'Never Too Late to Take Someone's Hand'

All photos courtesy of Alex Tizon and his family

My Family’s Slave

Alex Tizon

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

'We Can't Walk Away From This Truth'

Mitch Landrieu

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu explains to his city why four monuments commemorating the Lost Cause and the Confederacy had to come down.

Last week, the City of New Orleans finished removing four monuments—to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee, and the postwar battle of Liberty Place. The removals occasioned threats, protests, and celebrations. On Friday, Mayor Mitch Landrieu explained to his city why he had concluded that the monuments needed to come down.

-Yoni Appelbaum

The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way—for both good and for ill.

It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans—the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando de Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Color, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of France and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more.

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

Barbara Bradley Hagerty

The condition has long been considered untreatable. Experts can spot it in a child as young as 3 or 4. But a new clinical approach offers hope.

This is a good day, Samantha tells me: 10 on a scale of 10. We’re sitting in a conference room at the San Marcos Treatment Center, just south of Austin, Texas, a space that has witnessed countless difficult conversations between troubled children, their worried parents, and clinical therapists. But today promises unalloyed joy. Samantha’s mother is visiting from Idaho, as she does every six weeks, which means lunch off campus and an excursion to Target. The girl needs supplies: new jeans, yoga pants, nail polish.

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At 11, Samantha is just over 5 feet tall and has wavy black hair and a steady gaze. She flashes a smile when I ask about her favorite subject (history), and grimaces when I ask about her least favorite (math). She seems poised and cheerful, a normal preteen. But when we steer into uncomfortable territory—the events that led her to this juvenile-treatment facility nearly 2,000 miles from her family—Samantha hesitates and looks down at her hands. “I wanted the whole world to myself,” she says. “So I made a whole entire book about how to hurt people.”

The Explosion in Manchester

The Editors

U.K. police said at least 22 people are dead and 59 injured following the incident at Manchester Arena.

Here’s what we know on Wednesday, May 23:

—Greater Manchester Police said 22 people are dead and 59 injured following reports of an explosion at the Manchester Arena.

—Authorities say a lone bomber, who was killed at the arena, carried out the attack. Prime Minister Theresa May said authorities believe they know his identity, but are working to confirm it. ISIS claimed responsibility—though the group’s role in the attack is unclear.

—The venue was the scene of an Ariana Grande concert. The singer said she was “broken” at the news.

—This is a developing story and we’ll be following it here. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -4).

An Apple employee poses with a personal computer in 1986. — Corbis Historical / Getty

Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

Deirdre Clemente

The office was, until a few decades ago, the last stronghold of fashion formality. Silicon Valley changed that.

Americans began the 20th century in bustles and bowler hats and ended it in velour sweatsuits and flannel shirts—the most radical shift in dress standards in human history. At the center of this sartorial revolution was business casual, a genre of dress that broke the last bastion of formality—office attire—to redefine the American wardrobe.

Born in Silicon Valley in the early 1980s, business casual consists of khaki pants, sensible shoes, and button-down collared shirts. By the time it was mainstream, in the 1990s, it flummoxed HR managers and employees alike. “Welcome to the confusing world of business casual,” declared a fashion writer for the Chicago Tribune in 1995. With time and some coaching, people caught on. Today, though, the term “business casual” is nearly obsolete for describing the clothing of a workforce that includes many who work from home in yoga pants, put on a clean T-shirt for a Skype meeting, and don’t always go into the office.

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

Olga Khazan

A guide for those on the fence

Isabel Caliva and her husband, Frank, had already “kicked the can down the road.” The can, in their case, was the kid conversation; the road was Caliva’s fertile years. Frank had always said he wanted lots of kids. Caliva, who was in her early 30s, thought maybe one or two would be nice, but she was mostly undecided. They had a nice life, with plenty of free time that allowed for trips to Portugal, Paris, and Hawaii.

“I wasn’t feeling the pull the same way my friends were describing,” she told me recently. “I thought, maybe this isn’t gonna be the thing for me. Maybe it’s just going to be the two of us.”

At times, she wondered if her lack of baby fever should be cause for concern. She took her worries to the Internet, where she came across a post on the Rumpus’ “Dear Sugar” advice column titled, “The Ghost Ship that Didn’t Carry Us.” The letter was from a 41-year-old man who was also on the fence about kids: “Things like quiet, free time, spontaneous travel, pockets of non-obligation,” he wrote. “I really value them.”

