Tag: united states

The world is full of make-believe. Some of it is sweet, some of it is sick. It persists because we have found no other antidote for pain.

Gabriel Thompson takes us into San Francisco Immigration Court and the labyrinthine system that asylum seekers—and attorneys and judges—are up against.

“And yet, even though this health crisis reflects our nation’s political, social, and civic infrastructure, this plague has no consideration for morality. “

“If we do not know what our government is doing, we cannot hold it accountable. If we do know, our enemies know too. That can be dangerous.”

Even with the federal government in chaos, there’s still plenty of opportunity to solve a global problem.

A Chinese painter explores the US-Mexico border and discovers the reality of the border crisis.

Thousands of Haitians who fled the United States on foot last summer have started very different lives in Canada.

In Idaho, former state representative Paulette Jordan faces a tough race to become the nation’s first Native American governor.

Could Starbucks become the new General Motors? Or could the American worker make it even better?

At Maclean’s, Jason Markusoff reports on refugees who, in the face of tighter U.S. immigration restrictions, are risking their lives to find safe haven in Canada and on the network of people helping them do it.

After living and working abroad as a foreign correspondent for more than a decade, Jim Yardley returns to the United States to see, with his own eyes, how the country has changed.

The end of divine rule in postwar Japan, and the absolute power of General MacArthur.

Buddy Holly, John Wayne, and the A-Bomb.

Jill Lepore revisits the legacy of Benjamin Franklin, who in his time was “the most accomplished and famous American who had ever lived.”

Every year America’s schools shut down for nearly three months—leaving families like single mother Olympia and her 6-year-old daughter Raina struggling to keep up.

The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the […]

Starting with just a mail route, Juan Terry Trippe helped create a uniquely American luxury experience.

“I never figured out why they did that to me.”

It is worth noting that American students have never received high scores on international tests. On the first such test, a test of mathematics in 1964, senior year students in the US scored last of twelve nations, and eighth-grade students scored next to last. But in the following fifty years, the US outperformed the other […]

This October 2014 New York Times investigation by C.J. Chivers is about more than just the discovery of old chemical weapons in Iraq—it’s about how shabbily we still treat our troops when they return home. We leave our all-volunteer army with inadequate medical care, emotional trauma, and fragile families. Here are six stories on our […]

Over at Paleofuture, Matt Novak looks back at the 1959 Cold War cultural exhibitions hosted by both the United States and the Soviet Union. For the United States, the Moscow exhibition was a chance to show off the newest products and technology from companies like IBM, Sears and Kodak—and perhaps the most important innovation of […]

“In goal, you’re taking in all the movement, all the runs,” Howard said. “You see everything. You’re yelling. You’re tense. You’re so wired-in. To tell you the truth, I don’t enjoy the game—I’ve never actually had fun within the course of those ninety minutes.” Because the object is always a shutout—a “clean sheet,” as the […]

“The Unwinding is a powerful and important work, but even so, I can’t help but think that it has arrived very late in the day. Ask yourself: how many books have been published describing the destruction of the postwar middle-class economic order and the advent of the shiny, plutocratized new one? Well, since I myself […]