What’s so great about having things spelled out clearly?
Search results
The Horse Was a Lie (The Horse Is Here With Us Now)
In Mario Chard’s “Land of Fire,” was it the truth or a lie that killed the migrants in the desert? And what if that’s the wrong question? What if we say it was a horse?
Did the Modern Novel Kill Charles Bovary?
Jean Améry, the Austrian essayist and Primo Levi’s former barrack-mate at Auschwitz, wrote one last novel before he died. Its six angry chapters are written as if by Charles Bovary, accusing Flaubert of ruining his life.
Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail
During a month hiking Muir’s “Range of Light,” three young women traversed snowy mountain passes, ran out of food, confronted a gendered wilderness, and learned to deal with each other.
If the Rich Really Want To ‘Do Good,’ They Should Become Class Traitors Like FDR
“Winners Take All” is an indictment of the insular, Disneyfied world of Ted Talks, “thought leaders” and philanthropy as self-help for rich people. But does it go far enough?
How the Guardian Went Digital
Remaking itself from a little leftie newspaper to a powerhouse of internet journalism required experimentation, transparency, and embracing uncertainty.
The Light Years
After his parents pushed him out of their home, a teenager descended into the drug-fueled counterculture of the 1970s American West.
I’m Writing You from Tehran
A French-Iranian journalist writes a letter to her grandfather about the ten years she spent in Iran, trying to make sense of her identity and a country living very different public and private lives.
A Crocodile In Paris: The Queer Classics of Qiu Miaojin
As the first woman in Chinese literature to come out as openly gay, Qiu Miaojin adopted and humanized the bestial expectations of a cruel public.
How Diderot’s Encyclopedia Challenged the King
The encyclopedists’ plan to catalog knowledge seemed harmless enough. But what they intended was far more subversive: to restructure knowledge itself.
