Disarm an Angry Uncle Like a Pro
Make it through a family holiday gathering in one piece with these tactics from the FBI’s former lead international kidnapping negotiator.
family
A collection of 145 issues
Moving Stars
The Obamas are the rare First Family to leave the White House stronger than when they arrived—never victims, even when hatefully victimized. Is it too late for the rest of us to learn how?
Dear Jack
A father writes his son a note on election night. It gets passed around their family and friends—and soon the entire world. What viral impact looks like, post-Trump.
Dribbling in the Dark
What it’s like to be 14 in a new school, a new city away from home—and the wrong ethnicity in a divided country.
Where Death Lies
Each year, the Japanese government expects dozens of people to die from eating ill-prepared blowfish, and yet the dish remains a delicacy.
Dark Waters
Some of the world’s largest, oldest fish live in Oregon. Why anyone would want to vandalize them, even abduct them, takes explaining.
Dirty Words
Throwing f-bombs may be offensive to some people, but it's also one of the greatest mental health regimens ever devised.
The Last Dying Cat
When the family pet nears the end, of course there is sadness. But there is also every other emotion.
Life Before Death
If you had to choose between the life of a loved one or the survival of a dozen other people, would you be capable of a rational decision?
The Loss
To understand everything wrong about health care in America today, look to a horrifying trend in amputation.
Love in the Time of Catholicism
The Pope spoiled his trip to America by meeting with a Kentucky clerk. But his unheard praise of a different radical provides a silver lining.
Hunting the Hound
A lifelong phobia is the result of a terrifying childhood incident. But the real culprit may be Arthur Conan Doyle.
Anything but Nothing
After a lifetime of mental illness, one woman opts to try electroconvulsive therapy. She discusses her decision with her sister.
Mrs. Bundy
For the mother of a serial killer, a chance to connect with victims on live TV offers a shot at redemption.
The Girl on the Lawn
Forget anxiety, overcaution, or just plain unhappiness. The real problem with parenting is philosophy.
Our Imaginary Brother Only Watches PBS
How one family schemed to be the best TV-watchers in America.
The Slaughter
To produce food in the form of meat, an animal will be killed. Obvious but significant: You will realize you are about to end a life.
This Was No Accident
Forty years after Jaws, why the very first blockbuster should be considered art—and how it helped one man to survive.
Meet the Flintstones
How to give away a house in Flint, Michigan, home not only to a water scandal but record violence.
A Heritage of Hate
Why it’s the duty of every white American to burn a Confederate flag.
Silicon Valley High
No one’s surprised in Silicon Valley when a 12-year-old runs the family e-commerce store. But going to the same high school as Steve Jobs and liking it are two different things.
Voices of the Walmart
There are eight million stories in a city. How many are there at Walmart? Random telephone calls made to hear about life inside.
The View From Up Here
Class isn’t supposed to exist in America, unless it’s overcome. But the art of being upwardly mobile doesn’t always come easy.
In the Wilderness
A young girl in South Dakota—the last school-age child remaining in her community—epitomizes the challenges of rural American Judaism.
Home Sweet Sweden
In a life of perpetual movement, the moment arrives when you find yourself desperate for stillness.
Cafe Azteca
Love of food can be love’s most sincere form—especially when avocados are involved—but also bittersweet if paired with departure.
Do You Believe in Ghosts?
Ignore the critics: Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” is not only a serious, complex comment on space policy, it’s a heartbreaking, philosophical look at the value of time.
They Are Charlie
An American in Dijon, France, brings his country’s grasp of recent terrorism to a nation enthralled by theory, traumatized by attack.
The Marriage Defense
The Supreme Court will soon deliver a definitive ruling on same-sex marriage, a subject that has roiled the United States since the colonial era—or not. A brief illustrated history.
It Made Me Feel Like More Than One Person
You can learn how to read a poem, but you can’t choose how it will affect you. Here, a little cough launches a journey through a reader’s mind.
The Gambler
In which the novelist and magician Tim O’Brien makes the author disappear, and a family funeral puts a father’s sleight of hand on full display.
Grading the President
As President Obama enters his final days in office, a proper assessment of his tenure requires a variety of measurable, non-political categories: golf, offspring, homebrewing, and more.
The Long Play
A marriage in the digital era begins with an invitation to listen to a record. Rediscovering vinyl, sonic memories, and the joy of sitting down to do one single thing.
Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar
In the city of Irvine, in the county of Orange, in the state of California during a season of sports, sometimes America reaches maximum volume.
Back to Skol
NFL star Randy Moss is now a high school coach. A Vikings fan explains how watching one childhood hero move on with his life helps him say goodbye to another.
The Dosa Gentrification
Indian culture is under siege by Westerners enamored with yoga, authenticity, and convenience. The dosa—a beloved, inconvenient tradition—could be next to fall.
The Combination Lock Test
A man dies, leaving behind, among other things, a combination lock. Opening it may just prove the existence of the afterlife.
Summer Into Fall
New clothes, AP classes, middle-aged angst. A New York City mom reflects on being pulverized by the first day of school.
Thoroughly Modern Marxism
A Marxist upbringing, graduating into a recession, and a lineage of missed opportunities make a brutal combination.
