The Acre
by Brian Calvert,March 2010
After the death of his mother, a down-and-out writer realizes he needs a place, the kind you can’t buy, sell, deed, lease, or fence.
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The Pleasure of Flinching
by Nicholas Sautin, February 2010While amateur Iraq war footage abounds, Nick Sautin asks if the trend represents our “right to view,” or is it porn made from leftovers of a world filming its self-destruction?
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The War and the Roses
by Joelle Renstrom, February 2010Fourteen years after the end of Sarajevo’s besiegement during the Bosnian War, one writer finds a country uniquely capable of embracing the past while moving into the future.
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Writers, Plain and Simple
by Claire Messud, February 2010Women make up 80% of the fiction reading audience in this country. So why, guest fiction editor Claire Messud asks, are women authors so frequently left off the best-of lists, and left out of prestigious book prizes?
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In Search of a Modest Proposal
by Corinne Ramey, February 2010For Orthodox Jews, matchmaking and dating are more confusing than ever. Is secularism to blame? Feminism? Or is it part of a greater crisis?
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Sin City (Part 2 of 2)
by Austin Considine, January 2010How Dubai’s legal catch-22 transforms workers from around the world into de facto slave laborers without rights, days off, or pay.
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Mars or Bust
by Eric Benson and Justin Nobel, January 2010While the aerospace community waits for February when President Obama will announce the 2011 budget, effectively setting NASA’s direction for the near future, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin agitates for a manned mission to Mars.
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Sin City (Part 1 of 2)
by Austin Considine, January 2010Where do architectural wonders, coat hanger abortions, virtual slave labor, and a modern underground railroad meet?
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The Kids Are Alright
by Sara Irani, December 2009A week removed from the Student Day protests, some media still claim the pace of change in Iran indicates weakness on the part of student protesters. But could it be a sign of political maturity?
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Delta Farce?
by Pranav Behari, December 2009The MEND rebels of the Niger Delta are on a charm offensive, hosting press on fact-finding missions. Are they legitimate freedom fighters or environmental profiteers?
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Happy Valley Postcard
by Elizabeth Kadetsky , December 2009Is this exuberant college town, named for defying the trends of the Great Depression, a clue into American violence, grief, and longing?
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Seeing in Stereo
by Suzanne Menghraj , December 2009When art sets out to deceive us, do we collude with just our eyes? The author visits an exhibit of trompe l’œil in Florence.
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The Colonized Mind
by Sadanand Dhume, November 2009In Java, Indonesia’s traditionally relaxed Islam has lost ground to an assertive new orthodoxy.
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Chronicles of a Soviet Capitalist (Part 2 of 2)
by Irakli Iosebashvili, November 2009Twenty years later, a Georgian writer recalls the pursuit of money in the years immediately after the Iron Curtain came down.
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Chronicles of a Soviet Capitalist (Part 1 of 2)
by Irakli Iosebashvili, November 2009Twenty years later, Georgian writer Irakli Iosebashvili recalls the pursuit of money in the years immediately after the Iron Curtain came down.
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Bolaño Inc.
by Horacio Castellanos Moya, November 2009Roberto Bolaño is being sold in the U.S. as the next Gabriel García Márquez, a darker, wilder, decidedly un-magical paragon of Latin American literature. But his former friend and fellow novelist isn’t buying it.
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Under the Milanese Bureaucracy
by Michelle Schoenung, October 2009Public health care threw every conceivable obstacle at one pregnant American in Italy—bureaucracy, long waits, condescending doctors—yet she still favors the public option. Here’s her story.
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Loyal Opposition
by Chris Lombardi, October 2009As Afghanistan erupts with redoubled violence, Chris Lombardi recounts the unbroken line of soldiers who have refused to serve (or repented their service) in every American war since the War of 1812.
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There Will Be Blood
by Jamal Mahjoub , October 2009Back in his native Sudan for the first time in years, Jamal Mahjoub observes the capital’s newfound oil wealth and argues that focusing narrowly on Darfur while ignoring the secessionist South could spell big trouble for all of Sudan.
