CATEGORIES

THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE

Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.

THE HOME FRONT

Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.

SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED

Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.

TUCKER EVERLASTING

Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.

The Puppet Masters - Compulsion, complicity, and the art of Bunraku.

The National Bunraku Theatre, in New York recently for the first time in more than thirty years, presented an evening of suicides. The performance, at the Japan Society, consisted of excerpts from two of the company’s most celebrated productions. In the Fire Watchtower scene from “The Greengrocer’s Daughter,” by Suga Sensuke and Matsuda Wakichi, from 1773, the titular character sacrifices herself to save a temple page boy she loves. In a scene from “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,” by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, from 1703, two lovers are driven to take their own lives. Both plays were inspired by real events, and Chikamatsu’s was followed by a wave of double suicides that led to a ban on further performances. This mirroring of life and art is all the more astonishing given the fact that the actors are not people but puppets.

The Convert - The sudden rise of J. D. Vance has transfixed conservative élites. Is he the future of Trumpism?

Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate had punctuated an astounding rise. Born in the small manufacturing city of Middletown, Ohio, he was raised by a drug-addicted mother and his beloved Appalachian-born grandmother, Mamaw. He worked his way up through storied American institutions: the Marine Corps, Yale Law School, Silicon Valley. “Hillbilly Elegy,” the best-selling memoir Vance published in 2016, made him famous, and his denunciations of Trump as “cultural heroin” for the white working class even more so. A few years later, he was a senator from Ohio, the Republican Party’s most effective spokesman for Trumpism as an ideology, and—both improbably and inevitably—the VicePresidential nominee. “If you think about where he came from and where he is, at forty years old,” the conservative analyst Yuval Levin, a Vance ally, said, “J.D. is the single most successful member of his generation in American politics.”

SONGS OF WAR

Early on in “Blitz,” Rita Hanway (Saoirse Ronan), a London factory worker, puts her nine-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan), aboard a train. Rather, George puts himself aboard; he twists angrily free of his mother’s grasp—“I hate you!” he cries—and tears off down the platform.

STAR-CROSSED

“Sunset Blud.” and Romeo Juliet,” on Broadway.

A PIECE OF HER MIND

Does the Enlightenment’s great female intellect need rescuing?

EACH MORTAL THING

What other creatures understand about death.

From the Wilderness

One morning in the rainy season, I went to bed at 6 a.m. after working all night and was on the verge of falling asleep when I was startled by the sound of my father’s voice coming through the air-conditioner next to my bed.

THE BIG DEAL

Joe Biden's economic policies are starting to transform America. Will anyone notice?

THE LAST MILE

The aid workers who risk their lives to bring relief to Gaza.

TAKE ME HOME

The filmmaker Mati Diop turns her gaze on plundered art.

AMERICAN REFRAINS

“Hold On to Me Darling,” Our Town,” and Sump’n Like Wings.”

GIG ECONOMY

The decline of the working musician.

CITY OF GOD

The Met’ revelatory show on Siena.

POP CULTURE

How dirty soda became a Utah delicacy.

CLOSED CHAMBERS

What can memoirs by Supreme Court Justices teach us?

BUCKS WITHOUT BORDERS

In the geography of the rich and mobile, sovereignty is for sale.

WAR DOGS

The facility lies two miles away from the main terminals but within the grounds of the airport, at the end of a service road that skirts a pond where geese flock during their migrations.

PURCHASING POWER

What do the biggest donors to Donald Trump's campaign expect to get in return?

PIVOTAL, SEMINAL, RARE

He built an empire in high-end books. Then a rock star pressed charges.

FOREIGN INFLUENCERS

How the U.S.government decides when to alert the public about election meddling.

PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE

Hi, Billy's dad! Andrew, right? Thanks for meeting on such short notice. No, don't worry, this actually isn't about Billy.

ALPHA GIRLS

Inside the tight-knit world of Kamala Harris's sorority.

Pecking Order - Language is said to make us human. What if birds talk, too?

On a drizzly day in Grünau im Almtal, Austria, a gaggle of greylag geese shared a peaceful moment on a grassy field near a stream. One goose, named Edes, was preening quietly; others were resting with their beaks pointed tailward, nestled into their feathers. Then a camouflaged speaker that scientists had placed nearby started to play. First came a recorded honk from an unpartnered male goose named Joshua. Edes went on with his preening. Next came a honk that was lower in pitch than the first, with a slight bray. Edes looked up.

The Ascent - Can Kamala Harris defy her doubters—and end the Trump era?

When Joe Biden called Kamala Harris on the morning of Sunday, July 21st, she was in the kitchen at the Vice-President's residence, a turreted mansion on a hill in Northwest Washington. Harris was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie from her alma mater, Howard University. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, was in Los Angeles, but the house was bustling with relatives. She had just finished making bacon and pancakes for two grandnieces before sitting down with them to work on a jigsaw puzzle.

TWERKERS' COMP

Earlier this year, the Cannes Film Festival observed a heroic first: the director who won the Palme d'Or, the event's highest honor, dedicated the prize to \"all sex workers, past, present, and future.\"

AMERICAN ATTITUDE

The docuseries Mr. McMahon” explores the underbelly of the WWE.