Who Should Regulate?
Does the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have the authority to impose a mask mandate on people who travel on planes, trains, and buses? In...
A Permanent Battle
On New Year’s Day, I went to a bookstore in Cheonan, South Korea, to buy a wall map of the country. The label said, simply, “Map...
An Impulse Felt Round the World
“The surreal today is measured on the scale of our defeats.” Georges Henein, a founding member of a Cairo group of Surrealists, was responding to a...
The Babel Within
A few weeks ago I was invited to the book festival in Trieste, in northeast Italy, a city of divided loyalties and complicated history. At its...
Under Their Skin
The first fictional spacecraft were thrilling, vehicles for exploration and discovery, but it wasn’t long before writers realized that spaceships would also be workplaces like their...
The Iron Grip of the CFA Franc
What is wrong with Africa? Of the world’s twenty-five poorest countries, twenty-one lie south of the Sahara. Crowded streets and informal markets from Dakar to Mombasa...
Beyond the Betrayal
On the morning of August 4, 1944, everything seemed normal at Prinsengracht 263, a tall, narrow building along a canal in Amsterdam’s Jordaan neighborhood. On the...
Cousin Bob & Cousin Wendy
To the Editors: During the recent annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, a senior Sanskrit scholar offered me a “good news, bad news” proposition. The...
7 Books That Deliver Unexpected Mystery
Having been raised by my grandparents and great-aunt, my early years were predominantly filled with oral storytelling. Many tales my family shared bordered on the fantastical...
Calling a Woman Selfless Isn’t a Compliment
I first met Courtney Maum in 2011 when she was writing the “Celebrity Book Review” column for Electric Literature. Through the medium that is Courtney’s mind,...