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Drawing on History
by Rachel Somerstein, September 2009This month in Berlin, June Glasson exhibits her series The Foulest of Shapes, ink-and-wash drawings of women engaged in violence and revelry that pose complex questions about what it means to be a feminist artist today.
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After the Flood
by Pia Ehrhardt, September 2009Four years after Hurricane Katrina, writer Pia Ehrhardt, a New Orleanian before and after the storm, has guest edited our September issue culling art of all genres with the hopes of identifying how New Orleans is healing.
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White Canvas House
by Rachel Somerstein, August 2009What’s revealing about Obama’s art selections for the White House has nothing to do with gender or race. It’s more abstract than that.
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Food Among the Ruins
by Mark Dowie, August 2009Detroit, the country’s most depressed metropolis, has zero produce-carrying grocery chains. It also has open land, fertile soil, ample water, and the ingredients to reinvent itself from Motor City to urban farm. Mark Dowie’s immodest proposal...
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The Infinite in the Infinitesimal
by Suzanne Menghraj, July 2009How is it that miniature works can express so much? For Suzanne Menghraj, an exhibition of tiny objects conjures thoughts of philosopher Gaston Bachelard, homes designed for low-emission living, dinner in a shed, and the infinite.
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Intelligence Without Design
by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, July 2009By bridging aspects of intelligent design with evolution in a new approach they call “possibilism,” authors Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer probably haven’t solved the American culture wars. But they might have.
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Good Fences
by Ned Stuckey-French , July 2009While building a tree house with his father, Ned Stuckey-French begins to understand the politics at play in the backyards of his suburban neighborhood.
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Dreaming in Hindi
by Katherine Russell Rich, June 2009Fighting cancer, Katherine Russell Rich escapes to India to learn Hindi and throw her life “in the air for a passion.”
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Hurt to Read
by Michael Copperman, June 2009Back in the Mississippi Delta for the first time in four years, a teacher comes face to face with what he left behind.
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In Praise of Failure
by Pierre Bayard translated by Suzanne Menghraj , May 2009Citing French literary gods like Proust and Molière, the French prankster extraordinaire, in a new translation by Suzanne Menghraj, asks, “Isn’t it high time we started thinking about all the crap good writers make?”
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Chain Reaction
by Ben Huang, May 2009One year after the earthquake that devastated central China, Ben Huang contemplates the connections between the quake, Chinese history, and his father’s death.
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Human Nature
by Mark Dowie, May 2009Is modern conservation linked with ethnic cleansing? In an excerpt from his new book, Mark Dowie explores the concepts of wilderness and nature, and argues that the removal of aboriginal people from their homeland to create wilderness is a charade.
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Guided by Voices
by Joel Peckham , April 2009Why every nation needs a poet—an essay on Israel, Palestine, and the United States, from Amman, Jordan.
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Strangers in a Strange Land
by Lis Harris, April 2009Guest editor Lis Harris claims the writer’s mission to catch the fleeting moments that normally pass by unremarked is especially enlivened by the tabula rasa of a foreign country.
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Ruski Business
by Caleb Daniloff, April 2009During the Cold War, Caleb Daniloff, the son of an American journalist who would soon be jailed, spends his Moscow nights drinking, smoking, and black-marketing with Russian metalheads.
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Shadowing the Dogs of War
by Lis Harris, April 2009In search of meaning in the Holy Land, writer Lis Harris finds one group who, after great struggle, found a way to ford rivers of blood and tear down the walls of their own minds.
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La Poste Américaine
by Tara Bray Smith, April 2009An American in Germany sifts through the cultural signposts, in pursuit of what it means to belong to a particular nation.
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Listening to Birds
by Kirmen Uribe translated from the Basque by Elizabeth Macklin, March 2009From a remote village in Estonia, Kirmen Uribe considers lovers’ vows, and the twittering from the trees.
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Calypso Awakenings
by Suzanne Menghraj, March 2009What a pirate festival, and dancing alone to Calypso, can teach us about the here and now.
