This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The heat expert leading efforts to make America’s hottest city more bearable insists that Phoenix could eventually eradicate heat deaths—despite July’s record-breaking death toll. As many as 300 people may have died during the hottest ever month on record as the temperature in […]
Author: Marianne Szegedy-Maszak
After the Deluge
It’s raining, again. Days after Vermont was inundated, the skies just can’t let up. After enjoying brief periods of dryish weather, the clouds rolled in and the rain has started anew. Last week, Vermont became the latest casualty of the dire weather that has afflicted many parts of the country this summer. We’ve all read […]
What It Was Like to Be in Russia and Watch a Failed Coup
Editor’s note: This essay is anonymous in order to protect the writer from potential reprisals. Тhe coup that didn’t happen began on Friday night and ended by Saturday night. Various Telegram channels reported 15 Russian servicemen dead; a plane, a few helicopters, and an oil storage facility destroyed, bridges dismantled, roads dug up…and the only […]
During an Extreme Texas Heat Wave, Gov. Abbott Ended Local Rules Requiring Water Breaks for Workers
This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Amid a dangerous heatwave that has brought blistering temperatures across Texas, the state’s governor signed a law last week eliminating local rules requiring water breaks for workers. The measure, which will take effect later this year, will nullify ordinances enacted […]
Wildfires in Canada: Fires Are Burning With Greater Destructive Intensity Over Much Longer Seasons
This article originally appeared in The Globe and Mail. John Vaillant’s latest book is Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast. We weren’t a week into May before 30,000 people had been evacuated because of dozens of fast-moving wildfires in Alberta. Structure losses were mounting, and politicians were trotting out words like “unprecedented.” Unprecedented? Where were they in 2017, […]
Legislatures Passed 550 Anti-Trans Bills So Far This Year
This story is published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative reporting newsroom. Hundreds of anti-transgender bills proposed in state legislatures are sold as measures to protect minors—such as Idaho’s Vulnerable Child Protection Act and Montana’s Youth Health Protection Act—but advocacy groups and doctors warn that the effect is exactly the […]
Some Real Revelations From Prince Harry’s Ghostwriter
In this week’s New Yorker, JR Moehringer breaks all the rules of ghostwriting by ceasing to be invisible and asserting his hiding-in-plain-sight presence as the writer for Britain’s exiled Prince Harry’s blockbuster memoir Spare. Moehringer offers plenty to satisfy Royal obsessives, providing glimpses into their process, their relationship, and the genuine affection and respect that seems to have […]
Report From Russia: The Country’s “Special Military Operation” Is a Bloody Fiasco
A version of this essay originally appeared in The London Review of Books. The “Special Military Operation” (the law forbids calling it anything else) got off to bad start – Russian armed forces crossed into Ukraine and found themselves stuck in the mud, low on fuel and provisions, surrounded by a hostile civilian population. Then […]
These Black Mothers Bet on Themselves and Transformed Las Vegas
On March 20, 2023, Storming Caesars Palace, a documentary directed by Hazel Gurland-Pooler, premiered on PBS. It was based on the 2006 book Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty, by Dartmouth history professor Annelise Orleck, which was rereleased in an expanded edition this month. It chronicles the remarkable story of a […]
2022 Was a Particularly Deadly Year for Land and Environmental Activists
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In February of 2022, Colombian human rights activists Teófilo Acuña and Jorge Tafur were assassinated in front of their friends and families after decades of working to protect small, rural communities from mining and land-grabbing. Their killers have not been brought to […]