11 of Our Best Weekend Reads
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/arts/11-of-our-best-weekend-reads.html Version 0 of 1. When bright stars are dimmed, as was the case this week with the deaths of two leaders in their fields, we sometimes turn to other worlds for comfort. The World Cup, John Coltrane and a little Broadway bonanza come to mind. Here is some of our best journalism of the week to keep you going. This special issue of The New York Times Magazine is dedicated entirely to love in New York City over the course of a single day: Saturday, May 19, 2018. All the photography was shot on that date between 12 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. But it’s not all cupid’s arrow: We have a profile of divorce lawyers and a chronicle of a young couple’s first trip to Ikea; a fiancée’s visit to Rikers Island and a late night at a strip club. We have New York love, and heartache, in all its forms. The Magazine ____ Anthony Bourdain’s frank, and often profane, voice was the witty, connected guide to the world of food. He’d tell you things that others would not, and shone a light into the darker corners of the restaurant world, our restaurant critic writes. Mr. Bourdain, who began his career as a chef only to redefine the staid genres of food-writing and food television shows, was found dead in his hotel room in France on Friday. He was 61. His suicide came days after the American fashion designer Kate Spade was found dead in her Manhattan apartment. Our chief fashion critic writes that the designer, who died Tuesday, played an important part in the story of American women in fashion, and beyond. Food ____ José, a 5-year-old boy from Honduras, cried himself to sleep when he first arrived at his foster parents’ house in Michigan. His father had been arrested and led away at the border. The little boy’s separation from his father is part of the Trump administration’s latest and most widely debated border enforcement policy. National ____ Richmond, British Columbia, is a suburb-city built on flat islands embraced by arms of the Fraser River that lead into the Salish Sea. But with a robust immigrant population and access to fresh seafood and produce, it has become a one-stop paradise for lovers of Asian food. Travel ____ American Muslims say they own guns for the same reasons as anyone else: for protection, for hunting and sport shooting, for gun and rifle collections or for their work. They also cite another factor: fear of persecution, at a time when hate crimes against Muslims have soared to their highest levels since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. National ____ At the start of the last ice age, 2.6 million years ago, a sheet of frozen water formed atop North America that kept expanding and thickening until it reached a maximum depth of roughly two miles. The New York region lay under that ice sheet. It terminated abruptly in what are now the boroughs, leaving the city with a unique landscape. Science ____ Higher education is struggling to balance the demand by some students to be protected from offensive speech while guaranteeing freedom of speech to others. Education ____ The Broadway producer and theater owner Jordan Roth is rewriting the rules of his business. He’s made room on Broadway for “Mean Girls” and Bruce Springsteen; created a Trump-baiting animated YouTube series (even though his father is a friend of the president); and regularly turns heads with his attention-getting couture on red carpets (“Jewish Givenchy cardinal” was his Met Gala look). He’s up for a Tony himself as a producer. And his provocative self-expression has made him the talk of the town. Arts ____ In 1968, feminists threw bras and girdles into a trash can to protest the Miss America pageant for sexism. Now, #MeToo may have finally ushered in a new era. The Miss America Organization announced it would scrap both the swimsuit and evening gown portion of the competition, replacing them with “a live interactive session with the judges” in which a contestant “will highlight her achievements and goals in life.” We asked beauty pageant contestants to tell us why they love doing them, and their views on the Miss America changes. Here is a selection of their stories. Business ____ The vast sprawl of suburbs and satellite towns around Paris, disdained by some as a breeding ground for crime and terrorism, is home to the greatest pool of soccer talent in Europe. It is here, amid the tower blocks of the Parisian banlieues, that France finds its soccer players, including the select few who will represent France at the World Cup in Russia. Sports ____ “Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album” was cut by the saxophonist’s classic quartet two years before “A Love Supreme,” his explosive 1965 magnum opus. Then it was stashed away, until now. The family of Coltrane’s first wife recently discovered his personal copy of the recordings, which she had saved. A full set of material recorded by the quartet on a single day in March 1963 is set to be released on June 29. Arts |