How to Unmarry Your Wife
After moving from a state that recognizes same-sex marriage to one that doesn’t, a couple’s marriage becomes a partnership, and they are suddenly forced into new roles.
The Influencing Machine
When a genetic disease looms, we’re more like our parents than we’d like to believe—and when we become parents, that fear only grows.
Dear Daughter, Your Mom
Drawing inspiration from those who went before, and those still to come, in the waitress wars.
Girl With the Old English Tattoo
A court order is found buried in a desk. A private detective is hired. But tracking down a doppelgänger is not the same as confronting one.
A Country’s Width
Years go by easier when there are 2,000 miles separating a father and son. Then an American flag turns up in your lap.
The Cantina Scene
Returning to America after five years in the Middle East calls for a no-sleep jaunt back to Beirut for drinking, partying, and tying up loose ends.
Main Street, USA
Sinclair Lewis despised his hometown in Minnesota. It disliked him, too, especially after being lampooned in a bestselling novel that mocked the citizens for their small-town ways. These days, though, he's all they've got.
Big Water
The California Dream is made possible by old water and big water. Unfortunately, the former doesn’t care about us, and the latter’s running dry. A native reports from the wine country, where fires loom.
The Cello Courier
After a death in the family, a precious musical instrument must be transported a thousand-plus miles. Should it break, a lot more is at stake than just music.
Essaying Through Life
A youthful pledge to become an essayist gets lost.
One Small Store
Two men, separated by more than 150 years, discover the folly of attempting Western-style capitalism in Micronesia.
The Illuminated
A family that relies on the satisfactions of the logical—calculus, physics, chemistry—finds itself haunted by ghosts.
A Man Enough
Eventually a man who’s always in motion, always fixing something, will stop. Decline of the patriarch reveals an entire family’s vulnerability.
Read It Again, Dad
Good books are frequently credited with being worth reading twice. But when was the last time anyone had time for that?
Do Not Endure Verbal, Emotional, or Physical Abuse
Offered an opportunity to help a father reach out to his young daughter, a writer agrees to assist. But the challenge isn’t as simple as grammar and commas.
Send, Dad
Ever since my dad got an iPad last year, he sees it fit to multitask: Read an article, and text me about it.
Watch and Learn
YouTube tutorials are the classrooms of the 21st century. Are they enough to make you a better person?
Grandpa
Passing the summer days in North Carolina’s low country often meant sitting on the porch with Grandpa and his radio. Today, it doesn’t take much to go back there.
Having to Do With the Price of Onions
A sharp rise recently in the price of onions in India is about a lot more than just sandwiches. When onions are up, even governments are at risk.
A Lifetime’s One Regret
Does hindsight improve with age? People, ages five to 60, name their life's biggest mistake and what they learned.
Let Football Live
Cracks are appearing in football’s helmet—injuries to athletes, injuries to the game. For one former high school and college player, the damage has gone too far.
Our Hallow’s Eve
When dementia gets its grip on a father who always loved slasher movies, a daughter struggles to hold on—if only to the ghost of recognition.
The Complete Biography of North West
A baby is born to a celebrity couple. Meanwhile, many more babies are born to countless other non-famous couples. This is what happens next.
A Sudden and Awful Manner
In early New England, anyone who stood near an open door or window faced mortal danger. A conversation with a woman who hunts for gravestones with epitaphs describing death by lightning strike.
A Good Angle Is Hard to Find
The spread of the selfie produces daily turmoil, from columnist doom-mongering to celebrity scandals. Meanwhile, the world just took a billion more. Defense of a misunderstood phenomenon.
Now Boarding
More and more, we communicate today in short bursts of text. Letters may be dead, but we still write to each other constantly. A man considers what could be his last words to his children from a departing airplane.
Natural Born Tourists
When a vacation rental doesn’t live up to expectations, when that “charming Montauk cabin” turns out to be a shed, one family’s solution is passive-aggressive guestbook commentary.
E Pluribus, Gen X
Generation X has always been able to fashion its own best outcome. Now it’s time to take that DIY attitude and fix the nation. Because you know who really won the American Revolution? That’s right: Slackers.
The University of Marias
Daily life can wear you down when your freshman-year roommates are gray-haired and flirting with dementia. Then again, the best lessons may come that way.
Mother, May I
Don’t let the flying matzoh balls confuse you. A visit from a dead parent is serious business—a second chance for love, and for forgiveness.
Lots of Oil Fields Around Here
A special Fourth of July edition of our series where an editor randomly calls people in small towns around America to see what’s happening.
Super Sad Tiny Home Fetish
Micro-living is no longer just for the very poor and the very bohemian. But how much space do we really deserve? Tracking down the minimum square-footage below which no one should be forced to endure.
To Kill and To Eat
Farming chickens takes care and concentration, and a deal with the birds: We give you a life of safety and comfort, and you die for our food. Until a murdering predator arrives and gives lie to the vow.
The Moroccan Deception
A man follows his grandparents’ trek to Morocco—where the Alaouite Dynasty has ruled since 1666—to search for so-called “sacred music” amid a feedback loop of riots, arrests, and the promise of miracles.