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Who’ll Stop the Rain
by Swetha Regunathan, March 2009What if the September 11th attacks had coincided with the ravage of Hurricane Katrina? In India during November’s monsoon and the Mumbai attacks, Swetha Regunathan weighs the connections between weather and terrorism.
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Harm Subsidies
by Mark Dowie, March 2009Investigative historian Mark Dowie argues that the so-called nuclear renaissance ought to be aborted.
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Tick-Tock
by Jennifer Miller, February 2009The daughter of a Jewish-American peace negotiator narrates the drama of her father's surprisingly--and perhaps inappropriately--close relationship with Yasir Arafat.
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Twin Peeks
by Suzanne Menghraj, February 2009Suzanne Menghraj recounts two daring acts of seeing in and around the wilds of New York City.
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Phantom Pain
by Anna Steegmann, January 2009The daughter of a Nazi soldier recalls the spark and fizzle of her tenth New Year's Eve.
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The Man Behind the Curtain
by Kristen French, January 2009For Brazilian-born artist and modern-day trickster Vik Muniz, subverting his own images is all part of the game.
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Fire Inside
by Marilyn Krysl, December 2008In the Sri Lankan city of Batticaloa, an American peace worker watches one woman bravely face the worst the world can offer.
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Preservation
by Ron Tanner, December 2008The inhabitants of the Marshall Islands have endured waves of immigration, exploitation, and America's nuclear testing. Now under threat from rising sea levels, their storytelling culture offers us a cautionary tale.
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The Truth is a Powerful Potion: Guernica Non-Fiction Guest-Edited by Dinty Moore
, December 2008My first instinct is to step aside and let the work speak for itself. That is almost always my first instinct, but in this case, it is certainly the best instinct, since the two works in question are both powerful and compelling.
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Hiding in Plain Sight
by Emily Raboteau, November 2008Quoting Baudelaire, an American passes in Granada.
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Anti-Drudge
by Mark Binelli, October 2008Until his conscience overcame him, David Brock was conservatives' go-to hitman. The inside story of the media watchdog who has Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage--even Stephen Colbert--fuming mad.
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Growing Controversy
by Ruxandra Guidi; photos by Roberto Guerra, September 2008Once the target of the U.S. war on drugs, Bolivian coca is being repackaged by activist farmers in hopes of giving the crop a legal life in this destitute nation.
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Shock and Awe
by Seth Fischer, August 2008Seth Fischer was like most of his friends, protesting a faraway war being fought by people, on both sides, he didn't know. Lance Corporal Eric Vargas changed all that.
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Designed to Survive
by Mahvish Khan, June 2008The Supreme Court ruled last week that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their imprisonment in a civilian court. Having been kidnapped, tortured, raped, and even moved to try suicide, prisoner Jumah al-Dossary was one of the lucky ones. Mahvish Khan reports.
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I Want My AJE
by Julia Dahl, May 2008Al Jazeera English broadcasts in nearly 120 million homes worldwide, but only a handful are in the United States. Here's why.
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Eviction Slip
by Mark Dowie, April 2008While many governments now involve indigenous groups in environmental conservation, India is on the verge of creating what might become the largest mass eviction for conservation ever. Groups like India's Adivasis have come to be called "conservation refugees." Mark Dowie tells their story.
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Sectarian Conflict: Who's to Blame?
by Jonathan Steele, April 2008A survey by Baghdad's best pollster asked Iraqis which "suits you well": Sunni Muslim, Shia Muslim, or Just Muslim. The biggest category chose the last option. Then came the US occupation.
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Death Metal and the Indian Identity
By Akshay Ahuja, April 2008When writer Akshay Ahuja transported a guitar to India, little did he know he was being led down a rabbit hole to a vibrant subculture by a group that styled itself the Cremated Souls
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Rumors and Retribution
Lewis Alsamari, March 2008In this extract from his memoir, Escape from Saddam, Lewis Alsamari recalls some of the gruesome rumors and boyhood experiences that led to his dangerous escape from one of the world's most feared regimes.
