Thunderstruck: ‘Les Misérables’

Tim Parks reviews “The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of ‘Les Misérables’” by David Bellos.
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The Soviet Union Is Gone, But It’s Still Collapsing

And five other unlearned lessons from leading experts about modern Russia and the death of an empire. (Dec. 22, 2016)
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In Berlin

‘Colonialism as a form of violent foreign rule was legitimised by a racist ideology of European superiority,’ says the board that greets you at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin… By Daniel Trilling.
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Japan Cherry Blossoms - Drone Lapse Times

A few months ago Jack Johnston was asked to film a series of lapse time shots of the Cherry Blossom trees in Japan for a BBC Springwatch Special. After months of testing and working out the kinks in the process, this is a selection of shots that featured in the final show.
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Kent man with cerebral palsy finishes marathon

Patrick Barden has been walking the route with the help of a frame.
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Europe's Famed Bog Bodies Are Starting to Reveal Their Secrets

High-tech tools divulge new information about the mysterious and violent fates met by these corpses
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Journey Through 100 of Japan’s Finest Gardens

Marc Peter Keane in an American landscape architect who spent almost 20 years in Kyoto practicing landscape design. In fact, he was the first foreigner to receive a working visa as a landscape architect. Now back stateside, Keane maintains an office in upstate New York where he designs Japanese gardens for both public and private spaces. It’s hard to think of a better person to serve as a personal guide through 100 of Japan’s Finest Gardens.
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Disunion: When the Soldiers Went Home

At the age of 42, Taylor Peirce was ancient by Army standards. Nearly three years of campaigning and picket duty, from the rifle pits of Mississippi to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, had exacted great physical costs.
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Disunion: Humanity and Hope in a Southern Prison

For more than the obvious reasons, Civil War soldiers in both armies despised military prisons....Andersonville, the infamous Georgia prison, was the ultimate abattoir; during the summer of 1864 nearly one in three Union inmates died.
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Disunion: How Lincoln Became Our Favorite President

Today Americans almost universally regard Abraham Lincoln as our greatest president. And yet he was not always the revered figure that he has become.
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Disunion: The Sinking of the Sultana

As John Wilkes Booth stepped into President Lincoln’s booth at Ford’s Theater...Union prisoners of war were heading home.... 2,100 of those soldiers, many sick, many barefoot, boarded the wooden side-wheeler steamboat Sultana....
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Disunion: The Man Who Carried Lincoln’s Torch

It seemed all of Washington had gone to the theater on April 14, 1865 – Good Friday – to hail the imminent end of the war.
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‘Assassins!’: A Confederate spy was accused of helping kill Abraham Lincoln. Then he vanished.

On Feb. 19, 1867, the American gunboat Swatara returned to the Washington Navy Yard after a months-long trip to the Middle East. Out stepped a young man in a bizarre, filthy uniform and shackles. His name was John Harrison Surratt, and he was the most wanted man in the entire world.
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The Neoliberal or the Fascist? What Should French Progressives Do?

The presidential runoff between Emmanuel Macron and Marine le Pen poses a dilemma for many French progressive voters… By Philippe Marlière.
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Trump is 'milking the North Korea crisis'

Donald Trump seems to have recognised North Korea as a defining issue of his presidency. He has been sending military hardware to the region, ending America's "era of strategic patience", pressuring China to exert influence on its ally and urging the UN Security Council to impose new sanctions on Pyongyang. But perhaps the most theatrical element of all of this geopolitical choreography occurred at home, when he "invited" (summoned) the entire US Senate to the White House for a briefing on the issue.
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A desperate escape

A closer look at the violent persecution of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, and their exodus to Bangladesh. By Simon Scarr, Weiyi Cai, Wen Foo and Jin Wu.
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Dutch architects outfit a building in emoji.

The emotive faces from our keyboards are now literally plastered across a building in the city of Amersfoort in central Netherlands. The 22 circles relay 22 different expressions, from a smiling face to a grimacing face to a cool face with sunglasses.
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Where did all the saxophones go?

