The celebrated tragedians of the Booth family let Shakespeare’s themes seep into their own relationships. Hubris, glory, the legacy of a dead father, brotherly rivalry, and a powerful delusion led the family—and the nation—to catastrophe.
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Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Finding Stories in Familiar Territory: An Interview With Miranda July
“I feel like the creative mind is very fast in some ways and completely blind as a bat in other ways.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Founder of Flickr and Slack on the Psychological Torture of Selling Too Early
Stewart readily admits he sold Flickr too early. “If we had waited six months we would have made much more money. If we had waited a year we would have made 10 times more money,” he says. He regrets it now. But at the time, after the dotcom crash, the Nasdaq plummet, and September 11, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
New Wave
French Jews making aliyah go from one conflict zone to another. In a conference room at the Ramada Renaissance hotel on the western edge of Jerusalem, a group of 60 French Jews are about to become Israelis. They sit in softly cushioned metal-framed chairs set in two rows across the red-and-gold hotel carpeting. At the […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Cost of Life
A young reporter becomes an egg donor. Here, she reflects on her experiences, and the thorny ethical issues that surround the largely-unregulated fertility industry. A couple who lived half a world away plucked me out of an online library of hundreds of women who were willing to donate their sex cells to strangers. Each of […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Guardian At the Gate
It broke the WikiLeaks story, then the Snowden scandal, now Alan Rusbridger’s crusading newspaper is trying to break America. But with its US campaign on the brink of disaster, has the deadline passed to beat a dignified retreat? News outlets want to break big stories but at the same time not be overwhelmed by them […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other
From Airbnb to Lyft to Tinder, the sharing economy is rewiring the way we interact with each other. In about 40 minutes, Cindy Manit will let a complete stranger into her car. An app on her windshield-mounted iPhone will summon her to a corner in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, where a russet-haired woman […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Trapped Underwater: How A Group Of Strangers Saved A Boy’s Life
When a car plummets into a remote lake in British Columbia with a five-year-old boy trapped inside, a group of strangers must spring into action to save him: John resurfaced for air. By now Mark had manoeuvred the boat and was tossing life jackets to a few bystanders floundering in the lake. John went under […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Murder by Craigslist
A killer enlists the help of a high school student to target unemployed, middle-aged men by luring them with a job listing on Craigslist: “Jeff Schockling was sitting in his mother’s living room, watching Jeopardy, when he heard the doorbell. That alone was strange, as he’d later explain on the witness stand, because out there […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Last Hike of David Gimelfarb
On August 11, 2009, 28-year-old David Gimelfarb disappeared while hiking in Costa Rica’s Rincón de la Vieja National Park. His remains have never been found. His parents have spent more than $300,000 searching for him and are still holding out hope: “‘We believe David is alive,’ said Roma, 66, his eyes searching mine to gauge […]