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The Farce of Iraqi Sovereignty
by Jonathan Steele, March 2008Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Jonathan Steele shows the surge's inherent contradictions. To increase security is to rob Iraqis of their sovereignty and their dignity, which will ultimately fuel resistance. There is one solution: Admit defeat, then leave.
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Ghostwriting Gabo
by David Unger, November 2007Guatemalan-born writer and translator David Unger recounts the chance encounter that led to the job of a lifetime: ghostwriter for Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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Irrational Waiting
by Salar Abdoh, November 2007What does it take to drive the population of a county crazy? Apparently, just 3 liters of gas a day. Salar Abdoh navigates his way through the meaning behind Iran's fuel rationing.
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Are You Abnormal?
by Nancy Rawlinson, November 2007Join the club... or the Church of the Subgenius that is. A fringe religion that might not be as far out as it seems.
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Slick Torch
by Norman Solomon, October 2007Norman Solomon has made a career of challenging media to tell the truth. In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, Solomon takes on Colin Powell, Thomas Friedman, Bill Clinton and hawkish news reporters everywhere in a series of interrelated vignettes.
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Ireland 2.0
by Damien Lennon, September 2007Its Celtic Tiger economy has propelled Ireland from one of Europe's poorest countries to one of its richest. But money doesn't make the country. Why the Irish cultural identity must be re-imagined now.
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My Biafran Eyes
By Okey Ndibe, August 2007What Nigerian writer, Okey Ndibe, sees when he recalls the Biafran War.
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Vanishing Point
by Salar Abdoh, August 2007Writer Salar Abdoh considers the difference between "art" and "evidence" in modern day Iran--and discovers that when those roles overlap, images disappear.
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Future’s So Bright
By Sascha Matuszak , August 2007When the zebaleen, the garbage people of Cairo, were stripped of their responsibilities by the government, nothing but education could save them.
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Moving Violations
by Salar Abdoh, June 2007Iranian writer Salar Abdoh contemplates the codes of modesty of his homeland, and finds himself caught between a New York yoga class and the Caspian Sea.
Part one in a series on Iran -
The Price of Life
by Billy Briggs, March 2007Women are murdered in Guatemala so frequently that the phenomenon has been given a name: femicide. Despite worldwide calls for action, the problem seems only to be getting worse.
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The Last Jews of Cairo
By Josh Weil, November 2006Once there were more than 75,000. Today less than 100 remain. What led to the end of the once thriving Egyptian Jewish community, and how are the few who are left preserving their culture?
By Josh Weil -
The Dragon Mothers Polish their Metal Coils
by Edith Mirante, September 2006Burma's Kayan women brave indignity and exploitation to continue a centuries-old tradition: wrapping their necks in symbols of feminine beauty, otherworldly status, and matriarchal power.
by Edith Mirante -
Suffering for Sale
by Ann Tornkvist, August 2006Photojournalists can make a killing in galleries with war photos. Should they?
by Ann Tornkvist -
Lost Lebanon
By Katherine Darnell, August 2006The Lebanon I enjoyed vanished two days after I left.
By Katherine Darnell -
Writers’ Rooms: “Under Stolen Italian Skies”
by Peg Boyers, July 2006Having grown up with three languages, I have always found translation a handy way of getting at the limitations of language.
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Swarms at the Border: The Dead Heart of Africa
By Hasdai Westbrook, July 2006Will oil bring wealth or war to the people of Chad?
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Firmly Forward
by Mark Binelli, May 2006The Daily Kos's Markos Moulitsas Zuniga continues to push back
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Pharmaceutical Sales 101: Inside Information
By Jake Whitney, April 2006On the buying and selling of prescription records by major drug companies and pharmacy chains
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Pharmaceutical Sales 101: Me-Too Drugs
Jake Whitney, February 2006How the drug industry cashes in on drugs of dubious benefit
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Quieter, Softer: A Journey Through the Abortion Debate
Judea Franck, February 2006What if it was your body that was the “battleground”…
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Pharmaceutical Sales 101: Bagging Doctors
By Jake Whitney, December 2005The five ways drug companies entangle physicians in conflicts of interest. Part 2 of a four-part investigation.
