18 Andrew Keen: The boys are lying about themselves and claiming to be children of billionaires, and the girls are commodifying — going on Instagram or TikTok.

00:18:29 Bethanne Patrick: Yeah. And worrying about Vanderpump Rules, and whether or not they can rock a seven-inch stiletto heel or something like that. But the good thing is that if we can talk to both the boys and the girls about what really matters... And I don't know which book you have up next, but if I had my druthers, we would move to Make Believe.

00:18:58 Andrew Keen: Well, that was my book. Make Believe — a new manifesto. Yes. Children's literature, on telling stories to children. Whenever there's a problem in liberal circles, we always fall back on storytelling, don't we?

00:19:16 Bethanne Patrick: Well, here's what I love about this book. Mac Barnett is currently the Children's Laureate of the Library of Congress. I don't know anything about Mac Barnett's political predilections. I only know that he is a prolific and very well-published children's book author. And I love this book — not necessarily because I love or know anything about Barnett — but one of my favorite books from thirty, thirty-five years ago has to be The Call of Stories by the great Harvard psychologist Robert Coles. And I think that stories do have something to do with our innate humanity, if not with liberal politics in general. I think stories are so important to our consciousness and our non-AI-driven imaginations. And one of the things that Barnett argues in Make Believe is that we don't just need children's literature. We don't just need children's books. And believe me, he reminds us that there is no genre of children's literature, right? Children's literature encompasses all of the genres.

00:20:40 Andrew Keen: Well, yeah, we can talk till the cows come home. Sorry. Go on, and then I'll—

00:20:46 Bethanne Patrick: One thing I just wanna say is, he says what we really need is art for children. We need literature, not just any old dreck to go out there as a children's book. We need to give children exposure to great art and beauty and truth. And I am sure that Zach Brettler was read to by his brother. Yeah.

00:21:14 Andrew Keen: I mean, that was gonna be my point. Zach Brettler was a brilliant storyteller. In fact, had he lived, he may well have turned out to be a writer or a movie maker, because he told stories. He told stories about himself, which ultimately resulted in his—

00:21:28 Bethanne Patrick: So it's not simply the act of storytelling. It's about the act of seeing others. It's about building compassion through stories — and that is something that, for whatever reason... I cannot diagnose Zach Brettler, and no one can at this point. But stories have to move you toward caring about other people if they are going to give us something. It's not just about taking in. It's not just about consuming. One of the things we know about our screen age is that video, any kind of screen, is about consumption and about passivity. But reading — and, of course, we're gonna talk about this more today too, Andrew — it may be something that is changing, and it may be falling off as a leisure activity. It's really, really sad, because it is something that has to do with give and take instead of simply passive consumption.

00:22:47 Andrew Keen: One of the few things missing from the salad bowl of Patrick Radden Keefe's London Falling is AI. It didn't seem as if Zach Brettler was influenced by AI, although there are parts of the book which suggest that he spent all his time on his phone looking at social media. So, of course, there is an AI book in your list this week — by Joanna Stern, the excellent tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal. And she writes a book — I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do Almost Everything. I have to admit that she's more of a consumer tech person. What's the book like?

00:23:33 Bethanne Patrick: The book is very funny and almost breezy. And — as you pointed out, she's an excellent reporter and she is on the consumer side of things — this is not a book about the meta aspects of tech. This is about hands-on tech, and the kind of tech that's available to almost everyone now. There are a few examples of things she might be trying out a new version of, or getting ahead of time because she's a reporter, but these are things that are in our lives now. For instance, one of the things she does — she and her wife, and their kids, I think they have more than one — spend a vacation driving in Waymo cars, in self-driving cars. And they did have a scary incident where something happened and the car nearly crashed into a wall. And so it's not that all of her interactions with AI are benign, or that she loves AI, but she takes all of it with a healthy dose of skepticism. And one of the things I love about this is the photo of her with the AI arm.

00:25:01 Andrew Keen: So for those people just listening, it's a photo of Joanna with one arm of a robot.

00:25:08 Bethanne Patrick: Yes. And it reminded me of Tina Fey's book Bossypants, where you see Tina Fey's head, and her forearms have been replaced with, like, very large hairy man's forearms — for comic effect. And so I want to say that I Am Not a Robot is a stunt memoir, right? We all remember stunt memoirs — "my year of doing this," "my year of that," "my attempt to be"—

00:25:41 Andrew Keen: So it's not an anti-AI book.

00:25:44 Bethanne Patrick: Not at all. Not an anti-AI book. And in fact, she tells you upfront in the book: "No, I didn't write this book with AI. Every sentence is a sentence from my head to the page." But she tells you, "I did use AI for spell checking. I used AI for research. I used AI for editing." So in a way, I thought — and I'm not trying to challenge Stern — but this is a question that has come up for me quite recently with one place that I review for: when is even the tiniest bit of AI too much AI? Stern and her editors, and her Wall Street Journal editors as well as her book editors, have clearly decided it was fine for her to use AI for certain book-related tasks.

