The Latest

“J. D. Salinger’s Closed Circuit,” (October 1962) makes an appearance in a new documentary

The United States debates a military strike in Syria, Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiates at a same-sex marriage, and KFC Japan begins selling deep-fried soup

From the June 2013 issue

Smoke Bomb, a painting by Alex Roulette, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our September 2013 issue. Roulette’s work was on view in May at Fisher Landau Center for Art, in Long Island City, New York. Courtesy the artist and Fisher Landau Center for Art, in Long Island City, New York

How foreign media are filtered in Iran

How the director of The Grandmaster captures the essence of the fight 

A poison-gas attack in Syria, a verdict in the Manning trial, and wing-walker Flame Brewer

"Relationship #5," a photograph by Nikolay Bakharev, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our September 2013 issue. On view in July at Julie Saul Gallery in New York City, and at the Venice Biennale, Bakharev's beach photography portrayed his subjects' bodies more revealingly than was usually allowed in Soviet Russia. © The artist/ Courtesy Julie Saul Gallery, New York City

“The FBI operative in New Haven who wrote my forensic profile possessed some talent with words and turned his phrases with apparent pleasure.”

How the junior senator from Kentucky motivated the Obama Administration to forgo mandatory minimum sentences

On inspiring (probably, maybe) a Newsroom plot arc

The case against Algebra II, the FBI’s file on William T. Vollmann, and our new Washington correspondent 

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

From Baghdad to the Menard County Fair

The Mexican government announces a state of emergency following a mass shrimp die-off in the Sea of Cortez

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

“We are cautious,” said General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, “about every drop of Egyptian blood.”

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

Food cart, Cairo, November 2011, a painting by Rebecca Bird, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our September 2013 issue. Bird's work will be on view next year at Kopeikin Gallery, in Los Angeles. Courtesy the artist

Dubious sources feed national-security reporter Eli Lake a fraudulent story for political purposes — once again

The foolish free-trade sophistry of Thomas Friedman

What can we do to address the collapsing global fishery?

Revisiting Richard Linklater’s Waking Life

On the possibility of a new Detroit

"Storm Over Field, Lake Pointsett, South Dakota, 2010," a photograph by Mitch Dobrowner, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our August 2013 issue. Dobrowner's new monograph Storms will be published next month by Aperture. Courtesy the artist and Aperture, New York City

The U.S. government responds to an alleged terrorist plot, Ramadan ends in violence in parts of the Muslim world, and Swedish men guard their testicles from pacu fish 

How will the Obama Administration handle Edward Snowden’s case in the long term?

“Oil and Water: Extracting Petroleum, Exterminating Nature,” by Jakob Rosenzweig (cartography) and Jacqueline Bishop (artwork). This map was produced for Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, co-edited by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker. The book will be published on November 4 by the University of California Press. Read Jeffery Gleaves’s interview with Rebecca Solnit here. 

Rebecca Solnit on how personal stories can fail to satisfy, the architectural space of the book, and the pleasures with which the landscapes of our lives are salted

"Untitled #4 (Flux series)," a photograph by Karine Laval, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our August 2013 issue. An exhibition of Laval's work was on view in May at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, in New York City. Courtesy the artist and Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York City