Using Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Key, Jianan Qian examines the differences between how stories are structured and celebrated in Western and East Asian cultures.
Books
Posted inEditor's Pick
Rules For Departure
An excerpt from Rachel Z. Arndt’s new essay collection, Beyond Measure. While hitching a ride to a week-long bike tour, Arndt considers the rituals of leaving — and making a clean break.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Chasing the Man Who Caught the Storm: An Interview With Brantley Hargrove
An interview with Brantley Hargrove, the author of a new biography of the storm chaser Tim Samaras, who was killed by the biggest tornado ever recorded. To understand the life of a chaser, Hargrove had to become one himself.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Sharp Women Writers: An Interview With Michelle Dean
Cultural critic Michelle Dean discusses her new book Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion. Topics covered range from emotionally fraught book reviews of Susan Sontag to male blowback against the famous first line of Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer to how horrified Elizabeth Hardwick was by her friend Adrienne […]
Posted inArts & Culture, Crime, Nonfiction, Story, Writing
The Death Row Book Club
When Anthony Ray Hinton was sentenced to death for two murders he didn’t commit, he used his time to create a book club for death row inmates.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Olympian Who Believes He’s Always On TV
An Olympic sailor suffering from Truman Show Disorder attempts to wrest control away from the Director. An excerpt from The Kevin Show: An Olympic Athlete’s Battle with Mental Illness.
Posted inBlog Post, Business & Tech, Nonfiction, Story
Blockchain Just Isn’t As Radical As You Want It To Be
On how a new administrative technology is being conflated with radical politics.
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Lobbyists Normalized the Use of Chemical Weapons on American Civilians
Or, how we learned to stop worrying and love the gas. An excerpt from Anna Feigenbaum’s book, Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WWI to the Streets of Today.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Only Downside to Lower Infant-Mortality Rates? All Those Baby Books
When you don’t need to worry about the big things, you can start obsessing over the small ones.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Diabolical Genius of the Baby Advice Industry
On the modern explosion of a confusing, quackery-filled, yet irresistibly addictive book genre.