Putting Out Fires
Timeless stories from our 175-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
The Los Angeles Fires
[ J U N E • 2 0 2 1 ]
“That our species has the power to destroy life on earth but not to contain wildfires in California should give us pause as we consider what our ingenuity and determination can do in the face of a violent planet.”
Read “Prayer for a Just War” by Greg Jackson
[ A U G U S T • 2 0 1 8 ]
“If it seems as though the world’s on fire, that’s because it is.”
[ A U G U S T • 2 0 1 8 ]
“The West has always known forest fires, of course, but for much of the past century, they rarely got any bigger than 10,000 acres. No more.”
Read “Combustion Engines” by Richard Manning
[ A U G U S T • 2 0 1 8 ]
“Only in the Seventies did it become commonplace for wildfires to burn more than 5,000 acres per year. By the Eighties, they were burning about 180,000; by the Nineties, more than 250,000.”
Read “There Will Always Be Fires” by Scott Sayare
[ J U L Y • 1 9 8 9 ]
“The northern horizon was suffused with a deep red glow, as if we were perched near the rim of a seething caldera. Now and again the color intensified, and we could hear the roar of our enemy.”
Read “Hellroaring” by Peter M. Leschak
Shrinking Guantánamo Bay
[ J U L Y • 2 0 0 9 ]
“Not only have we failed to punish the people who created and maintained our torture regime; we have failed to dismantle that regime and, in many cases, even to cease torturing.”
Read “We Still Torture” by Luke Mitchell
[ S E P T E M B E R • 2 0 0 6 ]
“Every year, the United States government sends Fidel Castro a check for $4,085 to pay the rent on forty-five square miles of Guantánamo Bay real estate. Castro, who has long wanted the U.S. to vacate the premises, refuses to cash the checks. The lease agreement, which dates from 1934, cannot be broken without the consent of both countries, and it is unlikely that ours will ever be given.”
Read “American Gulag” by Eliza Griswold
[ M A R C H • 2 0 2 3 ]
“Ron DeSantis was there watching us. We were crying, screaming. We were tied to the feeding chair. And he was watching. He was laughing.”
[ A P R I L • 2 0 1 5 ]
“An official at the State Department had called three alleged suicides at Guantánamo ‘a good PR move.’ ”
Read “Life After Guantánamo” by Pardiss Kebriaei
[ M A R C H • 2 0 1 0 ]
“Those charged with accounting for what happened—the prison command, the civilian and military investigative agencies, the Justice Department, and ultimately the attorney general himself—all face a choice between the rule of law and the expedience of political silence. Thus far, their choice has been unanimous.”
Read “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides’” by Scott Horton
Red, White, and...Greenland?
[ M A Y • 1 9 4 0 ]
“Rumors have recently appeared in the papers that the United States is thinking of buying Greenland from Denmark. For the time being they will probably come to nothing.”
Read “Should We Buy Greenland?” by Earl Parker Hanson
[ F E B R U A R Y • 1 9 0 7 ]
“The Stars and Stripes again placed in the lead in that centuries-long international test of determination, endurance, and experience known as the Race for the Pole.”
Read “Nearest the North Pole” by Robert E. Peary
[ M A R C H • 1 9 9 7 ]
“Greenland’s treeless, icebound landscape appealed to me so much then that now, three years later, I've come back. Its continuously shifting planes of light are like knives thrown in a drawer. They are the layered instruments that carve life out of death into art and back to life. They teach me how to see.”
Read “Cold Comfort” by Gretel Ehrlich
Gilded Orbs
[ J U L Y • 2 0 1 1 ]
“My colleagues were sure the movie had a bad reputation. I said I loved it.”
Read “When Is a Movie Great?” by David Thomson
[ N O V E M B E R • 2 0 1 6 ]
“When television is at its best, as it’s so often been in recent years, it’s not because the suits capitulate. It’s because they’re smart enough, or confident enough, or desperate enough, to bet that creative freedom can itself conduce to profit.”
Read “Ready for Prime Time” by William Deresiewicz
[ M A Y • 2 0 2 4 ]
“The film and TV industry is now controlled by only four major companies, and it is shot through with incentives to devalue the actual production of film and television. What is to be done?”
Read “The Life and Death of Hollywood” by Daniel Bessner