An anthropologist on a return visit to a remote village in Papua New Guinea learns that all the village’s young men are terribly wounded.
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Posted inNonfiction, Story, Writing
Hierarchy of Needs
Angela Palm learns to find joy in a world filled with suffering.
Posted inCurrent Events, History, Nonfiction, Quotes
‘Wir Schaffen Das’: Angela Merkel, the Refugee Crisis, and the Complexity Behind a Simple Statement Like ‘We Will Do It’
In Lapham’s Quarterly, Renata Adler returns to her familial homeland to explore Germany’s present-day reaction to the millions of people now trying to get in rather than out.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Six Years Later, Over 400,000 Dead: The Graffiti Kids Who Sparked the Syrian War
Mark MacKinnon tells the story of Naief Abazid — who, at the urging of some older boys, graffitied a school wall on a lark in Daraa, Syria, at age 14. The “writing on the wall” enraged Syria’s Baathist dictatorship, and became the source of ignition in the Syrian war.
Posted inBooks, Story
Fairy Scapegoats: A History of the Persecution of Changeling Children
Distraught over a sick or disabled child, parents would torture — sometimes even kill — what they believed to be a malevolent stand-in for a stolen baby.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Stripped: The Search for Human Rights in US Women’s Prisons
The US prison system is broken. It sucks up billions of dollars each year and destroys lives. Could a Thai princess and an accidental criminal justice reform activist in the Pacific Northwest have the answers?
Posted inBooks, History, Science & Nature, Story
Taming the Great American Desert
By advocating for agriculture in the arid West, Major John Wesley Powell challenged the way America viewed its right to develop the continent.
Posted inCrime, Current Events, education, Nonfiction, Story
The Battle Over Teaching Chicago’s Schools About Police Torture and Reparations
A little-known city law has educators figuring out how to talk to eighth and tenth grade students about the history of Chicago police abuse.
Posted inNonfiction, Op-Ed, Story
What Thomas Jefferson Taught Me About Charlottesville and America
University of Virginia grad Joshua Adams believes that if you want to understand the recent violence there, look back at history and the school’s complicated founder.
Posted inBooks, Current Events, Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Story
Where Have You Hidden the Cholera?
In Mozambique and around the world — and throughout history — cholera outbreaks have caused riots. Why? And what does it have to do with bicycles?
