The New Yorker

James Ross Gardner on the past week of life and the first deaths in Seattle — the first city to feel the effects of Covid-19 in America. “Every avoidance felt like an act of heroism. You told yourself you were saving lives, and you were probably right.”

Brad Parscale used social media to sway the 2016 election. He’s poised to do it again.

“My side-eye at the family’s neo-pioneer lifestyle is accompanied by a thrum of envy for the freedom of their life and a desperate, shame-filled recognition of the disparity between their towering competence and my obvious lack thereof.”

Portis published five novels during his lifetime, but their depth and singular wit earned the author a devoted following. One fan examines why.

People struggling with addiction who share a lethal dose of drugs are being prosecuted as killers.

Sequoias can live for thousands of years, but a single bristlecone in California’s White Mountains can live indefinitely. This gnarled tree species will outlive humanity.

In Raffi Khatchadourian’s New Yorker profile, N.K. Jemisin recounts the racism she witnessed as a child in Alabama in the ’80s, as well as racism — editorial and otherwise that she has lived through in her career.

For migrants who speak Mayan languages, a grassroots group of interpreters is often their only hope for receiving asylum.

In this long, kitchen-sink essay, long-time New Yorker writer and art critic Peter Schjeldahl reveals that he is dying of lung cancer. He poignantly looks back at his life and career, and his history as a smoker.

Jia Tolentino goes undercover into the world of plastic surgery, where everyone wants to look like an already-warped version of Kim Kardashian.