The White Darkness
David Grann tells the story of Henry Worsley, a British military man and “apostle” of polar adventurer Ernest Shackleton. Worsley earned fame by retracing Shackleton’s failed expedition to reach the South Pole. He, along with two teammates reached their destination on January 9th, 2009. A case study in the art of story pacing, this piece is a testament to the triumphs and perils of human ambition and endurance.
The Extinction of the Early Bird
The early bird is the culinary extension of Florida retirees’ early bird lives, a predictable, routine meal perfect for building a night life around before heading to bed by 7:30. Unfortunately, like Florida’s Everglades, it’s endangered.
A Teen and a Toy Gun
This is the story of the last day of 17-year-old Quanice Hayes’s life. It involves a police department that says they have no good way of deciphering between real guns and fake ones, and a family still searching for answers.
A Kingdom from Dust
Stewart Resnick is the world’s largest irrigated farmer. He lives in Beverly Hills and has never driven a tractor. His California empire of fruit, almonds and pistachios helped turn the state’s nut boom into a national controversy, thanks in part to his wife Lynda Resnick’s ingenious branding of their crops as healthy snacks. Despite the catastrophic five-year drought and a lack of state and federal irrigation water, the Resnick’s acres in Kern County continued to thrive. So how were they able to outsmart Mother Nature? And what was the true cost to California? San Joaquin Valley native and journalist Marx Arax travels to the company town of Lost Hills, where he follows a secret pipeline to the truth. Arax was been trying to write Stewart Resnick’s story for twenty years. Resnick declined all interview requests, until old age and cancer changed his mind.
Unpacking Forty Years of Fandom for a Losing Team
In this personal essay, Kevin Sampsell examines his love of football — and a team that’s never won a Super Bowl.
Dressing for Two
From giant Victorian tent dresses to oversized 20th century sacks with drawstring waists, maternity clothes have long been designed to hide women’s pregnancies. They also shame and other women. Stephie Grob Plante’s personal and cultural history of these contentious, temporary items offers reasons for hope amid relics of the status quo.
Radio Nowhere
Radio Alwan is the independent station that broadcasts important daily news and activism in war-torn Syria. After radicals forced the station out of Syria, it made its secret home inside an Istanbul apartment in a residential neighborhood, because truth is an endangered commodity in Assad’s Syria, and because those who run Alwan are still not safe.
How to Not Die in America
Molly Osberg’s harrowing essay—a mysterious illness that wastes away her body in days and nearly threatens her life—outlines in painstaking detail how (or if) she would have survived and recovered from her ordeal without medical insurance or a safety net.
The Shallowness of Google Translate
Despite advances in machine learning and ever-bigger datasets, rumors of human translators’ imminent demise are greatly exaggerated.
Rivers of Babylon: The Story of a Third-Trimester Abortion
A bracing essay on late-term abortion, and how American politics have made an impossibly difficult situation even more painful and dangerous for women.
You must be logged in to post a comment.