Cicadian Rhythms
Should the cicadas arrive just in time for your wedding—biblical, unexpected, and yet, routine as clockwork—there’s nothing to do but carry on with the ceremony. Come hell or, in fact, high water.
Flood-Tide Below Me
Seeking respite from a life lived in war zones—too many rebel factions, too many gunshots, too many backfiring motorcycles that sounded like gunshots—a family discovers temporary shelter in the outer edges of New York City. And then, the deluge.
It’s Complicated
Though mothers may gnash their teeth at forgotten flowers and missing brunches, the poets still sing of the worst Mother’s Day ever: that of Oedipus and his bride.
The Case of the Hungry Stranger
A man is always more complicated than his paper trail—especially when he’s your father, who walked out one day.
Night Vision
An unexpected pregnancy, tuna sandwiches consumed in darkness, and woman after woman of a certain age living by the ocean—eventually, all connections make sense when it comes to prescient grandparents.
Pause, Panic, Gringo
When your name prompts questions in several continents, how you answer—and whether or not you stick an accent above the “a”—says a lot about who you are.
I Wish That We Could Both Be There
In 1974, a car hits a seven-year-old boy in central New Jersey. The boy dies. From 2013, a former friend starts to probe the causes, effects, statistics, and consequences.
Rainy Night in Georgia
Even in the most forsaken corners of the Caucasus, daily life can boil down to domestic turmoil, hip-hop videos, and arguing over Bryan Adams’s nationality.
Separate Housewives
A happy cul de sac experiences its first affair. Soon every living room—every computer screen—reverberates with news bulletins. Even for the Facebook generation, divorce comes with surprises.
Handicapped Children
All parents like to believe their children are special. But horse breeders know better: Progeny can be unique, but for very particular reasons. How to be more honest about your offspring and their ability to finish in the money.
The Boulevard of Broken Bones
Even through the prism of life in the tumultuous Middle East, the U.S. in an election year looks divided, fractious, frustrating. But there’s still a ray of hope—in Queens.
Jess Walter
Our man in Boston sits down with the author of The Financial Lives of the Poets to talk about his latest novel, how to survive in Hollywood, the ins and outs of contemporary publishing, and that unheralded Paris of the Northwest, Spokane.
The Bull Passes Through
Every summer, many are injured when bulls run the streets in Spain. A report from inside one man’s skull before the rocket goes off.
Kathryn Harrison
Our man in Boston and the author discuss her latest novel, Enchantments, the writing process, how book reviewing works at the New York Times, what it's like to be nastied, and the life and times of two writers raising children without a television in the house.
Eyes Wide Open
The next time jet lag ruins your day—exhausted, yawning, blurry-eyed, fiending for any means of correction—what if you were to stop looking for a cure inside purgatory and, instead, embrace the cloud?
Therapist, Know Thyself
For psychotherapists, maintaining a stable, flawless public image is critical. But when a marriage and family counselor actually goes through a mid-life crisis herself, all bets are off and here come the tattoos, affairs, and professional infidelities.
Bagels, Toasted
Risen from the streets of Eastern Europe and squalid New York City, bagels now hold a seat at middle- and upper-class breakfast tables everywhere. A look back from a baker with 50,000 “golden visions” under his belt.
The Storm Comes Around
Tornado season is a distant concept for most people. For some, it’s a scary but known part of life. Then there’s what happens when one of the South’s deadliest storms in history destroys your house.
Rebellion Rules in a Conformist World
Last year, our correspondent entered a March Madness pool with brackets filled out by his mother, who knows nothing about NCAA men's basketball. He won. Now it's time for lightning to strike twice.
Call and Response
Sometimes a book appears in your life and starts to pester you. The characters act like your friends. Events occur in the plot that reappear inside your home. It’s enough to drive a man to wonder which world is more real, until danger appears.
Don’t Leave Me
World War II had veteran parades. Vietnam War vets were often ignored, if not shunned. For the current generation of war-weary Americans, solace comes on YouTube.
Happy Misgivings
Thanksgiving is an American holiday, but that doesn’t mean it’s not celebrated elsewhere. And each of those celebrations—in Liberia, in Leiden, in the South Pacific—give us fresh reasons to be grateful for our own messed-up version.
Home for the Holiday Tech Support
When the annual trip home becomes a customer-service visit to “fix the internet,” sometimes even bourbon can't save the day. We gathered a half-dozen of our favorite tech writers and editors to help anticipate the headaches of 2011.
Fight Night
The recent Pacquiao-Márquez match was full of lust, anger, calculation, sport—the same as what's occurring across America, in Zuccotti Park, in Congress, in every household with a bullet-skulled parent. Boxing is the sport of the now, and its lessons will be useful tonight.
The Demands of Cold Blood
When a crime reporter is told an outlandish account, his first obligation is to establish the facts. But when the story turns out to be a conspiracy, it can knock his sense of duty until it cracks.
Picture Me Not Posting
If distractions poison a writer’s ambitions, then surely a summer with no internet access is the antidote?
Photo Finish
Running into your father on the internet can be a startling event when it’s unexpected. Particularly when your father is dead.