Adrian Daub’s fascinating essay in the LA Review of Books on the Stephen King classic IT — now 30 years old — reveals that the real horror of IT wasn’t Pennywise the supernatural clown, but our own, entirely human ability to forget the horrors of the past.
Category: Nonfiction
Congress was inundated with thousands of phone calls from people urging their representatives to vote against Trump’s education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos. Given her poor performance during confirmation hearings, her lack of experience, and her history of supporting attempts to dismantle traditional public education, Americans had visceral, negative reaction to DeVos. But this defense of […]
At The Weeklings, Khirad Siddiqui reflects on wearing a hijab at age 13, as a young woman in Plano, Texas. She discovered “affirmation and reassurance” in the writings of Malcolm X, an American Muslim who too felt that his “peers failed to understand him as a complete and multifaceted human being.”
When writer Dale Maharidge and photographer Matt Black traveled through California, Ohio, and Maine to labor alongside the working poor, t hey found lots of things they expected — long hours, low pay, financial uncertainty — and one thing th ey didn’t: hope.
In 2011, Diederik Stapel, a bright social psychologist at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, was suspended for fabricating data on a study that brought him much praise. At the Guardian, Stephen Buranyi profiles the team of researchers from the university’s psychology department, Chris Hartgerink and Marcel van Assen, who have since focused their research on scientific fraud.
At Pacific Standard, Rachel Nuwer reports on the aging homeless population of California and how something seemingly innocuous — like forgetting to renew your driver’s licence on time — can instigate a downward spiral into poverty and homelessness that skyrocketing rent and street-inflicted trauma can extend, sometimes indefinitely.
The story of Eh Kaw Htoo, a Karen refugee from Myanmar — a man who “extolled the redneck’s work ethic” and helped build a community of 150 Karens who sustain one another by living frugally and sharing the bounty of the land in the rural community of Comer, Georgia.
Mark Sundeen, writing for Outside, traveled to the National Tiny House Jamboree in 2016 and talked to some of the tiny house movement’s pioneers, including its “godfather” Jay Shafer. Over a cigarette break in the woods — away from all the tiny space swooners, wannabe-minimalists, and sales reps — Shafer tells him a bit about his design philosophy and the purpose of material objects.
Sam Anderson of the New York Times Magazine reports on Russell Westbrook, the Oklahoma City Thunder guard and the best player in the NBA. What’s extraordinary about this piece isn’t just Anderson’s insight (he wrote about the Thunder for the NYTM in 2012), or how his vivid descriptions of the utter ferocity and skill with which Westbrook plays—it’s that Anderson was likely allowed 10 or so minutes to spend actually interviewing Westbrook, a famously taciturn subject. The piece is a marvel of observational reporting.
There are facts in journalism, but there are other truths hidden in the room. In this 2016 Paris Review interview with James Santel, Robert Caro, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson, gives a masterclass on how to report on a subject’s behavior, his environment, his breath, and the cushiness […]
I was never a Dungeons and Dragons person, but as a nerd, seems like they’ve always been nearby. I would not have expected a Venn diagram overlapping the D&D nerds I know — delightful, gentle weirdos who like elves and other imaginary creatures — with high security prisoners. Elisabeth de Cleer wrote about one such […]
The reason the U.S. is a good place to do business is that, for the past two centuries, it’s built a firm foundation on the rule of law. President Trump almost undid that in a weekend. That’s bad for business. -From a scathing short column by Matt Levine about businesses waking up to a harsh […]
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