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My sister wins an Oscar

There really should be an Oscar for Best Supporting Supporting Actor

123rd Officer Cadet Training Regiment, Royal Artillery, 1942

A group portrait of the R.A. from 1942, an inauspicious time to go through training

Don’t do this, Washington Post!

The Post asks “Hit job or gossip?” about their owner, but doesn’t have the answer


James Baldwin at David Zwirner

I worked with Hilton Als on a James Baldwin show; now Als has curated an exhibit about him

The fall of men at the NYRB

Surely #MeToo should also be about educating men in their 60s like Ian Buruma rather than driving them out

The Battle of Chile and the wonder of movie theaters

The Battle of Chile is a great film that was made more powerful by the sound of anguish in the audience


Eugen Baraga university records, Slovenia, 1919-20

I chanced upon the records of one of the first students ever to attend the University of Ljubljana

On the streets of Hong Kong in 1938

Hong Kong in 1938 was smaller in scale, more human, much poorer and more unjust

Banning the Indian rupee notes really was dumb

The cash ban was floated in a Tamil action film, of all places, yet somehow became real policy


The continuing glory of the New York Review of Books

The New York Review was always great, but it may be even better under new editor Ian Buruma

Visiting Leila Menchari’s garden in Tunisia

An Hermès exhibit to honor Leila Menchari and my journey to her beloved garden in Tunisia

Ta-Nehisi Coates is wrong about Trump voters

True, for many race defined this campaign but stating that bluntly won’t win them back


Young man with pitchfork, Studio Maignet, Paris, date unknown

I collect old portrait cards all over the world but it was the semiotics of this one that intrigued me

Car bombs and gangsters in Malta

I found that the Maltese talk openly about the criminals in their midst

Police shootings database

Whatever the cause the sheer number of dead should impress us: 813 so far this year with weeks to go


Robert Silvers was our greatest editor

Robert Silvers died this week but his New York Review of Books brought me years of pleasure

Bali ruined, again

A photo I took in Ubud in 1989 shows the changes on Monkey Forest Road

Tracking the incompetent Trump cabinet

Bush’s team bungled Hurricane Katrina but they were professionals compared to Trump’s gang


Warrior-gymnasts in Tonkin, Vietnam, 1909

French overlords in colonial-era Vietnam make the locals do ridiculous things

The generosity of the Quebec City eulogy

After the massacre at a Quebec City mosque, a lesson in how to defeat hate

Lijiang, China as it used to be

One of the world’s most exquisite towns, now lost, captured on video the very year I first saw it


Homs, Syria after five years of war

Drone video footage shows there’s no life left in Syria’s third largest city

My pick for travel in 2016 is Iran

As I write in Travel + Leisure, for the traveler the nuclear accord makes Iran newly accessible

On the attacks in Paris

Le Ca Rillon and Le Petit Cambodge, both hit by Islamic State, were two of my favorites in Paris