Précis Archives

Précis

Did a Top Taliban Leader Fake His Own Death?

by Harper’s Magazine,

Harper’s Magazine Reporter Concludes that Taliban Intelligence Chief Qari Ahmadullah Is Still Alive

Willam T. Vollmann Was Suspected of Being the Unabomber

by Harper’s Magazine,

The author obtains his FBI file and discovers a case largely based on literary criticism

Andrew Cockburn on the Failure and Ferocity of America’s Sanctions Programs

by Harper’s Magazine,

“We ‘squeeze, and then squeeze some more’ with no end in sight.”

Nicholson Baker Argues that Algebra II Shouldn’t Be a Required Course

by Harper’s Magazine,

“Life’s prerequisites are courtesy and kindness, the times tables, fractions, percentages, ratios, reading, writing, some history — the rest is gravy, really.”

Writers Go in Search of a Good Night’s Sleep

by Harper’s Magazine,

We asked some of our favorite writers how they were sleeping. Their responses ranged from the personal, to the scientific, to the historical.

McKenzie Funk Searches Iceland for the Man who Tried to Sell Glaciers

by Harper’s Magazine,

“There was no country more in the thrall of commercial banking and paper wealth. . . . All this helped explain why no one in Iceland seemed worried about building an economy on water, not when the last one had been built on air.”