Posted inEditor's Pick

Es Devlin’s Magic Circles

Inside the creative world of the set designer, who has worked with the Olympics, the opera, and Miley Cyrus: There’s a philosophy that goes with all this, which Devlin lays out for me in an e-mail from a hotel room in Ipanema. “The environment and/or objects and light are chosen very specifically on a moment-by-moment […]

Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story

The Missing History of Ravensbrück, The Nazi Concentration Camp for Women

The story of the Nazis’ only concentration camp for women has long been obscured—partly by chance, but also by historians’ apathy towards women’s history. Sarah Helm writes about the camp, where the “cream of Europe’s women” were interned alongside its prostitutes, and members of the French resistance perished alongside Red Army prisoners of war.

Posted inEditor's Pick

Chat Wars

Sabotage, bureaucracy, and emoticons: Inside the late ’90s chat wars between Microsoft and AOL, from the perspective of a former Microsoft programmer: The messenger war was a rush. Coming in each morning to see whether the client still worked with AOL was thrilling. I’d look through reams of protocol messages to figure out what had […]

Posted inNonfiction, Reading List

Being Gay in Russia Today: A Reading List

Unfinished hotel rooms, terrorist threats, egregious human rights violations and thrilling athletic feats: Sochi’s got it all. But Russia’s dangerous, government-sanctioned homophobia precedes and extends far beyond this year’s Olympic games. 1. “Closed, Destroyed, Deleted Forever.” (Dmitry Pashinsky, n+1, February 2014) Incredible interview with Lena Klimova, founder of Children 404, a social networking resource for […]

Posted inEditor's Pick

Failure Is Not an Option

As head coach for women’s track and field at the University of Texas, Bev Kearney won six NCAA championships and coached athletes who later competed at the Olympics. An affair with a student forced her to resign and her legacy is being tarnished: “She was a magnetic, inspiring presence, and not only because of her […]

Posted inEditor's Pick

How Athletes Get Great

How much of greatness is nature vs. nurture? Sports Illustrated writer David Epstein challenges Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” rule in a new book about the science of training, The Sports Gene. A lot depends on individual biology, and there are cultural factors, too: “Usain Bolt is a great example. He was 6’4” when he was […]

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