The Last Temptation
How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory
April 2018
In This Issue
The women who busted a con man, refugee detectives in Germany, and why cartoonists struggle with drawing Trump. Plus the problem with Nancy Pelosi’s effectiveness, BLM meets sci-fi, an interview with Cory Booker, fiction by Mary Morris, and much more.
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The Perfect Man Who Wasn’t
For years he used fake identities to charm women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then his victims banded together to take him down.
The Refugee Detectives
Inside Germany’s high-stakes operation to sort people fleeing death from opportunists and pretenders
Why Is Donald Trump So Hard to Caricature?
The 45th president should be an easy target for political cartoonists, but they’ve struggled to come up with an image that sticks.
Mama’s Haven
A short story
Dispatches
Ryan Melgar The Nancy Pelosi Problem
The first female speaker of the House has become the most effective congressional leader of modern times—and, not coincidentally, the most vilified.
Esther Aarts When Guilt Is Good
In a world that is growing more divided and atomized, it may be guilt—not empathy—that can bring people together.
Rami Niemi China’s New Frontiers in Dystopian Tech
Facial-recognition technologies are proliferating, from airports to bathrooms.
Alvaro Dominguez Retweets Are Trash
A modest proposal to improve Twitter—and perhaps the world
Tim Tomkinson Julie Washington’s Quest to Get Schools to Respect African-American English
The speech pathologist believes that helping kids switch seamlessly between dialects is a key to their success.
Oliver Munday Is Big Business Really That Bad?
Large corporations are vilified in a way that obscures the innovation they spur and the steady jobs they produce.
Christopher DeLorenzo Is Fandom Really Worth It?
What studies reveal about the good and the bad of loving a sports team
Stephen Voss ‘We Can’t Make Our Elections About Being Against Trump’
Cory Booker on the 2020 presidential race, Star Trek, and why it’s Gen X’s turn to save the day
Cynthia Kittler Can a Simple Test Match You With Your Perfect Dog?
“Luke likes long walks—really long walks.”
Joe McKendry Prisons Are the New Asylums
A very short book excerpt
The Culture File
Audun Rikardsen / BBC The Beauty and Horror of Blue Planet II
David Attenborough’s latest documentary gorgeously reveals the world’s oceans—and shows how badly humans are screwing them up.
Mike McQuade Commander v. Chief
The lessons of Eisenhower’s civil-rights struggle with his chief justice Earl Warren
Daniela Yohannes Where Fantasy Meets Black Lives Matter
A much-anticipated young-adult debut taps into a tradition of speculative fiction rooted in African culture.
Gracìa Lam When Truth and Reason Are No Longer Enough
In his new book, Steven Pinker is curiously blind to the power and benefits of small-town values.
Viking The Art of Vanishing Is a Marriage Memoir With Hidden Depths
Laura Smith looks to the haunting story of a missing child novelist to answer her own questions about balancing creativity and freedom with love and stability.
Departments
The Conversation: No Way Out
Readers respond to January/February and March stories and more.
Graham Roumieu Which Fictional House Would You Most Like to Live In?
A big question
Poetry
Melinda Josie Syphon Fountain
A poem
