A meticulous and gripping eyewitness account of the events that culminated in the 1973 CIA-backed military coup and assassination of Salvador Allende.
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On June 13th, 1971, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the New York Times began to publish excerpts of an internal Pentagon document that detailed the top-secret history of US-Vietnam relations from 1945 to 1967. …more

Dumitru Tsepeneag is a Romanian novelist, essayist and one of the founders of the Romanian Oniric literary movement. Established in the mid-60s, the Oniric group was inspired by surrealism and built an aesthetic platform centered on dreams. As one of the only Romanian counter-cultural literary movements at that time, the Oniric Group was largely suppressed. With Ceaucescu’s rise to power, the movement was banned entirely. …more

After announcing our intention to donate millions to charity this week, Goldman offices were immediately besieged by requests from bohemian types for somewhat sad sums for “projects.”

Since we are deeply concerned about the welfare of America’s artistic communities, we are giving $500 million (more than three times the NEA’s annual budget, or the price of about 70 executive shower curtains) to artists and writers. Please stop calling our secretaries admin assistants and use the application below. …more

Sasa Stanisic was born in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina and lived there until 1992, at which point his family fled the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. He currently resides in Germany.

How The Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (2008), Stanisic’s first book, is a self-portrait of a precociously creative young boy as he wades through the ugly swamp of ethnic violence and political destabilization of the Balkans during the 90s. …more

Okay, so lots of confusion and grief and gnashing of teeth out there over why my adopted state, Massachusetts, just elected a Republican nudie model to fill the seat once held by Ted Kennedy.

I’m gonna try to explain, but I warn you upfront that my explanation isn’t going to make you feel any better, and likely somewhat worse, and maybe even nauseous. Sorry.

Here’s what it comes down to: …more

“In a few weeks, the international media will leave the country, and Americans will be free to forget about Haiti once again. It is my hope that this story will give American readers a glimpse into the lives of people I have come to love in Haiti. We must not forget them.” …more

On New Year’s Day this year I removed all the bookmarks from my Firefox bookmarks bar. When I mentioned to a couple friends that my resolution was to lay off the political blogs, I got variations on the same response: Yeah, that’s a pretty popular resolution right now. My resolution hasn’t worked out all that well; instead of clicking links I simply type andrewsullivan.com into my browser window to maintain my daily outrage level. I worry that I’m addicted to incredulity, that for some twisted reason I need to seek out the tawdriest filth erupting from the mouths of the Limbaughs and Becks and Palins of the world in order to define myself in opposition. …more

“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” …more

In March of 2009, I wrote to Elaine Showalter on behalf of The Rumpus, saying she inspired me as a writer, editor, and feminist. She agreed to an interview, the focus of which would be her latest book, A Jury of Her Peers. Ranging from the instigators to contemporary innovators, Jury is the first (yeah, first) history of American women writers. …more

Facebook employees know better than most the value of privacy.

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Born in the former Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dubravka Ugresic began her career writing children’s television programs and books. In nearly four decades of writing and editing, she has published books on Russian contemporary fiction, edited anthologies of Russian avant-garde writing, translated texts into Croatian, written more than half a dozen books and published countless articles in European and American magazines. …more

The latest memoir of the 2008 Presidential campaign is a fake book about fake events by a fake political operative. …more

As for the fate of the country, my money is on roving diesel mobs. But then, my money has always been on roving diesel mobs. …more

“We need to be able to digest and give people who are very far away the time and space to tell their story in their own words …more

US district court judge Denny Chin will be ruling in a case on how we access printed books in the future. Who’s in the middle of a bid for our literary heritage? Google, of course. …more

Labor Day. The Rodney Dangerfield of holidays. Nobody knows why it’s treated like the runt of the celebration litter. Maybe it has to something to do with our biological clocks being stuck on elementary school time. Deep down in our bones, we’re anticipating the first Monday of September pounding the final nail into the coffin of our vacation signaling a return to whatever scholastic institution we’ve been consigned to that semester. Making it as endearing as thunderheads on a picnic morning. …more

Pop Idol has been widely imitated throughout the world [American Idol here in the states] , but Afghanistan is possibly the only place where the mere existence of a televised, Western-style talent show amounts to a political statement. …more

A look at the upcoming presidential election in Afghanistan by Tamim Ansary, author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.

I have this recurring nightmare in which my life has gone so wrong, I’ve become the president of Afghanistan. …more

PART I: WHY RUMSFELD, WHY THIS BOOK?

Donald Rumsfeld is my grandmother. …more

Sophia Raday’s new book, Love In Condition Yellow–A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage, is a beautifully rendered, often hilarious, account of how opposites can attract, and maybe even should. It’s also insightful meditation on America after 9/11 as it struggles with its Red State/Blue State animosities. …more

I keep the first picture in mind, but I frame each new picture as if it’s its own composition, bearing in mind that it is related to what came before it and what’s coming after it.

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Twisted Sister has just released Stay Hungry, a remastered double CD of their 1984 hit. We were given a chance to interview Dee Snider from Twisted Sister. We passed the opportunity on to our readers. And we ended up with an interview that was much more interesting than we had expected. …more

A special comment by Tamim Ansary, author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

The Khomeinist regime in Iran is in terminal trouble; but that doesn’t mean Iran is about to repudiate Islam and become a secular democracy. In order to see where Iran is going, it’s important to see where it’s been. …more

When my son Josh was thirteen he got braces on his teeth.  His orthodontist’s office was in the same building as the Preterm clinic where John Salvi shot and killed Lee Ann Nichols on the morning of Friday, December 30, 1994. …more

I sat there with an 8 ounce beer glass in the semi-dark in a long room cluttered with those often set apart from the herd, either because of their alcoholism—which is a symptom (not a disease)—or their antagonisms, worn down but not altogether defeated—a moot point. …more

“When you think of the 60s, you generally think of nice smiling hippies, long hair, tie-dye, peace signs. These Weatherpeople were definitely not that. These Weatherpeople looked really HARD. It was jarring. But at the same time, being a middle class white kid myself, I could glimpse traces of the middle class white kids that they were and at the same time were trying to transcend. The images really got under my skin. I put them at the beginning of the film, and they still get me.” …more

Denis Hayes coordinated the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, when 20 million people took to the streets and kicked off the environmental movement. …more

Trevor Paglen may be familiar for his 2008 appearance on The Colbert Report, where he talked about his book I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to be Destroyed By Me, a picture book of military unit patches worn by servicemen in secret flight squadrons and other classified projects. …more