00:26:46 Andrew Keen: I mean — this anti-AI hysteria seems to me to be particularly absurd and reactionary. It's hard to imagine any writer now not using AI in some way for a spell check, or for a fact check, or to learn something about—

00:27:06 Bethanne Patrick: I totally agree. I totally agree, Andrew. But where we all get into more of a gray area is when we feed our work entire into an AI engine. So, for example, with the situation that I was just mentioning about me and a review outlet — I can't simply take a manuscript and use AI to troll. It's someone else's manuscript, right? Because that would feed the entire book into an engine. And we know from the Anthropic case — which so many people, including me, full disclosure, are participating in — because we've had books used to train AI without any knowledge of that. Okay? That's what the Anthropic case is all about. We can't allow intellectual property to slide too easily into training these — but as you're saying, it's really tough because it can happen. It's kind of like piracy in film or music, right? If there is a work out there and there is a way for someone to copy it, it's going to happen. It's just—

00:28:41 Andrew Keen: I think it's rather like the debates — I'm sure there were some in the nineteenth century saying, "Well, we're not gonna use electric lights to light ourselves." And speaking of book reviews and AI, there was an interesting piece in The New York Times — "Where Have All the Book Reviews Gone?" Of course, book reviewers — we have one on our show, the Los Angeles Times book reviewer Bethanne Patrick. And this was an interesting piece which actually cited a short story by Donald Barthelme, back in 1981, predicting machines doing reviews. Is this one of the reasons, Bethanne, why there are no longer any book reviewers?

00:29:25 Bethanne Patrick: Well, a couple of things. One of the things that amused me most about Barthelme's story is how Barthelme cheekily says at one point in the story that Publishers Weekly has, in this future time, resorted to just using thirteen-year-old girls for all of its information. And I thought — there's the Gen Z. There you go.

00:29:51 Andrew Keen: There you go. The Freya India book — Girls.

00:29:53 Bethanne Patrick: Yes. Exactly.

00:29:55 Andrew Keen: The commodification of everything and everyone — including book reviews.

00:30:00 Bethanne Patrick: Including book reviews and book reviewers. So Dwight Garner in this New York Times piece cites the fact that The New York Times quite recently had a freelance reviewer who had to admit to using AI in writing a review, and evidently had used AI in several reviews. I'm kind of like — hello, New York Times! Here I am! I don't—

00:30:30 Andrew Keen: Use it. Yeah. I tried to sell you to them by presenting you as the New York Times reviewer.

00:30:41 Bethanne Patrick: There you go. There you go. I don't use AI in writing my book reviews, but the fact is that's going to happen more and more. It was a year or two ago, I believe, that the Chicago Tribune wound up publishing a roundup of some summer reads that was just AI slop — and it was real slop. It made up some books. There was a book purportedly by Louise Erdrich in it, and it was a book she's never written, a title she's never used. And so it's going to keep happening — and I think with the idea that fewer and fewer people are reading, especially fewer and fewer people are reading avidly, and the fact that it's hard to know who is writing honest, human-crafted reviews, because here's the thing: if criticism isn't going to be written by one human mind, what else is it for? Criticism done by AI means nothing. It doesn't have a—

00:32:00 Andrew Keen: I don't even — [unclear: I don't know who was a big defender of AI] — but as Google is essentially shifting over to AI as a search engine, when you put London Falling, for example, into Google, or Freya India's Girls, the first thing you would see is a summary by Google Gemini of the reviews. So that's AI.

00:32:24 Bethanne Patrick: But those reviews are written by people. And part of being a critic is having a curious, wide-ranging mind like yours, Andrew. You are a cultural critic and pundit. And so all of these things — Google can't synthesize all of that the way a human brain can. I'm no Donald Barthelme. I can't predict whether that will—

00:32:57 Andrew Keen: I don't really like Donald Barthelme, I have to say.

00:33:01 Bethanne Patrick: But it's really scary to think that judgment can be passed on art by a non-human entity, because making art — which is what I was talking about with the Barnett book — is something fundamentally human. Now, I want to add a caveat.

00:33:24 Andrew Keen: Whatever that means.

00:33:26 Bethanne Patrick: Whatever. Well, this is the caveat I want to add. The British, award-winning, acclaimed novelist Jeanette Winterson, who is extremely—

00:33:36 Andrew Keen: Yeah, she's been on this show. I wouldn't say she's a friend of mine, but I do know her.

