3,755 words | Mar. 24, 1991 | newrepublic.com One sunny afternoon in the week of liberation, I went to the theater. The hall at Kuwait University’s school of music & drama is a place of conspicuous civilization, a big cantilevered room with modestly elegant…

3,755 words | Mar. 07, 2007 | salon.com As thousands of burned-out soldiers prepare to return to Iraq to fill President Bush's unwelcome call for at least 20,000 more troops, I can't help wondering what the women among those troops will have to face. And…

4,459 words | Apr. 05, 2021 | bostonreview.net After he killed eight people in the Atlanta suburbs on March 16, the perpetrator told police that he “wanted to eliminate” the “temptation” of the massage parlors & spas he had targeted. While it is unclear if…

3,790 words | May. 18, 2024 | newyorker.com A friend of mine knew a wealthy man who had decided to live forever. That made him hard to be around, my friend told me, in an e-mail, because he was “always dropping to the floor to do ab crunches or running out…

4,950 words | May. 09, 2024 | defector.com In 1968, workers digging a trench for a water pipeline in southern Finland came across the knotted bronze hilt of an early medieval sword. When the archaeologist Oiva Keskitalo excavated the dark soil of what would…

4,800 words | Nov. 14, 2023 | wired.com Across the 75 years since something—something—crashed outside Roswell in early July 1947, the very name itself has taken on a life of its own: Today, it’s shorthand for UFOs, extraterrestrials, & a vast govt conspiracy…

6,093 words | May. 22, 2024 | themontrealreview.com Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World, an account of Scott’s last expedition to the Antarctic, was the first “adult” book that I, a schoolboy in Melbourne, was required to read. The book…

7,188 words | May. 2024 | dmagazine.com I. The Arrival Adopted at two weeks old from Fort Worth’s Edna Gladney Home, Debra Stevens grew up a mystery to herself. It wasn’t until late in life that she found more family than she could have asked for, on the…

3,498 words | Jul. 01, 2024 | nathangoldwag.wordpress.com In 30 BCE, the armies of Octavian decisively defeated Mark Anthony at the Battle of Actium. By the end of the year, both Anthony & his lover Cleopatra had killed themselves, & the young heir of Caesar…

3,409 words | Dec. 21, 2022 | restofworld.org In December 2021, Rahul, a 30-year-old resident of the Indian city of Rohtak, received a message on Facebook Messenger from a woman who gave her name as Payal. 

3,586 words | Jun. 2024 | asteriskmag.com RAND’s halcyon days lasted two decades, during which the corporation produced some of the most influential developments in science & American foreign policy. So how did it become just another think tank?

8,292 words | May. 20, 2024 | propublica.org Kris Hansen had worked as a chemist at the 3M Corporation for about a year when her boss, an affable senior scientist named Jim Johnson, gave her a strange assignment. 3M had invented Scotch Tape & Post-­it notes;…

7,358 words | Jul. 10, 2024 | inthesetimes.com Before the day’s light had begun to dim, Brandon Lee picked up his phone & texted Sister Genny. ​“Even until now,” he told the nun, ​“I feel like I’m being watched.”

5,809 words | Jun. 30, 2024 | nymag.com What may turn out to be a hinge in American history occurs one day in November 2004, when the future president of the United States asks his then-girlfriend to turn around so the nation can see how her ass looks in…

9,398 words | Jun. 14, 2005 | amitavghosh.com The Andaman & Nicobar islands are one of those quadrants of the globe where political & geological fault lines run on parallel courses. Politically the islands are Union Territories, ruled directly from New Delhi…

3,810 words | May. 06, 2024 | lithub.com “I won’t show his picture to my relatives until he cuts his hair,” my mother said, an ultimatum I hadn’t imagined. I imagined: “It’s either Quincy or us,” not “It’s either Quincy’s dreadlocks or my relatives.” I was…