On an abandoned mining site in Scotland, an architectural theorist attempts to bring the mysteries of the cosmos to life on Earth.
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Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
‘I Would Prefer Not To’: The Origins of the White Collar Worker
Before the Civil War, the clerk was “a small but unusual phenomenon.” By the end of the 19th century, clerical workers were a social force to be reckoned with. This is the story of their rise.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
Glamorous Crossing: How Pan Am Airways Dominated International Travel in the 1930s
Starting with just a mail route, Juan Terry Trippe helped create a uniquely American luxury experience.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
How a Great American Theatrical Family Produced the 19th Century’s Most Notorious Assassin
The celebrated tragedians of the Booth family let Shakespeare’s themes seep into their own relationships. Hubris, glory, the legacy of a dead father, brotherly rivalry, and a powerful delusion led the family—and the nation—to catastrophe.
Posted inReading List
The Bureaucracy of Death: A Reading List
Although more and more countries are abolishing capital punishment, over half the world’s population lives in four of the countries that continue to use it: India, Indonesia, China — and the United States. U.S. public opinion continues to move against the death penalty, but while some states have overturned capital punishment (or never had it), most still sentence people […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Woo Cho Bang Bang
In Brownsville, Brooklyn kids are joining gangs whose territories are based on the housing projects where they grew up. The warring gangs have helped made Brownsville the “murder capital of New York”: Prosecutors and detectives still don’t know when the battle of Brownsville started or what it was over. Some think it grew out of […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Theorizing the Drone
What does the rise of the drone mean for justice, for the ethics of heroism, for psychology? Most important of all, who is dying and why?
Posted inNonfiction
The Rise and Fall of John DeLorean
“It was the end of the story of John DeLorean as part of the American Dream—how a humble kid from Detroit could rise to the very top.”
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Hell—Nothing Less—And Without End: Six Days in Warsaw
“The uprising,” we told each other immediately, like everyone else in Warsaw. Strange. Because no one had ever used that word before in his life. Only in history, in books.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Loving Books in a Dark Age
In the “dark ages” of Europe, people began reading silently to themselves, and a love of books and learning took hold, pioneered by Bede.
