Brief Encounters

The National Security Counselor

“Entrenched constraints would have been damn useful in preventing Trump from heedlessly tearing down the US-led postwar liberal order.”

January 16, 2021

Chronicler of a World on the Move

“Despite the immense amount of violence and loss I have witnessed, I remain interested in the miracle of survival, in what keeps us going.”

January 9, 2021

Desperately Not Seeking Susan

“The strong feelings about Sontag were exactly what I dreaded when I was first asked to do the biography. If I’d cared too much about that, I couldn’t have written it.”

January 2, 2021

The Advocate—for All India’s Citizens

“At the heart of it, lawyers are storytellers,” says the leading constitutional and civil rights litigator.

December 19, 2020

The Long Afterlife of the KGB

“The last time I was in Moscow, I was well aware that I was being watched wherever I went.”

December 5, 2020

On Race and Property in the South

“There is just something about the robustness of Black cultural institutions and networks in the South that can’t be matched elsewhere.”

November 28, 2020

Holding the Fraudster-in-Chief to Account

“To my mind, the Justice Department as an institution is in its worst state in decades,” says the former federal prosecutor.

November 21, 2020

Framing Life in a Conflict Zone

“I miss the warmth and kindness of the people in Gaza,” says the young Palestinian photojournalist, now living in exile.

November 7, 2020

ICE’s Bail Bonds and the Migrant Detention Industry

Zukowska grew up undocumented in the US, an experience that politicized her. Today, her writing and organizing centers on immigrant rights.

October 31, 2020

Lessons from Minsk

The Polish writer and activist on how Belarusians are schooling the world in a mass movement for democracy.

October 20, 2020