00:33:40 Bethanne Patrick: She's really remarkable, and I've been reading Winterson's work for a long time now. She recently wrote a piece, I believe, in The Guardian about how she had read a short story generated by AI and really found it compelling. And I thought — I get it. I get it. I have read some things written by AI. I've played around with — I've asked AI, for instance, to — here's another thing that plays into what we're talking about, Andrew. There have been all of these crazy little literary email scams going on in the past year or so, where you'll get an email saying, "Hi, it's Margaret Atwood, and I want to connect," or, "Hi, it's Sir Salman Rushdie, and I would love to connect." Writers are getting them all over the place. And some of us also get emails that say, "I am in charge of this kind of book club, and I read your book," and then they summarize it, and it's beautifully done. And it's all done by AI. So I actually thought, what would it be like if the New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs wrote a humorous piece about these scams? And so I asked an AI engine to do that. And what they came up with, Andrew, was really pretty funny. It wasn't great. It wasn't perfect, but it was really, really good. And that's now — what's gonna happen two years from now? It's just that I think a fundamental part of criticism is judgment. And if the judgment isn't done by a human, can it really break through? Can it really help us make those connections, that deep reading of really great books that can happen?

00:35:48 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And, of course, Jeanette Winterson is unusually optimistic — or was, anyway — about AI. She's written a couple of books quite sympathetic.

00:35:54 Bethanne Patrick: Yes. She is.

00:35:58 Andrew Keen: And I think she's interesting in that she's interpreting it very much in the context of her own — I wouldn't say religiosity, but certainly her faith, or the faith she was brought up with. So she's a particularly interesting figure.

00:36:13 Bethanne Patrick: She is. And I should mention too, as I was talking with you about before we started the show today — last week, I attended the Authors Guild gala in Manhattan. And the Authors Guild is very conservative when it comes to AI, really does not want any of its members' work to be fed into AI engines. And the bestselling author David Baldacci stood up and gave a pretty — he's a little stoic, but for him it was a pretty impassioned talk about the testimony that he's given to Congress in the past few years about AI and what it's done with his works. And what was significant to me is that there was so much money raised. I think the initial goal had been something like, I don't know, $100,000, and it was close to $900,000 raised in the evening, because the people who were attending — the authors, the agents, the editors, the critics, a few of us sprinkled throughout still—

00:37:32 Andrew Keen: A few of you left. There's, what, five of you in the world?

00:37:35 Bethanne Patrick: No, no. Five full-time. I am not a full-time book critic, so I can't claim that mantle the way Dwight Garner can. But it is true that now — gosh, I don't even know. Maybe they're all at The New York Times. There's probably Jeffrey Trachtenberg — no, Jeffrey Trachtenberg is a reporter. There's—

00:38:01 Andrew Keen: Well, the Post shut its department. So... in other words, it's like asking Mrs. Lincoln after the play, "How was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" Which leads us to Mrs. Lincoln, Mary—

00:38:14 Bethanne Patrick: Mrs. Lincoln. Mary—

00:38:16 Andrew Keen: Mary Todd Lincoln. That's your final book. I was waiting for that. I'm not sure if it's a perfect sequel, but I couldn't resist. An Inconvenient Widow about Mary Todd Lincoln — many years, centuries indeed, before AI, before young men threw themselves off tall buildings in London, before the commodification of everything for young women, we had Mrs. Lincoln. I always thought — the way I always read about her as a generalist is that she was a rather unpleasant woman. Is that a fair description? And is this book — An Inconvenient Widow by Lois Romano, The Torment, Trial, and Triumph of Mary Todd Lincoln — is it an attempt to rehabilitate?

00:39:06 Bethanne Patrick: It is an attempt to rehabilitate, but Romano — who is a really, really, very professional, very experienced journalist — does not try to see Mary Todd Lincoln through rose-colored glasses. And so when you said she seemed to have been a very unpleasant person, I think — like Zach Brettler — Mary Todd Lincoln was truly, truly challenged. And I'm sorry, I think—

00:39:40 Andrew Keen: Zach Brettler has been compared to many people, but not to—

00:39:45 Bethanne Patrick: Not to Mary Todd Lincoln. I'm sorry, Zach.

00:39:49 Andrew Keen: I don't know if I've been invited to Mrs. Lincoln or to Zach Brettler.

00:39:55 Bethanne Patrick: But she was often challenged and incapacitated, sometimes by mental illness and challenges. But what Romano does is a very clear-eyed look. She really looks at the research that's available. And Robert Lincoln, the oldest son of Mary and Abraham Lincoln, outlived his mother. Three of her younger sons died — well, I can't place them in order, but anyway, three of their sons predeceased her, as well as, of course, her husband. But Robert Lincoln actually put his mother into an asylum, and actually burned a lot of correspondence — not just between him and his mother, but between his parents. So there are things we're missing in all of the Mary Todd Lincoln. And she was known as Mary Lincoln. She was not known—

00:40:56 Andrew Keen: Well, my understanding — again, very, very shallow — is that Lincoln had a great sense of humor, and she didn't. Is that fair?

