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The Latest

Browsings

Pages from William T. Vollmann’s FBI File

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

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Perspective

On Rand Paul’s War on the War on Drugs

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

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Personal and Otherwise

Occupied by The Newsroom

On inspiring (probably, maybe) a Newsroom plot arc

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Editor's Note

Introducing the September 2013 Issue

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

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Précis

Willam T. Vollmann Was Suspected of Being the Unabomber

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

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Personal and Otherwise

America by the Yard

From Baghdad to the Menard County Fair

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Perspective

On the Trouble with Farmed Shrimp

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

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Précis

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

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

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Weekly Review

Weekly Review

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

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Précis

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

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

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Art

Food Cart, Cairo, November 2011

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

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Controversy

Anatomy of an Al Qaeda “Conference Call”

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

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Publisher’s Note

Thomas the Tank Engine

The foolish free-trade sophistry of Thomas Friedman

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Suggestion

Four Steps Toward Guilt-free Seafood

What can we do to address the collapsing global fishery?

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Art

Storm Over Field, Lake Pointsett, South Dakota, 2010

"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 ApertureCourtesy the artist and Aperture, New York City

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Weekly Review

Weekly Review

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 

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No Comment

Obama’s Snowden Dilemma

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

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Art

Oil and Water: Extracting Petroleum, Exterminating Nature

“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

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Six Questions

The Faraway Nearby and Unfathomable City

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

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Art

Untitled #4 (Flux series)

"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

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Weekly Review

Weekly Review

Zimbabwe re-elects Robert Mugabe, a fatwa against croissants, and a lemonade-stand robbery at BB-gunpoint

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Art

0232

"0232," a photograph from Linda Fregni Nagler's series The Hidden Mother, which was featured in the Readings section of our August 2013 issue. All 997 daguerreotypes, tintypes, and albumen prints that comprise the series are currently on view in an exhibition curated by Cindy Sherman inside Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace) at the Venice Biennale. Because of the long exposure times required by early photography, children posing for portraits were often held still by adults hidden under blankets. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Milan/Zuoz, Switzerland

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Six Questions

Byzantium: Stories

Ben Stroud on getting to know a character, the balance between research and imagination, and the writer’s desire for recognition

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Official Business

Sleeping with Harper’s Magazine: An Event at McNally Jackson in Manhattan

Please join us at McNally Jackson Books on Wednesday, July 31, at 7 p.m. for Sleeping With Harper’s Magazine: Authors in search of a good night’s rest.

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Postcard

Two Fish, One Fish, Don’t Fish, Ton Fish

How one community on the Sea of Cortez restored its fishery — and its economy — by stopping fishing altogether

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Six Questions

A Marker to Measure Drift

Alexander Maksik on Charles Taylor’s Liberia, the oldest story in the world, and the trouble with elegant variation

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Perspective

On the Selling of the Egyptian Coup to Liberals

How the mass killing of Islamists is being justified in America

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Weekly Review

Weekly Review

Egypt teeters precariously, cat zombies and zonkeys live, and a hexapus dies

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