The Magazine
The Money Issue
November 30, 2020
Reporting
Letter from Silicon Valley
How Venture Capitalists Are Deforming Capitalism
Even the worst-run startup can beat competitors if investors prop it up. The V.C. firm Benchmark helped enable WeWork to make one wild mistake after another—hoping that its gamble would pay off before disaster struck.
Our Local Correspondents
The Art of Building the Impossible
The carpenter behind some of New York’s most elaborate—and expensive—homes.
Personal History
Preparing to Spin the Wheel of Fortune
You may win a lot of cash and tons of prizes, but please don’t do anything stupid, like quit your day job.
Portfolio
Faces of a Fast-Food Nation
During the pandemic, low-wage workers must manage risk and rudeness.
U.S. Journal
The Heavy Toll of the Black Belt’s Wastewater Crisis
Many rural households in America don’t have access to safe sewage systems. In Alabama, entrenched poverty and unusual geology have created a public-health disaster.
The Critics
On Television
The Sensuality and Brutality of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe”
In his new film series, the director wants to vanquish any idea that British racism is somehow more repressed and less violent than the American kind.
Books
The Long Awakening of Adrienne Rich
Some called her coarse, extreme, too quick to change. In fact, she was always one step ahead.
The Art World
The Metropolitan Museum at a Hundred and Fifty
The museum is our Home Depot of the soul. It has just about whatever you want, and it has a lot of it.
Books
William Faulkner’s Demons
In his own life, the novelist failed to truly acknowledge the evils of slavery and segregation. But he did so with savage thoroughness in his fiction.
The Talk of the Town
Amy Davidson Sorkin on Biden’s coronavirus mission; Georgia’s election audit as spectator sport; team Trump; the accent is key; Green-Wood Cemetery’s living resident.
Georgia Postcard
In Georgia, the Dullest Spectator Sport in the World
The election audit was a sprawling affair, a television-unfriendly November Madness, confirming that Joe Biden was the first Democrat to take the state since Bill Clinton.
Six Feet Under Dept.
Green-Wood Cemetery’s New Artist-in-Residence
With half a million of New York’s dead six feet under her studio, Heidi Lau, a ceramic artist, plans to work with Chinese funeral homes for a project inspired by her grandparents’ burial rites.
The Pictures
Don’t Typecast Lesley Manville
The British actor, known for her work in Mike Leigh’s films, discusses nailing a North Dakota accent, playing Margaret Thatcher, and becoming Princess Margaret for “The Crown.”
Comment
Biden’s Covid-19 Mission
As Donald Trump continues to find new ways to make things worse, Joe Biden is preparing to take immediate action on an escalating crisis.
Legal Eagles
The Motley Crew Leading Trump’s Election Challenges
Jared Kushner wanted a “James Baker-like” figure, but he ended up with a ragtag bunch of lawyers led by a raving Rudolph Giuliani, who made his first appearance in federal court in this century.
Shouts & Murmurs
Shouts & Murmurs
Rebooted
Cartoons
1/15
“If we’re lucky, Aunt Jane will seat us at the children’s table—out of the line of fire.”
Cartoon by William Haefeli
Fiction
Fiction
The Winged Thing
Poems
Goings On About Town
Above & Beyond
The Urban Refuge of the New York Botanical Garden
Meadows, woodlands, wetlands, and glades, full of plants native to the region, surround a crescent-shaped pool of recycled rainwater—an outdoor space for which to give thanks.
Tables for Two
Hatch Chilies and Southwestern Hygge at Ursula
At his Crown Heights café, the Albuquerque transplant Eric See infuses everything from breakfast burritos to pillowy fry breads with the spirit of New Mexico, and with plenty of its chilies, hand-delivered by his mother.
Mail
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