Credit...Illustration by Melinda Josie Feature In the wake of mass shootings, a lifetime of gun ownership leads to unsettling questions. Credit...Illustration by Melinda Josie By April 2, 2018 Two weeks before Christmas, I had a 9-millimeter pistol concealed in my waistband and a rifle with two…

Let’s begin with a hypothetical situation. Let’s suppose that I become aware that another group of people do not share the same access to material opportunities, cultural perks, and civil rights that I enjoy. Let’s suppose that this segment of the population is historically and regularly racialized,…

Vol. 39 No. 2 · 19 January 2017 From Lying to Leering Rebecca Solnit on Donald Trump’s fear of women Share on BlueskyShare on FacebookShareEmail 3630 words Women​ told me they had flashbacks to hideous episodes in their past after the second presidential debate on 9 October, or couldn’t sleep, or…

A Reporter at Large August 23, 1946 A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb. Survivors wonder why they lived when so many others died.Photograph from Rolls Press / Popperfoto / Getty I—A Noiseless Flash At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945,…

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Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The…

Fiction Dear son, If you’re reading this, I’m dead. I’m sorry. Rafael Zoehler 9 min read· Jul 29, 2015 -- Illustration: Jane Corwell/Flickr Death is always a surprise. No one expects it. Not even terminal patients think they are going to die in a day or two. In a week, maybe. But only when this…

This is more than just a Must Read. It’s a Must Live By… @JohnMetta: Why I don't talk about race with White people. https://t.co/yK3t25ISYe

On Wednesday night, I taught my last class of the semester at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and my last class there, at least for now. (I will be teaching an opinion-writing class at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in the fall.) So I decided to tell my students, who are…

If we are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a minimum requirement. Left, Invisible Children's Jason Russell. Right, a protest leader in Lagos, Nigeria / Facebook, AP A week and a half ago, I watched the Kony 2012 video. Afterward, I wrote a brief seven-part…

Paul Farmer. http://t.co/FksIizE5MR

Robbie McClaran This is, in other words, an economic approach that can unite left and right. Perhaps that’s one reason the right is beginning, inexorably, to wake up to this reality as well. Even Republicans as diverse as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum recently came out in favor of raising the…

"Lessons from America's War for the Greater Middle East." 30 years, and no end in sight http://t.co/cn4ru5IoxA @ndmagazine #longreads

Writing is intimidating. There’s this expectation of artful precision, mercurial grammatical rules, and the weird angst that comes with writing for other people. You start with a tidy nugget of an idea, but as you try to string it into language, it feels more like you’re pulling out your own…

UPDATE: The fine folks of Holstee have turned these seven learnings into a gorgeous letterpress poster inspired by mid-century children’s book illustration. On October 23, 2006, I sent a short email to a few friends at work — one of the four jobs I held while paying my way through college — with the…

There are a lot of terrifically talented and youthful singer-songwriting couples today who, when they're not making out, breaking up or making up, are capable of making beautiful music together. Now all of them should listen up, especially if they aspire to reach the level of Linford Detweiler and…

New Orleans’s Saint Charles Avenue is lined with oak trees whose broad branches drip Spanish moss and Mardi Gras beads from the pre-Lenten parades, and behind the oaks are beautiful old houses with turrets, porches, balconies, bay windows, gables, dormers and lush gardens. There are no refineries…

When people asked me what I was going to grow in my new garden, my response was, "Anything but tomatoes." Blame it on my Italian relatives for excessive use of marinara, or on American restaurants for the pale, mealy wedges atop salads, but I just don't like tomatoes. I was excited about growing…

Barbara Byrd-Bennett is offended by the fact that people have noticed she is shilling for racist policies from rich white plutocrat-sponsored think tanks. Rahm Emanuel agrees with Mitt Romney that children of color (and the other members of the 47%) are a lost cause because their parents are “bad”…

God does not ask us to choose between compassion and faith in the Bible. Christians are increasingly divided over the issue of the acceptance and inclusion of gay persons into the church. The debate itself is usually framed as essentially pitting the Bible, on one hand, against compassion and social…

Wendell Berry (Photo/David Marshall/Wikipedia Commons) Berry, a prolific author of books, poems and essays who won the National Humanities Medal in 2010 and was 2012 Jefferson lecturer for the National Endowment for the Humanities, offered “a sort of general declaration” on the subject of gay…

The hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD epidemic. When Rudy Giuliani ran for mayor of New York City in 1993, he campaigned on a platform of bringing down crime and making the city safe again. It was a comfortable position for a former federal prosecutor with a tough-guy…

In 2006, I flew with a group of journalists and United Nations officials to a remote village in Garamba National Park in eastern Congo, just on other side of the South Sudan border, for a meeting with Joseph Kony and the leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The meeting was to be held in a…

Mr. Penumbra’s 24‑Hour Bookstore This is my first novel, and it grew from a story posted on this very website into a New York Times Best Seller published in more than twenty countries. It’s a tale of books and technology, cryptography and conspiracy, friendship and love. It begins in a mysterious…

"How a Gun-Loving West Texas Girl Learned to Fear Assault Weapons." Haley B. Elkins, @xoJanedotcom http://lgrd.co/VRcvIC v. @jayrosen_nyu

"Let's Eliminate Sports Welfare." @patrick_hruby, @SportsonEarth http://lgrd.co/TgUF3m v. @arminrosen #longreads

Every American can be his own policeman; the country has nearly as many guns as it has people. Credit Photograph by Christopher Griffith Just after seven-thirty on the morning of February 27th, a seventeen-year-old boy named T. J. Lane walked into the cafeteria at Chardon High School, about thirty…

Educators say the darndest things. Consider this from a high school social studies teacher who told me, “Kids don’t read anymore. The only way I can teach them anything is by showing them videos.” Or this from a middle school principal who defended serving children junk food every day by telling me,…

Beautiful story about the mystery of the bat Roberto Clemente used for 3,000th hit, by @kevinguilfoile for @ESPNMag http://t.co/xKZeO8jx

Does Hillary Want to Shut Down Fracking? By PunditFact.com Does Hillary Want to Shut Down Fracking? By PunditFact.com By C. Eugene Emery and Lauren CarrollThe weekend before the first presidential debate, Donald Trump went to Roanoke, Virginia, to talk about energy.“Here, in Virginia, we are going…

Throughout life we are impacted with moments that are rich with meaning and significance. Regardless of the joy or sorrow that these moments create, it is our job to listen and respond. This summer I was given the gift of one of those profound moments. On a warm August afternoon, my wife and I…

“I walk everywhere in the city. Any city. You see everything you need to see for a lifetime. Every emotion. Every condition. Every fashion. Every glory,” Maira Kalman observed in considering the creative capacity of walking . Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo , too, came up with their best ideas while…

The tree had been on fire for over a week before anyone noticed. The Senator, one of the oldest Cypress trees in the world, was killed when a smoldering ignition from an errant lightning strike slowly transformed it into a towering chimney and fuel source in one. Or maybe it didn’t happen like that…