The number of deaths from the coronavirus in Latin America for the first time exceeds the figure for North America. Meanwhile, a second death surge is coming for the United States. 

Governors and mayors scramble to issue new mask orders and limit the size of gatherings.

COVID-19 vaccine trials are showing promising results, but few experts are optimistic we’ll have a vaccine by the end of the year. 

During the 1918 pandemic, public officials railed against being made to wear masks.

"Often referred to as 'mask slackers' or 'sanitary spartacans'..." Remembering San Francisco's 1919 anti-mask league.

Recent polling finds a clear majority of voters think President Trump is hurting rather than helping efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

George Will: “Under the most frivolous person ever to hold any great nation’s highest office, this nation is in a downward spiral.”

"I was 11 in 2008, when everybody was getting laid off." Lockdown through the eyes of the recently unemployed.

Pandemic feuds on Facebook allow lockdown-addled minds to vent frustration. A tale of two groups in North Carolina.

Asheville, NC, apologizes for its role in slavery and votes to give reparations to its Black community.

A stealth mission replaces the statue of a British slave trader with a statue of Black Lives Matter protester Jen Reid. It lasts there about a day.

A Washington Post investigation finds at least eight people who lost vision in one eye after being struck by police projectiles on the Saturday after George Floyd’s death.

From 2019, an interview with Brittney Cooper about Black women’s anger (shameful) in contrast to white men’s anger (our politics).

A tale of two covers at Condé Nast—Viola Davis in Vanity Fair, Simone Biles in Vogue—finds one widely praised, one widely panned.

Viola Davis: I betrayed myself and my people in The Help.

Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman say race plays differently in every friendship, even the closest interracial relationships.

What does it mean to be an artist and a mother? Touring a new retrospective on Ree Morton’s career.

Illustrations of an invented museum, by Yann Kebbi.

Architects explain the "micro-hood," or how to repurpose vacant office space in downtown high rises caused by the pandemic.

Related: A hundred years of Houston's development seen through photography. And some cleaned-up footage of Tokyo from the early 20th century.

After China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, President Trump issues new sanctions targeting Chinese businesses and officials, and also revokes the city’s preferential treatment.

With multiple high-profile accounts compromised, Twitter experiences “the worst hack of a major social media platform yet."

See also: Senior Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway and vocal Trump critic George Conway kick their liberal daughter off social media.

"I am unlikely to become a ship captain at this point in my life." Your weekly soothe: Shipwreck YouTube.

This week in Camp ToB, everyone’s discussing the surprise turn in the second half of Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman.