A poison-gas attack in Syria, a verdict in the Manning trial, and wing-walker Flame Brewer
"Relationship #5," a photograph by Nikolay Bakharev, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our September 2013 issue. On view in July at Julie Saul Gallery in New York…
“The FBI operative in New Haven who wrote my forensic profile possessed some talent with words and turned his phrases with apparent pleasure.”
How the junior senator from Kentucky motivated the Obama Administration to forgo mandatory minimum sentences
The case against Algebra II, the FBI’s file on William T. Vollmann, and our new Washington correspondent
The author obtains his FBI file and discovers a case largely based on literary criticism
The Mexican government announces a state of emergency following a mass shrimp die-off in the Sea of Cortez
“We ‘squeeze, and then squeeze some more’ with no end in sight.”
“We are cautious,” said General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, “about every drop of Egyptian blood.”
“Life’s prerequisites are courtesy and kindness, the times tables, fractions, percentages, ratios, reading, writing, some history — the rest is gravy, really.”
Food cart, Cairo, November 2011, a painting by Rebecca Bird, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our September 2013 issue. Bird's work will be on view next year…
Dubious sources feed national-security reporter Eli Lake a fraudulent story for political purposes — once again
"Storm Over Field, Lake Pointsett, South Dakota, 2010," a photograph by Mitch Dobrowner, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our August 2013 issue. Dobrowner's new monograph Storms will be published next…
The U.S. government responds to an alleged terrorist plot, Ramadan ends in violence in parts of the Muslim world, and Swedish men guard their testicles from pacu fish
How will the Obama Administration handle Edward Snowden’s case in the long term?
“Oil and Water: Extracting Petroleum, Exterminating Nature,” by Jakob Rosenzweig (cartography) and Jacqueline Bishop (artwork). This map was produced for Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, co-edited by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca…
Rebecca Solnit on how personal stories can fail to satisfy, the architectural space of the book, and the pleasures with which the landscapes of our lives are salted
"Untitled #4 (Flux series)," a photograph by Karine Laval, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our August 2013 issue. An exhibition of Laval's work was on view in May…
Zimbabwe re-elects Robert Mugabe, a fatwa against croissants, and a lemonade-stand robbery at BB-gunpoint
Ben Stroud on getting to know a character, the balance between research and imagination, and the writer’s desire for recognition