The Latest

Richard Rodriguez on the essay as biography of an idea, the relationship between gay men’s liberation and women’s liberation, and the writerly impulse to give away secrets

Join us Saturday, October 26, at 6:30 p.m.

How pro-oil Louisiana politicians have shaped American environmental policy

The U.S. government shutdown ends, Saudi Arabia turns down a U.N. Security Council seat, and an Alaskan town debates a successor for its cat-mayor

Why are opponents of Bill de Blasio invoking the David Dinkins era?

Jeremy Dauber on the remarkable life and afterlife of the man who created Tevye the Dairyman

A trip to one of the properties at issue in Louisiana’s oil-pollution lawsuits

On the remarkable life of the subject of “The Man Who Saves You from Yourself”

“Little boys” negotiate the U.S. government shutdown and debt ceiling, Bashar al-Assad wants his Nobel Peace Prize, and the Vatican tells the world about Lesus

“All of these practices are flagrant violations of the law.”

Nathaniel Rich on cults, Ken Silverstein on Louisiana oil lawsuits, and a story by Joyce Carol Oates

Our warmest congratulations to Alice Munro, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature. 

The U.S. government shuts down, African migrants capsize in the Mediterranean, and miscellaneous global crushings

Dame Margaret Drabble on the essayistic voice in fiction and North London anthropology

In search of an economy that won’t kill us

Can the European Union survive — and should it? 

Hell hath no limits

Audrey Petty on the history of Chicago public housing, the intimacy of oral histories, and reconstructing demolished communities

Obama and Rouhani make nuclear chitchat, Ted Cruz gets squirrelly, and Cambridgeshire loses a tea-and-bondage party

Off-Stage, a painting by Amy Bennett, whose work appeared in the Readings section of the October 2013 issue. Bennett's work was on view in July at Richard Heller Gallery, in Los Angeles. Courtesy the artist and Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles

The Brontë sisters’ devoirs on filial love, under the instruction of Constantin Heger

J. B. MacKinnon on human efforts to engineer nature, and whether we can restore what we've lost

Deadly terrorist attacks in Nairobi and Peshawar, House Republicans attempt to defund Obamacare, and a bookless library opens in San Antonio

A new introduction to The Green Child, by Herbert Read

“December 5th, 2012,” an archival pigment print by Zipora Fried, whose work appeared in the Readings section of the October 2013 issue. Fried's work was on view in February at the Clocktower Gallery, in New York City. Courtesy the artist and On Stellar Rays, New York City

A(nother) mass shooting in the United States, a deal on Syria’s chemical weapons, and notes on Arkansan squirrel cuisine

When the facts won’t convince the public to march into battle, politicians ramp up the rhetoric

Why can’t we indict Bashar al-Assad at the International Criminal Court?

The show trials at Guantánamo Bay, Bela Bartók’s monsters, the fate of Russia’s adopted children, and new fiction by T. C. Boyle

The Syria debate continues, the NSA breaks encryption routines, and a Windischeschenbach tubist complains about sex