How one instrument went from being the backbone of American popular music to being a punchline in a joke about the ’80s. There’s no song in the Top 40 right now with a saxophone solo, there’s hardly a defined saxophone part on any of those songs at all.
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A short lesson on Asian green tea

When it comes to green teas, your choices are not limited to one - there's Japanese and there's Chinese. What’s the difference between Chinese and Japanese green tea? A brief look at the key distinguishing features of green tea from these two countries.
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Heavy Metal Britannia

Nigel Planer narrates a documentary which traces the origins and development of British heavy metal from its humble beginnings in the industrialised Midlands to its proud international triumph.
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North Korea's Nuclear Tests Could Trigger A Deadly Volcanic Eruption

North Korea’s underground nuclear weapon blasts may be accidentally destabilizing a deadly volcano. Mount Paektu has been known to catastrophically
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The North Korean nuclear threat, explained

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Why does sugar in cornbread divide races in the South?

So many Southern food traditions are shared by both races. Most Southerners, black and white, revere fried chicken, pursue pork barbecue and exult their grandmothers’ garden vegetables. Why is there such a fundamental difference in cornbread? By Kathleen Purvis. (Mar. 29, 2016)
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A Night and a Day in Tonopah, Nevada

A 360-degree Western adventure featuring the Clown Motel, a miner's graveyard, and a forest of cars. (June 28, 2016)
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Now’s the time to eliminate Canada’s old blasphemy laws

Now that M-103 has passed many Canadians have concerns that the country is creeping towards some form of anti-blasphemy legislation.
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The Johns Chart: Percentage of Men (by Country) Who Paid for Sex

Chart of the male clients (johns) of prostitutes worldwide including 15 countries where men paid for sex at least once in their lifetimes.
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The Brilliant Earth Diamond Scam

Brilliant Earth has NO presence during the mining of their diamonds, has NO idea where their diamonds come from, and has NO way of knowing the age of their diamonds. The diamonds provided by brilliant earth are totally untraceable and could have easily been mined in a conflict zone.
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Romania’s Problem with Dracula

Bram Stoker’s novel was a mixed blessing for Romania. It attracted tourists, but the legend was at odds with communist ideals and made a villain of a national hero.
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Will Donald Trump have the guts to call the Armenian genocide what it was?

There were thousands of eyewitness testimonies to these atrocities, including the burning of babies by Turkish gendarmes. And Trump, as we all know, cares very much about ‘beautiful babies.’ By Robert Fisk.
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How to Cross a Field of Snow

A primer for reconnoitering the unknown. By Robert Moor.
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A Painting of a Crying Boy Was Blamed For a Series of Fires in the ‘80s

The artwork, said U.K. tabloids of the time, was haunted. By Natalie Zarrelli.
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How The FBI Used Murder And Blackmail To Thwart The Civil Rights And Antiwar Movements

They conducted illegal actions against U.S. citizens for two decades and got away with it. By Richard Stockton.
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The Living Disappeared

During Argentina’s military dictatorship, some 500 babies were born in secret torture centers or kidnapped. A group of grandmothers spent the next four decades searching for them. One was named Martín. By Bridget Huber.
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The Genesis of the Gang

“The cry ‘Get the boys off the street’ that has been raised in our cities, as the real gravity of the situation has been made clear, has led to the adoption of curfew ordinances in many places…” (Sep. 1899)
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Marine Le Pen Is What Happens When You Try to Meet Racism in the Middle

The rise of Le Pen in France is due to the failure of mainstream political parties to confront the racism of the National Front. Instead, they tried to co-opt it. By Mehdi Hasan.
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‘But It’s Tradition!’ Is No Reason To Ban Tie Games In MLB

