An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
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‘A Taste of Power’: The Woman Who Led the Black Panther Party
Elaine Brown was the first and only woman to lead the male-dominated Black Panther Party. She looks back on Jean Seberg, COINTELPRO, and internal divisions within the organization.
Taking the Slow Road: An Interview with Author Katherine Heiny
She published a short story in The New Yorker in 1992, then seemed to all but disappear. How author Katherine Heiny took her sweet time on the path toward publishing her new story collection.
For the Public Good: The Shameful History of Forced Sterilization in the U.S.
“I never figured out why they did that to me.”
The Good Girls Revolt
In 1970, Lynn Povich and 45 other women sued Newsweek for discrimination. Here is what the workplace was like for them.
We No Longer Drop Dead as Frequently as We Used to
Jacob M. Appel practices medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and his writing has appeared in numerous literary journals.
The Decline of Book Reviewing
Hardwick’s classic 1959 essay on the dismal state of book criticism. (Robert Silvers has pointed it out as an early inspiration for founding the New York Review of Books.) For the world of books, for readers and writers, the torpor of the New York Times Book Review is more affecting. There come to mind all […]
False Confessions: NYC Still Struggles in Aftermath of Central Park Five
In the spring of 1989, five teenagers from Harlem were convicted of raping and assaulting a woman jogging in Central Park after four of the five confessed to the crime. The confession of a convicted rapist and killer named MatĂas Reyes overturned the five men’s convictions in 2003. Since then, the NYPD announced it would […]
The Last Beat
The story of Lucien Carr, who befriended Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs while he was a freshman at Columbia. The four friends had their lives changed when Carr murdered a man during his sophomore year: “The day after Carr confessed, both Kerouac and Burroughs were arrested as material witnesses. Burroughs’s father came […]
The History of Cricket in the United States
The rules of the game on this side of the Atlantic were formalized in 1754, when Benjamin Franklin brought back from England a copy of the 1744 Laws, cricket’s official rule book. There is anecdotal evidence that George Washington’s troops played what they called “wickets” at Valley Forge in the summer of 1778. After the […]
