How Fetal Personhood Emerged as the Next Stage of the Abortion Wars
The line for which the Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is best known is also his ugliest: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” He was referring to a woman named Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter, in the case of Buck v. Bell, from 1927, which held that it was constitutional for…
The Best Episode of the New “Black Mirror” Is a Princess Tale Starring Miley Cyrus
“Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” is the pick of the litter of the fifth season of “Black Mirror.” The episode, directed by Anne Sewitsky and written by the series’ creator, Charlie Brooker, is a self-aware princess tale in triplicate. With a clarity that excuses its thematic obviousness, it explores a few overlapping visions retailed by…
The Michelin Guide’s Not Entirely Welcome Return to L.A.
In 2008, during a period of global expansion, the Michelin guide, the revered French handbook of great restaurants, launched a new edition dedicated to the city of Los Angeles. The following year, after only two L.A. guides had been published, Michelin withdrew its attention from the city. The organization behind the guide blamed its departure…
What HBO’s “Chernobyl” Got Right, and What It Got Terribly Wrong
Svetlana Alexievich, the Russian-language Belarusian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 2015, for her work with oral history, has said that the book she found easiest to report was her book about Chernobyl. (Its English title, depending on the translation, is “Voices from Chernobyl” or “Chernobyl Prayer.”) The reason, she said, was…
Donald Trump’s Royal Treatment
Veni, vidi, tweeti. Thus would Donald Trump, in all modesty and likelihood, sum up the tremendous events of the past two days. His presence in Britain, on a state visit, has been the usual low-key affair; according to some reports, his entourage numbers no more than a thousand. Having landed in Air Force One, he…
What “Always Be My Maybe” Understands About Making an Asian-American Rom-Com
The first time I came across the trailer for the new Netflix film “Always Be My Maybe,” I was thumbing through Twitter during the tedium of a rush-hour subway ride. “A rom-com starring Ali Wong and Randall Park,” someone wrote above the clip. Last year, I watched and loved “Crazy Rich Asians,” the first major…
Continental Shift
In “Continental Shift,” Amy Davidson Sorkin writes about the European elections. Click Here: watford fc shirt
Andrea Lee on Cross-Cultural Encounters
Your story in this week’s issue, “The Children,” is a narrative about identity, in which, one could say, three continents intersect: North America, where Shay, the narrator, comes from; Europe, where she lives; and Africa, where she spends part of the year. How did that encounter of diverse cultures inform the story? Is it a…