Queen of Cartels
The story of Sandra Ávila Beltrán, a woman who reached the upper echelons of the Mexican drug cartels.
David Foster Wallace on John McCain: “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub”
David Foster Wallace spent a week with the late Senator John McCain during his 2000 Republican presidential primary battle against George W. Bush for this perceptive and nuanced profile.
After the Fall
John Lanchester analyses the impact of the financial crisis a decade on. A potent mix of fine writing, economic analysis, and a concern to place the narrative in a political and social context that helps the reader to make sense of what happened.
IÕm Not Black, IÕm Kanye
Ta-Nehisi Coates on two ÔgodsÕ_Ñ_Michael Jackson and Kanye West, his own fortune Òto come of age in the last days of mysteryÓ before the social feed, fame, and America. As one reader puts it, the writing in this piece is Òbottled lightning.Ó http://bit.ly/atlantic-kanye
The Problem with Winning
The historian Linda Colley proposes that the relative political stability of Britain (along with the US) over time has left its political system with more maintenance work outstanding than other countries that have experienced greater upheaval. From there, she looks to the lessons history can offer in addressing Britain’s current challenges. http://bit.ly/lrb-history
Do civilisations collapse?
A piece reassessing common tropes we use to explain how civilisations decline, from Easter Island to the Maya.
The Mysterious Madame Giselle
A story about friendship and trust, told through a case of high society fraud allegedly perpetrated by a woman who claimed to be the Egyptian President’s secret wife, an ex-wife of Hugo Chavez, and a mentor to Ivanka Trump.
Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox
A searching piece about Amazon and monopoly, published in a newspaper owned by Amazon’s CEO. If you have the time, it’s also worth dipping into the elegantly wrought 28,000 word ‘note’ in The Yale Law Journal that inspired the piece.
In Defectors From the North, Doctors in South Korea Find Hope and Data
A piece examining a project driven by hope – an in-depth study of the health of North Korean defectors that seeks to understand the long-term impact of living through the regime’s many hardships, with the goal of rendering a future reunification more straightforward.