The Livingston Awards are handed out every year to celebrate outstanding work from journalists under 35. Here are this year’s winning stories, honored this week in New York: “Slavery’s Last Stronghold” (John D. Sutter & Edythe McNamee, CNN.com) International Reporting winner: A trip to Mauritania, where an estimated 10% to 20% of the population lives in slavery. […]
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Reading List: A Bizarre Institution
Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps. What do Scientology, child abuse, financial exploitation, and millionaire parents have in common? They’ve all got a niche in the education system. 1. “Surviving a For-Profit School.” (Stephen S. Mills, The Rumpus, July 2013) A […]
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Playlist: 5 Podcast Episodes on the History of Hip-Hop
Gabrielle Gantz (@contextual_life) is the blogger behind The Contextual Life, a frequent longreader, and a fan of podcasts. 1. How Hip-Hop Works (Stuff You Should Know, 52:13) In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Chuck and Josh discuss the history of hip-hop, from The Sugar Hill Gang to the present. They add their own […]
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Honor Betrayed
A two-part series on sexual abuse and homelessness among female veterans in the U.S.: “In response to the growing outcry over sexual violence, the Pentagon last year ordered that charging decisions in sexual assault cases be determined by more senior commanders than in the past, but the directive stopped short of taking the decision out […]
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Her Husband’s Hands
[Sci-fi, Fiction] A man comes home from a war transformed: “Her husband’s hands came home on a Friday. Rebecca had received word of the attack, which had claimed the lives of seven other soldiers in his unit and reduced three others to similar, minimal fractions of themselves: One man missing above the waist, another missing […]
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Disaster at Xichang
An American’s eyewitness account of the 1996 rocket accident at China’s Xichang spaceport, which killed six people and injured 57: “What Campbell witnessed over the next few days has haunted him ever since. Like most veterans of the Intelsat-708 launch, he hasn’t discussed the event in public. I got to know him while gathering material […]
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The Old Man and the Tee
A 29-year-old combat veteran returns home, then decides to try to walk on as a kicker for Wyoming: “Noble took a job for his uncle’s hay-brokerage company, throwing bales from trucks into the barn lofts of thoroughbred horse farms, sometimes 720 of them a day. He told the stories of walking dusty streets and climbing […]
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Is PTSD Contagious?
A look at the families who are not just affected by returning veterans, but display similar symptons: “Brannan and Katie’s teacher have conferenced about Katie’s behavior many times. Brannan’s not surprised she’s picked up overreacting and yelling—you don’t have to be at the Vines residence for too long to hear Caleb hollering from his room, […]
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Operation Delirium
Colonel James S. Ketchum oversaw years of research into new methods of chemical warfare—which included testing on U.S. soldiers: “Today, Ketchum is eighty-one years old, and the facility where he worked, Edgewood Arsenal, is a crumbling assemblage of buildings attached to a military proving ground on the Chesapeake Bay. The arsenal’s records are boxed and […]
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Blind Ambition
An Iraq war veteran becomes blind during combat and learns how to live on: “When the doctors told him the blindness was irreversible, he felt a rage and despair that made him feel like his head would explode. “Castro began therapy a week after waking up, and he only halfheartedly endured the rehab sessions with […]
