Elizabeth Warren has energized Democrats in Massachusetts during her 2012 Senate race against Republican incumbent Scott Brown, but has also faced many difficulties as a first-time candidate. The race remains very close: Lydon brought up an anecdote he’d heard: Warren, while she served on the bankruptcy panel during Clinton’s presidency, had known the first lady, […]
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Interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo about the difficulties, rewards—and traps—that come with reporting on the poor: When I pick a story, I’m very much aware of the larger issues that it’s illuminating. But one of the things that I, as a writer, feel strongly about is that nobody is representative. That’s just narrative […]
On the lives of Soviet cosmonauts—and circus performers: During the first ninety-six-day Salyut mission in 1978, cosmonaut Yury Romanenko was apparently so mesmerized by the vastness of the cosmos that he stepped out to have a better look and forgot to attach himself with safety tethers to the space station. Fortunately his cohort noticed and […]
[Not single-page] A young man with developmental problems develops post-traumatic-stress disorder after receiving 31 shocks at the Judge Rotenberg Center, shedding light on the school’s controversial behavior-modification program: At first there were no electric shocks. Israel and his workers relied instead on other ‘aversive treatments’: pinching the soles of their feet, squirting them in the […]
The “two bodies, one brain” of Lana and Andy Wachowski, creators of The Matrix and co-directors, with Tom Tykwer, of the new film Cloud Atlas: Since Costa Rica, the Wachowskis and Tykwer had viewed the dramatic trajectory of the script as an evolution from the sinister avarice of Dr. Goose to the essential decency of […]
How Lisette Lee, a privileged young woman with ties to the Samsung fortune, turned to drug trafficking: Lee would go on to tell federal authorities a lot of things about herself: that she was a famous Korean pop star as well as the heiress to the Samsung electronics fortune; she was so emphatic on this […]
From Featured Longreader, Emily Douglas: Solomon brings us the agonizing dilemmas faced by women pregnant as a result of assault (some feel pressured into having abortion and experience that as a second violation; others carry pregnancy to term and struggle desperately to bond with their children). And he forces us to confront how foundational a […]
Hundred of international parental child abduction cases are reported to the U.S. State Department each year, and left-behind parents are finding it difficult to receive help: Monica Sanchez, who lives in San Marcos, bounced between law enforcement agencies for days after her ex-boyfriend, Armando Muñoz Garcia, abducted their 2-year-old daughter Sarahi in January 2012. Sanchez […]
Why are cats so big on the Internet? A writer goes to Japan, “where the Internet-feline market began,” to find out: Marx and I watch a few new cat videos, some of the up-and-comers, those challenging or exceeding Maru’s pageviews. ‘An interesting thing, here in Japan, is that it’s not just the cat partners who […]
The wealthiest Americans are effectively seceding from this country—raising questions about the long-term goals of conservatism: If a morally acceptable American conservatism is ever to extricate itself from a pseudo-scientific inverted Marxist economic theory, it must grasp that order, tradition, and stability are not coterminous with an uncritical worship of the Almighty Dollar, nor with […]
A look at how residents in Arkansas are dealing with the health implications of drilling for natural gas in their communities: Keith didn’t want to think about Iraq, but the tankers and water trucks reminded him of the vehicles he’d seen in Iraq’s oil fields. In Iraq, if an eighteen-wheeler pulled up on him, it […]
A brief history of the political cartoonist, whose job is endangered in the digital age: Martin Rowson in particular seems to revel in mixing allusions to obscure literary texts with lashings of excrement. A cartoon he drew last month for the Morning Star features a ‘fivearsed pig’, shitting turds emblazoned with the logos of London […]
A look at Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital: Marc Wolpow, a former Bain colleague of Romney’s, told reporters during Mitt’s first Senate run that Romney erred in trying to sell his business as good for everyone. ‘I believed he was making a mistake by framing himself as a job creator,’ said Wolpow. ‘That was […]
A political reporter desperately searches for a sign of joy in this year’s presidential race: I am as cynical as any political reporter. And perhaps my recent craving for uplift was a sublimation of my own anger at being a small cog in a giant inanity machine. But I write and read and talk about […]
Bobby Jackson has received much recognition for engaging students in the classroom, including an award for “Texas history of the year.” A look at one very popular history teacher’s classroom: He starts challenging kids’ expectations the first day of school. ‘We do a brainstorming activity where I put the kids on a timer and ask […]
Police are recruiting young drug offenders to become confidential informants on drug cases—with little training and tragic consequences: According to a confidential deposition from a friend of Hoffman’s, the police made it clear that run-of-the-mill pot busts wouldn’t be sufficient to work off her charges. Instead, the friend said, the cops were looking for large […]
How Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo went from a small Wisconsin high school football field to the NFL, and what teammates, coaches, and a local sportswriter remember about Romo’s performance at one particular game: ‘He knew what he was doing,’ Luther says. ‘He doesn’t look like your prototypical quarterback in high school. He knew where […]
A look at Degrassi, 25 years after resonating with teens: Degrassi ’s grassroots approach to social class served as a near-invisible narrative strategy, but it anticipated the show’s most memorable legacy: its unflinching, plain-spoken treatment of pregnancy, suicide, interracial dating (a big deal in 1987), and HIV/AIDS. What’s more, Degrassi didn’t treat its characters with […]
A look behind the introverted life of James E. Holmes, a graduate student in the neuroscience department at the University of Colorado, Denver, before the shooting in Aurora: In the days after the shooting, faculty members and graduate students, in shock, compared notes on what they knew about Mr. Holmes, what they might have missed, […]
[Fiction] A philandering husband’s next phase in life: Horace and Loneese Perkins—one child, one grandchild—lived most unhappily together for more than twelve years in Apartment 230 at Sunset House, a building for senior citizens at 1202 Thirteenth Street NW. They moved there in 1977, the year they celebrated forty years of marriage, the year they made […]
A writer, out of money, is forced to part ways with his dream guitar: The first hospital bill arrived in late June. My eyes roamed its surface: “If paying by check…” “YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR BILL. PLEASE PAY THE BALANCE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.” “Please pay this amount…” Along came the dizzying despondency of […]
In 1972, Uganda’s President Idi Amin exiled Ugandan Asians from the country, who left behind most of their belongings and lives for new ones in other countries—particularly Great Britain: Dr. Mumtaz Kassam was only 16 when, stateless, she arrived at a reception centre in Leamington Spa – one of several across the country. Her parents […]
An oral history of Burning Man, which started as an effigy burning in 1986 on San Francisco’s Baker Beach, and moved to the Black Rock Desert in 1990 to become one of the largest annual gatherings of inventors, artists and free spirits: ALAN “REVEREND AL” RIDENOUR (head of Los Angeles Cacophony): In ’96, Burning Man […]
Four advice columnists, Dear Sugar’s Cheryl Strayed, Salon’s Cary Tennis, Slate’s Emily Yoffe, and The Globe and Mail’s Lynn Coady, discuss what it’s like to give advice to people online: Are there common threads or themes that you see over and over in the questions you get? Questions that seem to be real problems in […]
An inquiry into a neighbor’s suicide leads a man to discover links between heavy marijuana use and psychosis among people who suffer from mental illnesses: One afternoon recently, I met Dr. Roger Roffman, professor emeritus at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, in his office up on Roosevelt Way. He has a calm […]
In the first four years as the first black president, Obama has largely avoided addressing race directly. Some historical context: Thus the myth of ‘twice as good’ that makes Barack Obama possible also smothers him. It holds that African Americans—enslaved, tortured, raped, discriminated against, and subjected to the most lethal homegrown terrorist movement in American […]
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