Before he invented telegraphic code, Samuel Morse was a portrait painter. In the winter of 1825, he left his family in Connecticut and traveled to Washington, D.C., for a sitting…

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The nightmare logic of Twin Peaks

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Henry David Thoreau as prophet, naturalist, and stealth comedian

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A four-year study of a baboon troop found that males use strategic violence to control females’ mating behavior, with long-term conditioning in mind. Breastfeeding in the United States continued to…

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Black Like Me Zadie Smith writes that Americans “live in a mixed society” and that “there is no getting out of our intertwined history” [“Getting In and Out,” Review, July].…

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Factor by which women’s Tinder messages are longer than men’s : 10 Chances that an African-American mother is the breadwinner of her family : 4 in 5 Percentage change since 2011 in advertising spending…

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By Naomi Klein, from No Is Not Enough, which was published in June by Haymarket Books. Klein is the author of The Shock Doctrine, among other books.

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From news reports in the past year of facial-recognition technologies that have been implemented in China.

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From the jury selection process that took place over three days in June for the trial of Martin Shkreli, an investor and hedge fund founder who is facing eight counts…

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From a letter written by Patrick Leigh Fermor to Enrica Soma in 1961. Soma was a model and ballerina, and the wife of the director John Huston. Fermor was the…

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From a survey in which participants were asked to rank their agreement with statements about Alex Jones, the host of the right-wing talk show Infowars, from “never” to “all the…

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By Magda Szabó (1917–2007), from Katalin Street, a novel that was published this month by New York Review Books. Szabó was the author of The Door and the recipient of numerous literary awards.…

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By Keith Waldrop, from a manuscript in progress. Waldrop has published more than a dozen volumes of poetry. His Selected Poems (Omnidawn) appeared last year.

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The present is by common definition the instant between the not yet and the already, a moment as narrow and treacherous as a tightrope. But you might instead define it…

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From sentences in Unko Kanji Doriru (“Poo Kanji Drills”), a series of writing-exercise books for elementary school students in Japan. The books were written by Yusaku Furuya and published in…

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In the alt-right, women are the future, and the problem

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When a state divests from public education

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During the depressed years of the Thirties a good many private schools went out of business. Others cut their faculty salaries back to levels which confirmed teachers in their suspicion…

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Around the world with the Goya of conflict photography

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Harvest on an American family farm

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America’s long struggle with affirmative action

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When I came into the kitchen, Ward was using a knife to help his wife, Irene, peel the skin from two buffalo tongues. The skin was discarded in a small…

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