Turn Up the Heat
Timeless stories from our 174-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
Biden Calls for Ceasefire in Gaza
[ O C T O B E R • 2 0 0 1 ]
“There are no sounds of gunfire. The [Israeli] soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children’s slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos.”
Read “A Gaza Diary” by Chris Hedges
[ M A Y • 1 9 8 8 ]
“More than twenty years of occupation and oppression have not curbed the Palestinian struggle for national liberation. The rebellion in the territories, and its brutal suppression by the Army, clearly prove the terrible cost of continuing the state of occupation in the absence of a national solution.”
Read “There is a Limit,” translated by Willis Johnson
Southwest Swelters Under Deadly Heat Dome
[ D E C E M B E R • 1 9 9 5 ]
“New record-setting weather extremes seem to have become as commonplace as traffic accidents, and three simple facts have long been known: the distance from the surface of the earth to the far edge of the inner atmosphere is only twelve miles; the annual amount of carbon dioxide forced into that limited space is six billion tons; and the ten hottest years in recorded human history have all occurred since 1980.”
Read “The Heat Is On” by Ross Gelbspan
[ A P R I L • 2 0 1 4 ]
Will drought destroy the Southwest?
Read “Razing Arizona” by Christopher Ketcham
[ M A Y • 2 0 0 4 ]
Conservative think-tank correspondence on climate change: “I don’t know whether we have the resources to clean up this one.”
Red Hot Icelandic Summer
[ N O V E M B E R • 1 8 5 7 ]
Of an Icelandic eruption in 1766: “Then the lava began to overflow, and ran for five miles; and some days later–in order that no element might be wanting to mingle in this devil’s charivari–a vast column of water split up through the cinder pillar to the height of several hundred feet; the horror of the spectacle being further enhanced by an accompaniment of subterranean cannonading.”
[ J U N E • 1 8 5 7 ]
“In 1783, an island, consisting of high cliffs, was thrown up off the coast of Iceland…In less than a year the island had disappeared, leaving no traces of its existence.”
[ S E P T E M B E R • 1 9 5 8 ]
Betty Friedan on the fate of the Arctic.
In Memoriam: T.D. Allman
[ J U N E • 2 0 2 3 ]
From T.D. Allman’s 1984 article “The Doctrine That Never Was,” reprinted in the magazine last year: “The past, if we are willing to listen, still has the power to warn.”
[ S E P T E M B E R • 1 9 8 3 ]
“The bullets are flying, the bombs are falling; the four horsemen of the apocalypse are loose in Central America, and their names are the CIA, the Pentagon, the White House, and–limping behind the pack–the Department of State.”
Read “Reagan’s Manifest Destiny”
[ D E C E M B E R • 1 9 8 0 ]
Allman’s analysis of the modern art scene: “There is profit everywhere in art these days it seems, except for the soul.”