A year and a half after the takeover of Zuccotti Park there exists a widespread conviction that Occupy Wall Street ultimately failed, and that it did so for lack of…
Number of the 400 wealthiest Americans who count as small-business owners under House Republicans’ definition : 237 Percentage of the Bush tax cuts made permanent by the “fiscal cliff” compromise : 82 Portion of…
By Christa Wolf, from City of Angels: Or, the Overcoat of Dr. Freud, published last month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Wolf, who spent most of her life in East…
From open letters by the actor Gérard Depardieu, addressed to French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and to the Russian press. In January, Depardieu obtained Russian citizenship in order to evade…
From the October 29, 2012, testimony of Martin Dumont to a Canadian public inquiry into corruption charges against various Montreal city officials. Dumont was an organizer for Union Montréal, the…
For a time in December, it looked as though the nation was finally ready to take on the gun culture. Perhaps you recall the moment: twenty grade-schoolers, along with their…
By Jonathan Lethem, from “More Little Tales of the Internet,” published in Issue 59 of Conjunctions. Lethem is the author of many books, including, most recently, Fear of Music. His…
From Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress: Learn to Play the Most Complex Video Game Ever Made, by Peter Tyson, published last year by O’Reilly Media, Inc. When a “strange mood”…
From A Brochure for Comprehending the Cultures of the Coalition Forces, a twenty-eight-page pamphlet published by the Afghan Ministry of Defense and distributed to Afghan troops. Translated from the Dari…
From an interview with children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, by British journalist Emma Brockes, published in the November/December 2012 issue of The Believer. Sendak, whose many works include…
From Here and Now, a collection of letters exchanged by novelists J. M. Coetzee and Paul Auster between 2008 and 2011, out this month from Viking. 24 august 2009 Dear…
From an October 9, 2012, email sent by Lucy Bird, then chief executive of Marketing Edinburgh, to city councillors Sue Brice and Alastair Maclean, during the development of an ad…