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is trying to shorten the length of baseball games. He ushered in an (asinine) new intentional walk rule this season, and the minor leagues are testing an absurd rule that places a runner on second base to start every extra inning. Now, ESPN lead baseball announcer Jon Sciambi and New York Post baseball columnist Joel Sherman have another proposal for the commish: That games tied after the 12th inning should end that way. Many people think there will be backlash against the idea, but ties happened all the time during baseball’s glorious early days.
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Despite being banned in numerous states, Sprayground releases all new graffiti backpack today. (2016)

The Graffiti Utility Backpack has stoked controversy since it was made available, with critics voicing concern it “sends the wrong message” and “encourages vandalism.”
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Icelanders Seek to Keep Their Language Alive and Out of ‘the Latin Bin’

The people of Iceland, a rugged North Atlantic island settled by Norsemen about 1,100 years ago, have a unique dialect of Old Norse that has adapted to life at the edge of the Arctic. Hundslappadrifa, for example, means “heavy snowfall with large flakes occurring in calm wind.” But the revered Icelandic language, seen by many as a source of identity and pride, is being undermined by the widespread use of English, both in the tourism industry and in the voice-controlled artificial intelligence devices coming into vogue.
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The X Factor of Ancient Athens

Everyday citizens became the judges of an ancient theatre prize that challenged popular opinion and rewarded subtlety and intelligence.
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The Next Disney Will Come from China and Its Name Is Tencent

Tencent is using its social networks, WeChat and QQ, and video games to build an entertainment juggernaut.
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Life of the Civil War Soldier in Camp

Only a tiny fraction of any Civil War soldier’s time was spent in front line combat. Instead, the vast majority of his existence revolved around the monotonous routines of camp life, which presented its own set of struggles and hardships.
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The Backstory Behind Carder Kingpin Roman Seleznev’s Record 27 Year Prison Sentence

Roman Seleznev, a 32-year-old Russian cybercriminal and prolific credit card thief, was sentenced Friday to 27 years in federal prison. That is a record punishment for hacking violations in the United States and by all accounts one designed to send a message to criminal hackers everywhere. But a close review of the case suggests that Seleznev’s record sentence was severe in large part because the evidence against him was substantial and yet he declined to cooperate with prosecutors prior to his trial.
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Hot, Sticky and Sweet

We aren’t necessarily what we eat. But what we eat often inadvertently explains what we want to be. Who knew you could learn so much about Southern identity by thinking really hard about doughnuts? By Keaton Lamle.
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Meet Smelly Kelly, the Subway Sniffer of New York City

From gas leaks to eels, James “Smelly” Kelly changed the history of the city’s underground. By Eric Grundhauser.
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Bayes' Theorem: the maths tool we probably use every day, but what is it?

The decisions we make in life often come down to Bayes' Theorem, but most of us don't even realise what it is. So how does it work?
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Where Are The Romanovs’ Missing Fabergé Easter Eggs?

The Russian royal family had their intricate, bejeweled Easter eggs crafted by Fabergé. Then they were killed, and the glittering treasures scattered. By Allison McNearney. (Sep. 2, 2016)
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Literary Look Behind the Iron Curtain: Best North Korea Books

Though North Korea remains as impenetrable as ever, these books offer glimpses into the nation through fiction, memoir, and more.
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Human evolution: Small remains still pose big problems

In early 2004, the Australian palaeoanthropologist Peter Brown teasingly e-mailed me pictures of a strange-looking skull, asking what I thought it was. I knew that he had been working in east Asia, so I guessed that the images might represent the first discovery of a very primitive member of our genus, Homo, from somewhere like China.
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As France’s Towns Wither, Fears of a Decline in ‘Frenchness’

ALBI, France — The paint is fading, but the word is still clear: Alimentation, “Groceries.” It seems like a stage prop, grafted above the window of the empty old storefront. Opposite stands a tattoo parlor. Nobody enters or leaves. The street is deserted.
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A Week in Pre-War Syria

A detailed photo report about a week in pre-war Syria: women without headscarves, Assad’s portraits, Damascus and coastal Latakia, gray architecture & more.
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