“I did have an interesting (unattributable, of course) briefing from someone very senior in one West Coast mega-corporation who conceded that neither he nor the CEO of his company had security clearance to know what arrangements his own organization had reached with the US government. ‘So, it’s like a company within a company?’ I asked. […]
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Posted inUncategorized
What One Woman Discovered About Health Care in the Early 20th Century
“Until then, the Health Department had sought to track down sick children and refer them to physicians, a mostly futile endeavor in the days before antibiotics and modern medicine. Baker decided that the new bureau’s mission would instead be prevention. The city had an established and efficient system of birth registration. As soon as a […]
Posted inUncategorized
'The Power of a Name': Maya Lin on Making the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
“I made a conscious decision not to do any specific research on the Vietnam War and the political turmoil surrounding it. I felt that the politics had eclipsed the veterans, their service, and their lives. I wanted to create a memorial that everyone would be able to respond to, regardless of whether one thought our […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
In Conversation: Robert Silvers
The founding editor of the New York Review of Books looks back on 50 years: Danner: “I’m holding here the first issue, which declares, in a statement on the second page: ‘This issue … does not pretend to cover all the books of the season or even all the important ones. Neither time nor space, […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Loneliness and Solitude: A Reading List
When I moved from a small town in Northern California to Brooklyn, New York in the summer of 2010, I felt the pang of an inarticulable loneliness. Unable to string together words to describe this complicated feeling, I found Olivia Laing’s Aeon essay, “Me, Myself and I,” to be a starting point that began to […]
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
Yes, All Women: A Reading List of Stories Written By Women
This week, a lot happened. A misogynist went on a violent rampage. #YesAllWomen took off on Twitter. Dr. Maya Angelou, feminist author and all-around genius (and don’t get me started on her doctor honorary), died at 86 years old. This week, I present a long list of essays, articles and interviews written by women. Many […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
Swiping Right in the 1700s: The Evolution of Personal Ads
Noga Arikha | Lapham’s Quarterly | 2009 | 13 minutes (3,200 words) Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks) I. In 1727, a lady named Helen Morrison placed a personal advertisement in the Manchester Weekly Journal. It was possibly the first time a newspaper was ever used for such a purpose. As it happens, Morrison was […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
For the Public Good: The Shameful History of Forced Sterilization in the U.S.
“I never figured out why they did that to me.”
Posted inFeature
The Prodigal Prince: Richard Roberts and the Decline of the Oral Roberts Dynasty
He was the heir to the televangelist’s empire, but Richard Roberts soon disappeared from the university that his father founded.
