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Archive: 2017

On the Corner of Myth and Main

There was a time when I didn’t know that I lived in Middle America. When I was very young, growing up in eastern Minnesota, I thought I was just an…

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Harper’s Index

Minimum number of times since September 2015 that Donald Trump has referred to Christmas in speeches : 23 Number of those references that suggested the holiday was under attack : 19 Median age of voters…

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Before I Sleep

By Henry Marsh, from Admissions, a memoir about his life as a neurosurgeon. The book was published in October by St. Martin’s Press. Marsh is the author of Do No Harm.

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Thought Police

From a ruling handed down in September by a Louisiana district court in Officer John Doe v. DeRay Mckesson et al. The anonymous Baton Rouge police officer filed suit last…

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Chronicle of Dire Education

From news reports of homework given to students in US public schools since 2011.

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Document of Barbarism

From The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. The book was published last month by the University of Chicago Press. Arendt, Scholem, and Walter Benjamin were German-born Jewish philosophers.…

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God Among Men

From Bakkhai, a translation by Anne Carson of the play by Euripides. The book was published this month by New Directions. The adaptation was produced in 2015 by the Almeida…

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Poem with Orpheus

By Emily Skillings, from Fort Not, her first book of poetry. The collection was published by The Song Cave in October.

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The Send-Off

By Philippe Claudel, from Inhumaines, which was published by Stock earlier this year. Claudel is a novelist and filmmaker. Translated from the French by Camille Bromley.

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Raise the Red Pen

From a list of prohibitions for online media, including video-streaming sites, circulated in June by the China Netcasting Services Association, a state-controlled body that oversees more than 600 media companies.…

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Terms of Surrender

It was in the fall of 1941 that the question of atomic energy was first brought directly to my attention. At that time President Roosevelt appointed a committee to advise…

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Crossing Guards

When private ownership of a bridge gets old

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“I am Here Only for Working”

Conversations with the petroleum brotherhood in the UAE

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Dear Rose

Introduction by Ben Lerner Oceans and roses are surely among the most shopworn images in poetry, as Ocean Vuong is well aware: “I place your finger on a flower so…

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Framing The Shadows

The luminary vision of W. Eugene Smith

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The Year of The Frog

To look at him, Sweet Macho was a beautiful horse, lean and strong with muscles that twitched beneath his shining black coat. A former racehorse, he carried himself with ceremony,…

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New Books

When you consider the savagery of your run-of-the-mill fairy tale, our use of the term to connote “romance” or “idealization” smacks of nothing more than romance and idealization — a…

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Dead Ball Situation

A philosopher’s flat-footed meditations on the beautiful game

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The Cost of Living

Elizabeth Hardwick’s political conscience

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Findings

Economics students behave more selfishly than do arts majors and science majors in monetary experiments because they expect less from others. Anger shifts people toward fiscal conservatism. Deviance spurs bonding…

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Letters

Book Collective Jonathan Dee’s reflections on the status of the social novel are a welcome critique of contemporary writing, but his argument is compromised by an elision in his survey…

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Preaching to The Choir

Once, on a river-rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, I traveled with a charming, good-humored man who happened to run an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. He liked…

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December 2017

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