He was was a self-made, blue-collar millionaire in Reagan’s America. But when Percy Ross decided to give away his fortune, he made things simple: all you had to do was ask for it.
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Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Quotes
Robert Caro on Understanding a President Through the Rooms He Occupied
There are facts in journalism, but there are other truths hidden in the room. In this 2016 Paris Review interview with James Santel, Robert Caro, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson, gives a masterclass on how to report on a subject’s behavior, his environment, his breath, and the cushiness […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Price We Pay for Mass Incarceration
Put another way, the supposition on which our mass incarceration is premised—namely, that it materially reduces crime—is, at best, a hunch. Yet the price we pay for acting on this hunch is enormous. This is true in the literal sense: it costs more than $80 billion a year to run our jails and prisons. It […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Behind the ‘Literary Brat Pack’ Label
At Harper’s Bazaar, Jason Diamond offers a look back at the “literary brat pack–Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz and a group of other writers in the 1980s as famous for their coke-fueled late nights at the Odeon as they were for publishing celebrated novels before the age of thirty.
Posted inArts & Culture, History
Percy Ross Wants to Give You Money!
He was was a self-made, blue-collar millionaire in Reagan’s America. But when Percy Ross decided to give away his fortune, he made things simple: all you had to do was ask for it.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Urge
Oliver Sacks’s last essay for the New York Review of Books, which looks at a man with Klüver-Bucy syndrome, “which manifests itself as insatiable eating and sexual drive, sometimes combined with irritability and distractibility, all on a purely physiological basis.”
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
On Island: Journeying to Penal Colonies, from Rikers to Robben
On journeys to Rikers Island in New York City and Robben Island in South Africa, Roohi Choudhry examines issues of incarceration and racism, and envisions a day when the convicted are no longer exiled to penal colonies.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
The Admission
Stacy Torres recalls the mixture of frustration and relief that came with checking herself into a New York City psych ward at the age of 20.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women
Pregnant, then Ruptured
After an emergency operation, Joanna Petrone considers the medical advances and legal protections that allow women to survive ectopic pregnancies.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
Thank You, Jon Gnagy: An Appreciation of a Predecessor to Bob Ross
Ned Stuckey-French reflects on the host of Learn to Draw, the “middlebrow” instructional art show he loved as a kid.