00:41:06 Bethanne Patrick: I do think that's fair. But they shared an intellectual partnership, friendship, meeting of the minds, even though she wasn't as witty and as humorous and kind as Abraham Lincoln was. She was very much his supporter, and someone who not only helped him reach political heights, but who also did things. She has been cheated by history. History has seen her as this unpleasant, shrill, "quote unquote" crazy woman who was a detriment to her husband, her family, her country. It isn't true. It isn't entirely true. And let me just compare Romano's book to a recent book — I'm forgetting the author's name, but there was a recent biography in late 2025 of Pamela Harriman. Pamela Digby Churchill something Harriman, who is a pretty well-known figure in the United States because of her years as a political hostess.

00:42:26 Andrew Keen: Yeah. She was a socialite. Very distinguished.

00:42:29 Bethanne Patrick: She was a socialite.

00:42:30 Andrew Keen: She was a socialite.

00:42:32 Bethanne Patrick: Originally, back in the World War II era in England, she was known as someone who was a bit of a courtesan in the old-fashioned sense. And the new biography of her — and again, apologies to the author whose name I can't remember at the moment — was published by Virago Press, and Virago Press is a feminist press. I've been following their books for quite a while. And I think that one — this is my point, Andrew — attempts to resuscitate her a little too much. I don't think Pamela Harriman was a true political actor. I just don't think she was someone who was doing anything in particular for England or for the United States. She was much more of a socialite, much more of someone who was willing to reinvent herself depending—

00:43:31 Andrew Keen: On—

00:43:31 Bethanne Patrick: ...on the way the social tides turned. Mary Lincoln, on the other hand, did hew to her husband's side and to his causes. She was from Lexington, Kentucky, and from a slave-owning family, but she came to believe in her husband's views on abolition, about enslavement, about the reasons he decided to go forth with the Emancipation Proclamation. Doesn't mean either of them was right or perfect. What it means is she was pretty much someone who was devoted to a cause, and the cause was Abraham Lincoln. Now, let me just say one last thing about her before we finish today. And that is, of course, lots of people are hearing the name Mary Todd Lincoln because of Oh, Mary!, Cole Escola's Broadway play, which Romano does mention in her introduction. And that is a completely silly, completely research-free piece of popular culture, and I did see it recently. Not everyone will love it. I thought it was a hoot. But what I also loved about it — and this is what I want to say in terms of Romano's resuscitating Mary Lincoln's legacy — is that even if you don't buy a campy enactment of the Lincolns' marriage that ends with — again, not spoiling anything — that ends with a scene in the box at the theater in DC the night that Lincoln was assassinated, there is a certain resuscitation of Mary Lincoln in Oh, Mary!, in which she gets hers. And I think—

00:45:24 Andrew Keen: It's about time that we started to look—

00:45:24 Bethanne Patrick: ...at women from history — started to look at women from history who have been maligned, and say what was true and what was false. And that's what Romano does really well.

00:45:41 Andrew Keen: Well, I'm not sure what your favorite book is of May, Bethanne. Is it gonna be Mrs. Lincoln? Is it gonna be London Falling, Girls, or Make Believe? I suspect you rather like Make Believe.

00:46:01 Bethanne Patrick: I really did love Make Believe, and I think that probably overall calls to me the most. But if I had to say which book I enjoyed reading the most, it would be Joanna Stern's, because it is so current, and it's so much about things that I'm grappling with right now. I did put this one in my LA Times column, and I think it's something that can help a lot of other people say, "Oh, that's right. AI isn't necessarily — it's a tool. It's not good or bad. It's a tool, and we have to reckon with it."

00:46:46 Andrew Keen: You're gonna get one of those arms?

00:46:50 Bethanne Patrick: I — you know, maybe if I could get one that held, like, an old-fashioned-looking quill pen.

00:46:56 Andrew Keen: Well, then you don't like Mrs. Lincoln. Well, as always, Bethanne Patrick — a book critic, shall we say, at the Los Angeles Times, not full-time but full-time in my mind — one of the few credible professional book reviewers left in the world. We need more of you, as Dwight Garner notes in "Where Have All the Book Reviews Gone?" And when, I think, the book reviewers go, the books will go too. As always, Bethanne, wonderful to talk, and maybe we'll do a fiction update in the not-too-distant future. Thank you so much.

00:47:30 Bethanne Patrick: Great. Always a pleasure, Andrew. Thank you.