We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in profiles.
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Waiting for Alice
Nick and Nora had Asta. Why can’t we have Alice?
Fire Sale: Finance and Fascism in the Amazon Rainforest
From global capital to YouTube, carbon credits to indigenous land defenders in their own words, Will Meyer has compiled a reading list on who lit the match and how the fire might be stopped.
Grandiose and Claustrophobic: ‘Prozac Nation’ Turns 25
Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestseller is deeply rooted in a specific, Gen-X cultural moment. Can it still speak to us in 2019?
The 19th Century Lesbian Made for 21st Century Consumption
Jeanna Kadlec considers Anne Lister, the historical figure at the center of HBO’s Gentleman Jack, and the influence of other queer women who preceded her.
Unearthing the Story: An Interview with Peter Hessler
The New Yorker writer describes his career’s circuitous route, from his start as a struggling fiction writer to becoming a China correspondent, and now the author of a new book about the Arab Spring.
When a Missing Nickel Makes All the Difference
“Yet money was a lie—pieces of paper and metal suggesting prices for goods, services, labor, and human beings themselves in a way that often had more to do with profit than with true value.”
‘I’m Incredulous That People Do This Repeatedly. The Second Book Thing Is So Real.’
Mary H.K. Choi discusses her latest novel, which examines how “holograms and digital envoys” represent us online, and why it feels like her “second book signals the death of my first.”
Shelved: Jeff Buckley’s Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk
The posthumous Buckley industry began with this problematic album, proof that the people who control a musician’s estate don’t always have his music in mind.
On Vanishing
Dementia is a kind of erasure, a death before death, where the living discount the infirmed long before they’re gone.
