Does Recovery Kill Great Writing?
In this excerpt from her book, The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, Leslie Jamison recalls how in the early days of recovery, she examined the work of newly-sober writers like John Berryman and Charles Jackson for clues about how sobriety would affect her as a writer. It wasn’t until she read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest that she found “proof that sober creativity was possible.”
When You’re a ‘Digital Nomad,’ the World Is Your Office
On life at a Miami digital-nomad compound, which one resident describes as “a hybrid between a summer camp for adults and a reality-TV show without the cameras.”
I Used to Insist I Didn’t Get Angry. Not Anymore.
An essay examining women’s long-standing conditioning away from owning and expressing anger, instead often sublimating their rage in sadness, which has historically been more acceptable.
The Case for the Subways
In every other city on earth, underground transit is revered as a national wonder: Hong Kong’s expects 99.9 percent of its trains to run on time, London is moving towards driverless trains, even Los Angeles has invested in its underground mass transit, despite having one of the largest freeway systems in the country. But New York’s subway, once the glory of the world, is in tatters. We are already too late to fix it, but will we be too late to save it?
The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English
How classicist Emily Wilson cut through centuries of literary tradition to produce a fresh verse epic.
The Mind of John McPhee
After publishing thirty books over the last fifty years, one of America’s most revered and private nonfiction writers finally wrote a book about himself, or at least, about his writing process. And for this article, McPhee agreed, for the first time, to let someone profile him.
How Fake News Turned a Small Town Upside Town
There were few details about the case because they couldn’t legally be released: The crime was a sexual assault between juveniles in Twin Falls, Idaho that involved two refugee boys and a 5-year-old girl. When Breitbart heard about the crime — and tied it to plans to allow Syrian refugees to settle in Twin Falls — the website unleashed a panic of misinformation about Muslims in Idaho that threatened to tear the town apart.
The Resegregation of Jefferson County
Gardendale, Alabama’s attempt to secede from its school district shows that despite the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, there are still white communities organizing to keep their schools segregated.
Down the Breitbart Hole
Breitbart, a far-right media outlet, was once described by Steve Bannon as a “platform for the alt-right.” But its editor-in-chief says he is trying to turn the site into a legitimate news organization and has been called a traitor for acknowledging Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
What a Fraternity Hazing Death Revealed About the Painful Search for an Asian-American Identity
Jay Caspian Kang reports on the death of Michael Deng, a college freshman who died while rushing an Asian-American fraternity, and examines the history of oppression against Asians in the U.S. and how it has shaped a marginalized identity.