Ruth Marcus discusses the Federalist Society’s 30-year Justice-grooming project, the botched investigations, and everything else that brought us “too big to fail” Brett Kavanaugh.
Hope Reese
Posted inNonfiction
‘I Was Trapped Forever In This Present Tense’: Carmen Maria Machado on Surviving Abuse
“She was always afraid of my voice. That was the defining factor of our relationship — fear of what I would say and write and do. She’s afraid of … the narrative that I possess.”
Posted inNonfiction
‘We Live in an Atmosphere of General Inexorability’: An Interview with Jia Tolentino
Jia Tolentino talks about what kinds of personalities thrive online, why she is suspicious of her own self-narrative, and the pervading sense that everything’s spiraling out of control.
Posted inNonfiction
The Growing Power of Prosecutors
An unintended consequence of mandatory minimums has been to concentrate too much power in the hands of prosecutors. Journalist Emily Bazelon talks about how some cities are pushing back.
Posted inNonfiction
‘There’s Virtually No Conversation In Chicago … About the Aftershocks of the Violence.’
In “An American Summer,” journalist Alex Kotlowitz tries to report on gun deaths on Chicago’s South Side with the same attention to survivors, anniversaries, and aftershocks that is paid to mass shootings.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Science & Nature, Story
‘I Cannot Name Any Emotion That Is Uniquely Human.’
According to primatologist Frans de Waal, we don’t like to admit that animals, especially apes, have emotions just like ours, and science has become better at studying apes’ behaviors than human ones.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Guy Gunaratne on the ‘Push-Pull of Ancestry and Meaning’ in London
Guy Gunaratne’s Man Booker-longlisted “In Our Mad and Furious City” recognizes multiple, overlapping versions of London and its inhabitants, examining the ways violence can bubble up through the city’s fissures.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story, Unapologetic Women
Women Are Really, Really Mad Right Now
Rebecca Traister talks about the revolutionary power of women’s anger.
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Dead Girls: An Interview with Alice Bolin
It’s clear we love the Dead Girl, enough to rehash and reproduce her story, to kill her again and again. But not enough to see a pattern.
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Story
A Person Alone: Leaning Out with Ottessa Moshfegh
Leaning in doesn’t work in real life. When I was writing, I kind of hoped that it would. I think I hoped that the answers are always within me. And when I reached the end of the book, it was like: there are no answers.