The Last London
The author Iain Sinclair traverses the city, records what he sees and considers what has been before.
The Dark, Dangerous World of Illegal Mining
The horrendously dangerous existence of illegal miners in South Africa working outside the law.
This is What a Feminist Looks Like
President Barack Obama lays out his personal perspective on feminism.
Being Gay in Putin’s Russia
A 2014 piece examining repression and persecution taking place in Russia.
An unsolved murder at Italy’s most notorious tower block
The story of a murder at an apartment block marketed as a luxury development when it opened in 1968, but now “like an inverse of Dante’s layers of hell”. The building is disintegrating, but houses a large and diverse population, including an estimated 50 drug dealers. This is a story about the changes in fortune in the Italian economy, urban development, immigration, integration, and failing public infrastructure.
Selling Airborne Opulence to the Upper Upper Upper Class
A story about a man who sells private jets, and about society, and the global economy.
The Daimons’ Wisdom
A biographer of Machiavelli looks to Florentine history for lessons in the battle to preserve the rule of law in the face of tyranny.
The Reckoning
A piece revisiting a celebrated series of documentaries about the Ganiga tribe in Papua New Guinea and their fractured interactions with Australian prospectors. The author looks at how the story has progressed in the thirty years since The New York Times said of the first instalment_Ñ_Òwatching it feels like taking an inspired crash course in economics and cultural anthropology.
The Increasing Unfitness of Donald Trump
New Yorker Editor David Remnick’s piece on Donald Trump starts with a reference to the infamous Roman Emperor Nero and goes from there.
Kim Jong-un’s North Korea: Life inside the totalitarian state
Months of interviews with over 25 escapees from North Korea reveal that life under the “Great Successor” is every bit as grim as under his predecessors.