Stephen Thomas on how and why a site originally intended for sharing “best of the web” links become a place where strangers help each other in real life in extraordinary ways.
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Well-Aimed and Powerful
The death of the shuttle, the moon hoax conspiracy theory, and why one man deserved to be punched in the damn mouth by Buzz Aldrin.
Escape from Baghdad!: Saad Hossain’s New Satire of the Iraq War
In his debut, Saad Hossain brings a much-needed cynicism to our literature of the Iraq War. An absurdist protest novel in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 or Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Escape from Baghdad! relentlessly focuses the reader’s attention on the folly of war.
Kelly Link Is Beloved, But Still Underrated: A Primer on My Favorite Living Short Story Writer
There’s that urge in adolescence when you feel like you discovered something, maybe a song, a book, or a painting, that resonates so deeply within you, to protect it, and keep it secret and close, so that you feel like you have claim of something wondrous and all your own. And if you share the […]
Life as a Teenage Girl, Living with Doris Lessing
It was a famously cold winter. I’d come from a snowbound Hove, where I’d spent hours sitting and brooding, wrapped up but shivering on the frozen pebbled beach staring out at an icy sea, writing poetry about seagulls and loneliness (no longer extant, thank heavens, though that’s not to say that I wouldn’t write about […]
The Meaning We Put Behind Our Passwords
“Perhaps my biggest surprise has been how willing, eager actually, people are to openly discuss their keepsakes.”
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.
Buried Alive in a Grain Silo
Grain-bin accidents have become a consequence of our massive corn consumption.
Escape from Baghdad!: Saad Hossain’s New Satire of the Iraq War
In his debut, Saad Hossain brings a much-needed cynicism to our literature of the Iraq War. An absurdist protest novel in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 or Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Escape from Baghdad! relentlessly focuses the reader’s attention on the folly of war.
Buried Alive in a Grain Silo
Grain-bin accidents have become a consequence of our massive corn consumption.
