1985—In Jenkins v. Missouri, federal district judge Russell G. Clark launches his desegregation plan for the Kansas City, Missouri, School District—a plan that will become...
The first sound At 5 a.m. on May 24, employees at Kyiv’s Chernobyl Museum heard the thud of what was almost certainly an Iskander missile. In wartime Kyiv, a thud is never just a sound. It is a question. Where did it hit? Who was hurt? What is burning? Within moments, word began to spread. […]
On Aug. 18, 1920, a 24-year-old state legislator from East Tennessee walked into the Tennessee House chamber wearing a red rose on his lapel. Red meant no. The chamber was deadlocked 48-48. The 19th Amendment needed one more state, and Tennessee was the last realistic option. Harry Burn had a letter in his pocket from […]
“Amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare” (“Love moved me, which makes me speak”). So declares Virgil to Dante at the outset of The Divine Comedy, explaining why he has come to serve as Dante’s guide through Hell: love set him in motion. Mark Helprin takes this line from Canto II of Inferno as the […]
James Ellroy is one of the great American authors of the last 50 years, and yet, it is easy to dismiss his literary achievement. If you were to pick up his latest novel, Red Sheet, and turn to a random page, you’re likely to encounter such terse fragments as, “It was a sex-slash job. Cuts, […]
