The end of divine rule in postwar Japan, and the absolute power of General MacArthur.
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The Russian Information War
“The point is to spoil [the internet], to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it.” –Adrian Chen, in The New York Times Magazine, on Russia’s massive troll army—and their plot against him. Read the story
Our Well-Regulated Militia
Is the conversation around guns in this country really about the right to bear arms?
The Extraordinary Life of the First American to Join China’s Communist Party
Sidney Rittenberg served in China as an army linguist in the 1940s. After his enlistment ended in he stayed in China, became a leader in the Cultural Revolution and spent 16 years in solitary confinement.
‘Perhaps Lucia Berlin Will Begin to Gain the Attention She Deserves’
Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s Work in Progress site has excerpted the first story from A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories, the newly released collection of short fiction by the late Lucia Berlin–who died in 2004, and was largely overlooked while she was alive. In the book’s foreword, author Lydia Davis writes, “Perhaps, with the […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
The Top 5 Longreads of the week.
Red, White, and Bruised
When Donald Trump and the GOP Convention arrive in Cleveland, they will find a city with a long history of violent outbursts, racial tension—and brushes with fascism. In short, the perfect stage for the 2016 presidential campaign. Kyle Swenson explores the history of his hometown.
The Missing History of Ravensbrück, The Nazi Concentration Camp for Women
The story of the Nazis’ only concentration camp for women has long been obscured—partly by chance, but also by historians’ apathy towards women’s history. Sarah Helm writes about the camp, where the “cream of Europe’s women” were interned alongside its prostitutes, and members of the French resistance perished alongside Red Army prisoners of war.
Your Phone Was Made By Slaves: A Primer on the Secret Economy
On the new triangle trade, and the surprising connection between modern slavery and ecological disaster.
‘Did We Have the Sense that America Cared How We Were Doing? We Did Not’
In The Atlantic in 2014, James Fallows examined how Americans and political leaders became so disconnected from those who serve in the military—and the consequences of that disconnect: If I were writing such a history now, I would call it Chickenhawk Nation, based on the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long […]

