The Latest

Underworld XIII, a collage by John Stezaker, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our July 2013 issue. Nude and Landscape, an exhibition of Stezaker’s collages, closed earlier this month at Petzel, in New York City. Courtesy the artist and Petzel, New York City

The real problem with Toronto mayor Rob Ford isn't that he's a venal, possibly crack-smoking bully; it's that he's not the kind of venal, possibly crack-smoking bully who makes his city better

What would Frank Church say about the Snowden Affair?

Rebecca Makkai on reconciling family history in writing

The author writes about the inspiration for “May I Touch Your Hair?” (July 2013)

The U.S. offers military aid to the Syrian opposition, Turkey clears protesters from Gezi Park, and oculolinctus enthusiast Elektrika Energias speaks

“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.”

Advice for parents about raising their sons

A global-warming get-rich-quick scheme, a magic-mushroom murder, and more

The Visit, by Kim Dorland, whose work was featured in the Readings section of our June 2013 issue. Ghosts of You and Me, an exhibition of Dorland's paintings, is on view through June 8 at Mike Weiss Gallery, in New York City. Courtesy the artist and Mike Weiss Gallery, New York City

Big Barack is watching, Turkish winter is coming, and Sunday Swett is winning

The Cinco Estrelas encampment in northern Mato Grosso, where residents are fighting to gain access to land granted them by the Brazilian government. Photograph © Nadia Shira Cohen, whose work from Mato Grosso accompanied "Promised Land," by Glenn Cheney, in our June 2013 issue.

Timberline Lodge, a building on the south side of Oregon’s Mount Hood that served as the exterior for the Overlook Hotel, annotated with Stanley Kubrick’s instructions to the crew of The Shining. © The Stanley Kubrick Estate. Courtesy TASCHEN/The Stanley Kubrick Archives

The military–industrial–congressional complex bullies the F-35 Lightning II into Burlington

Tension in Turkey, storm-chasing tragedy in Oklahoma, and auf Wiedersehen to Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

A tree on the grounds of the Gillis W. Long National Guard facility, formerly the Louisiana Leper Home, in Carville, Louisiana. Wet-plate collodion photograph © Lisa Elmaleh, from a series that accompanied "The Separating Sickness," by Rebecca Solnit, in the June 2013 issue.

Men carry a painting in Shenzhen's Dafen neighborhood. Dafen's artists produce original works as well as millions of inexpensive reproductions, which are sold to hotels around the world. Photograph © Tomas van Houtryve/VII, whose work from Shenzhen accompanied "Instant City," by Nicolai Ouroussoff, in the June 2013 issue.

Our congratulations to Lydia Davis, who last week was awarded the 2013 Man Booker International Prize for fiction. Read Davis's "The Old Dictionary" here.

Celebrate (or lament) the 460th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks by reading a brief history of the end of time according to the differing accounts of various parties.

Grand Central: Inside/Outside, a mixed-media work on paper by Olive Ayhens, was featured in the Readings section of our June issue. It was selected by New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority as part of its Arts for Transit and Urban Design program, and will be on view as a poster in subways and train stations throughout the city.

Obama calls for an end to the “war on terror,” tensions grow in Europe, and a Filipino with forty-one names

Anna Badkhen on life in rural Afghanistan and the friction between violence and beauty

Tracing the Holocaust-Symbol Theory of The Shining

The looming collapse of agriculture on the Great Plains

Government power-drunkenness, space oddities, and anti-lesbian prejudice on the Isle of Man

“The smart question is not ‘How we can ban more guns?’ but ‘How can we live more safely among the millions of guns already floating around?’ ”

“This is the heart of the magic factory, the place where medicine is infused with the miracles of science.”

The firearm as emblem of personal sovereignty

Why the AR-15 rifle is here to stay, the conspiracy theories of Room 237, and more