Frank Uwe Laysiepen (1943-2020), better known by the sobriquet Ulay, was a German-born photographer and artist who in 1976 perpetrated one of the most audacious and celebrated art thefts in modern history, albeit as an act of performance art. In this rather uneven account, a triptych of that event, principal author Charney attempts to place […]
Henry Kissinger (1923-2023) began taping conversations—for recordkeeping and for his memoirs—as soon as he was appointed national security advisor in 1969, continuing after he was appointed secretary of state and stopping only when he left office in 1976. Conversation, even from educated speakers, is ungrammatical, repetitious, and cliché-ridden, so journalist Wells, author of Wild Man: […]
San Francisco defense attorney Joe Turner’s latest case takes him down south to Barton, Georgia. He’s there on behalf of his investigator, Chuck Argenal, whose 18-year-old nephew is accused of fatally shooting the small town’s high school quarterback. There’s quite a bit of evidence (though no discernible motive) implicating Carl Ledbetter, who’s on the autistic […]
Seventh grader Olivia feels out of place. Everyone in her life is focused on crushes and relationships, but she’d rather spend her time drawing and watching her favorite YouTuber. Her brother, Malcolm, who’s gay, is prioritizing his new boyfriend; her friends are obsessed with a new social media app called KruShh; and everyone’s talking about […]
Little Gnouf and Mirabelle—two “Gnoufs,” who look like pale-skinned children with snouts and animallike ears—are thrilled to be visiting the ocean for the first time. The pals are marveling at their surroundings when Mirabelle hears with her “magical ears” a far-off cry for help: It’s a baby whale trapped in a fishing net on the […]
Zay must now finish his junior year at Broadlawn Alternative School, which is located hours away. The day he finds out he has to move in with his aunt and uncle (who live near Broadlawn), his white father is released from prison. Zay isn’t happy about Keith’s release; he feels betrayed by Ma for not […]
The women of Delilah Bea’s family are cursed: Anyone who falls for one of them will immediately forget their beloved. Delilah is determined to break the curse during her Calling, during which she has six months to successfully complete a quest or lose her magic forever. But when a stranger named Kieran Pelumbra turns up […]
Waking up to the first snowfall of the year, Chiyoko wants to build a snowman, but Papa says there’s no time. Today, they’ll be going to the misogura, a wooden barn, to learn the family business of making miso. Throughout the day, Chiyoko and Papa clean the tubs, cook rice, sprinkle powder to make kōji […]
It’s been 27 years since Karl left his native city of Ters, Albania, for a better life in Greece and, ultimately, America. The death of his father has brought him back home, however, and he finds a city just as riddled with contradictions as it was when he left. Ters is a city in which […]
It was sci-fi writer William Gibson who said that the future is already here; it’s just very unevenly distributed. Kobie, a contributing editor at Wired and the futures editor at PC Pro, would probably agree, as she romps through a series of gee-whiz ideas for machines that have failed to fulfill their much-hyped promise. The […]