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Writers’ Rooms: “Memory’s Homeland”
by Marjorie Agosin, November 2005I must always write in a solitary space because I am a poet of impermanence, of continuous travels, of imprecise cartographies.
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Pharmaceutical Sales 101: M&Ms Make Friends
By Jake Whitney, November 2005Is your doctor prescribing the drugs you need or the drugs a pharmaceutical rep needs to sell? Part 1 of a 4 part investigation.
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The Conscience of the King
by Hillery Hugg, September 2005What Cindy Sheehan and New Orleans mothers share: grief over the government's failures.
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‘No Iraqis Left Me on a Roof to Die’
by Tom Engelhardt, September 2005Two hurricanes, one of them human, had blown through American life; between them, they had linked the previously unconnected.
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My Father's English Friend
by Okey Ndibe, August 2005A British officer and African soldier show that the arrangements of history are subordinate to the call of friendship.
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New Europe Grows Old
by Stephen Henighan, June 2005Bush's desire that Eastern Europeans support any adventure to which the U.S. attaches the 'freedom' label depends on a vision of Europe that's already outdated.
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Speak Softly and Carry a Big Environment
by Jess Taylor, May 2005Just the way it did in the industrialized world, environmentalism can probably make inroads in Brazil fastest as a fashion thing.
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Riding with Critical Mass
by Eugene Karmazin, May 2005This has nothing to do with the current orange alert; in fact, it has nothing to do with terrorist threats or any sort of threat at all. This is the City of New York’s response to a bicycle ride called “Critical Mass.”
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Aceh Abandoned: The Second Tsunami
report and photos by Andre Vltchek, May 2005After a 13-year break, the U.S. is trying to improve relations with the Indonesian military. It is letting go of its concern about Indonesia’s human rights record that led Congress to curb military ties in 1992 and cut off Indonesia’s eligibility to buy certain kinds of lethal military equipment.
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Learning to See Abundance in Liberia
by William Powers, May 2005President James Monroe christened Liberia ''a little America, destined to shine gem-like in the heart of darkest Africa.'' If Monroe's language is anachronistic, his optimism is not; what we have spawned, we can help renew.
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Conversing With the World
Rachel Galvin on The Poet in Society, May 2005Artists are more capable than theorists or pundits in representing the consciousness of the people, because the language of art is a language of immediacy, of spirit, and of the transporting analogy.
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The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature
by William Cronon, May 2005It means looking at the part of nature we intend to turn toward our own ends and asking whether we can use it again and again and again—sustainably—without its being diminished in the process.
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Entries for a Devil's Dictionary of the Bush Era
by Tom Engelhardt, April 2005Never has an administration spent so much time creating, defining, or redefining terms, perhaps because no one (since George Orwell) has grasped the power and possibility that lay hidden in plain sight in the naming and renaming of words.
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Monkey Wants Banana
a Letter from Brazil by Jess Taylor, January 2005A Brazilian taxi driver's take on George W. Bush.
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Too Big
by Cynthia Fuchs, January 2005Nothing like a deadly catastrophe to make journalists and nations look important. And nothing like the next news cycle to shake all that importance loose again.
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On the Road with Ralph Nader
by Stephen Elliott, October 2004Will someone write a book about America’s historic rejection of third party candidates at the beginning of the millennium? And if they do, will anybody read it?
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Letter from Bohemian Budejovice
by Stephen Thomas, October 2004An Imposter checks in from the Czech Republic
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Catholics as ‘Values Voters’
by Carl Raschke, October 2004If there is any one lesson to be learned from this election, social theorists are going to have to revise slightly what one means by not only the “values voter”, but the “religious right” in this country.
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The Painting, Guernica
by Julián Ríos, October 2004The author explores and explodes Guernica by Pablo Picasso.