洛拉：我家的奴隶

Alex Tizon

她与我们家人一起生活了五十六年。她带大了我和我的兄弟姐妹，从早到晚做饭做清洁，从来没有工资。十一岁的我，一个典型的美国孩子，意识到她其实是我们家的奴隶。

她的骨灰装满了一个黑色塑料盒子，如烤面包机一般大小，重三磅半。去年七月，我用一个帆布口袋把这个盒子包起来，装在行李箱里，横越太平洋，飞去了马尼拉。我要从那里坐车去一个小乡村，去把这个在我家为奴五十六年的女人的骨灰交出去。

Donald Trump places his hands on a glowing orb in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May 2017. — Saudi TV / Reuters

The Peculiar Prophecies of Nostradonald Trump

Adrienne LaFrance

The president’s critics are dipping into his vast Twitter archive to find evidence of hypocrisy—and maybe even fortune telling.

Donald Trump doesn’t need a crystal ball, he has a mysterious glowing orb. No, wait. Scratch that. Donald Trump doesn’t need a crystal ball, he has a mysterious clairvoyant Twitter account.

There seems to be, Trump watchers have noticed, a weirdly prophetic tweet in Trump’s past for every new aspect of his presidency—from his weekends golfing at Mar-a-Lago to each new bombshell scoop about the embattled White House and its alleged ties to Russia.

This goes beyond using classic Trump tweets to insult him, though people are doing that, too—the prototypical example comes from June 2014, when Trump tweeted, “Are you allowed to impeach a president for gross incompetence?”

Trump’s critics are now delighting in the ability to criticize Trump by using his own targeted complaints about others. His past tweets underscore stupendous hypocrisy, they say, and perhaps a hint at an epic political downfall. Democrats have been agitating for Trump’s political demise since before he was the Republican nominee, but even the most apolitical observer would acknowledge how uncanny some of Trump’s past tweets have become.

What ISIS Really Wants

Graeme Wood

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

The Mick Mulvaney Budget Hits the Hill

Russell Berman

It may be Trump’s proposal, but his first fiscal blueprint reflects the vision of the House Freedom Caucus co-founder, and the president has left the sales job to him.

The budget proposal the White House will deliver to Congress on Tuesday might carry Donald Trump’s name, but it reflects Mick Mulvaney’s fiscal vision.

The president has been uncharacteristically quiet on the most expansive policy statement of his young administration, ceding responsibility for both its substance and message to his staunchly conservative budget director.

And Mulvaney has certainly run with the assignment. The former congressional spending hawk has affixed the presidential seal to a wish list of ideological budget cuts—to the State Department, the EPA, and the social safety net, among many others—that only a few years ago had been marginalized even in the Republican-led House. “This is, I think, the first time in a long time that an administration has written a budget through the eyes of the people who are actually paying the taxes,” Mulvaney told reporters on Monday by way of explaining the budget’s core philosophy, which he described more succinctly as “Taxpayer First.” “Too often in Washington we only look at the recipient side: How does the budget affect either those who receive or don’t receive benefits.”

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Paul Rosenfeld

A wealthy white lawyer has spent 16 years and millions of dollars turning the Whitney Plantation into a memorial to the nation's past.

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Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

Tynesha Foreman and Nicolas Pollock

New data and analysis from PRRI and The Atlantic suggests that it was cultural anxiety more than economic distress that fueled white, working-class support for Trump.

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A New Understanding of the Childhood Brain

Nicolas Pollock

Uncovering the link between early trauma and lifelong illness

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'Never Too Late to Take Someone's Hand'

About the Author

Most Popular

My Family’s Slave

'We Can't Walk Away From This Truth'

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

The Explosion in Manchester

Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

洛拉：我家的奴隶

The Peculiar Prophecies of Nostradonald Trump

What ISIS Really Wants

The Mick Mulvaney Budget Hits the Hill

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

A New Understanding of the Childhood Brain

'Never Too Late to Take Someone's Hand'

Latest Video

Trump Scandals Are Good for Putin

About the Author

Most Popular

My Family’s Slave

'We Can't Walk Away From This Truth'

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

The Explosion in Manchester

Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

洛拉：我家的奴隶

The Peculiar Prophecies of Nostradonald Trump

What ISIS Really Wants

The Mick Mulvaney Budget Hits the Hill

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

A New Understanding of the Childhood Brain