Following one veteran’s difficult transition from military to civilian life. Reported by Eli Saslow, a 2014 Pulitzer recipient, and part of a multi-part series “examining the effects of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars on the 2.6 million American troops who served and fought”: He had tried to replace the war by working construction, roughnecking in […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Cell to Cell
How Smuggled Mobile Phones Are Rewiring Brazil’s Prisons: On January 18, 2013, prison guards in the Brazilian city of Joinville rounded up a group of inmates and began torturing them. Over the course of four hours, the naked men were shot with rubber bullets and doused with pepper spray. In a video clip, the men […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
An Israeli Sniper’s Anguished Look Into The Crosshairs
The order is to shoot a Palestinan suspect, and then return to normalcy: 500 METERS FROM THE ISRAEL-GAZA BORDER — The team — two of us snipers, a spotter, the lieutenant, and a driver, sit around a table in the small office of Major W, commander of this special infantry unit. I examine a grainy […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Vagabonds, Crafty Bauds, and the Loyal Huzza: A History of London at Night
In the 16th & 17th centuries, “nightwalking” was a transgressive act in a city still on the brink of total nighttime illumination, but with complex implications depending on your social status.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Slavery and Freedom in New York City
The story of slavery in New York, the messy path to abolition, and a shameful history with which America has yet to come to terms.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, First Chapters, Story
First Chapter: Dave Eggers’ Novel, ‘Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?’
“We know each other, Kev. From way back. And I didn’t want to bring you here like this.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How America’s Soldiers Fight for the Spectrum on the Battlefield
The U.S. armed forces dominates the land, air, and sea. But it also must dominate the electromagnetic spectrum by jamming and counterjamming communications to remain effective on the battlefield: It is well known that America’s military dominates both the air and the sea. What’s less celebrated is that the US has also dominated the spectrum, […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg
An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
Posted inUncategorized
The Secret History of Silicon Valley
‘Let’s enlist universities directly in the war effort.’ Our video pick of the day is this 2008 talk (1 hr.) by entrepreneur and Stanford professor Steve Blank about how the defense industry first shaped Silicon Valley—starting with Stanford, which after World War II “became a full partner in the military-industrial complex.” For a connection between […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Ghost Files
Historians are uncovering gaps in the National Archives and analyzing data to find scores of classified documents that should have already been declassified and released to the public: Krasner, who earned a PhD in mathematics at Columbia, is among a half dozen computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians now working with Connelly on a multimedia research […]
