A married friend of ours is thinking about having an affair. Karen reveals this to me late one night in our kitchen while our sons sleep. "I think Michelle's just bored," she says. "That's all it is, really." I mentally rub my hands together: time aplenty for a nice moral deconstruction of how Michelle, who has a nice life, a good marriage, and a four-year-old son, is fucking up big time. "First of all," I begin, "there's no such thing as just sex. And the lying will mess them up even if she doesn't get caught." Karen, fiddling at the sink, stops. "She doesn't look at it that way." "Lying is a wedge, even if it's only in Michelle's head. You can't lie and just forget about it." My wife turns, places her butt against the counter, and works a tea bag up and down in a cup. "You lie." "No, I don't." I smile. "Not to you, anyway." "You did. You lied to me." |
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The Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 (So Far) |
It seems a cruel paradox that in this age of information overload, the world can feel harder to understand than ever before. Amid a dissonance of news sources, podcasts, commentators, and armchair experts, where should you turn to make sense of the world? More than movies, TV, or just other reading material, we stand behind nonfiction books as some of the best windows on the world, and luckily for you, we've curated some of the year's standout releases. |
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The New Golden Age of the American Steakhouse |
For a long time, the steakhouse and its trappings have signified success and a damn good time . . . even if the food and service could be hit-or-miss. But now, thanks to a handful of splashy, chef-driven restaurants from New York to San Francisco, the party has reached its next level. |
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Sex, Love, and Art in the Suburbs |
I turn 44 this spring. For the past nine years, I've lived in a small city in eastern Iowa; for almost as long, I've been in a relationship with a man I met soon after moving here. Six years ago we moved in together, and three years ago we bought a small Dutch colonial. In many ways, our lives are typical of one kind of midwestern American life. On nice evenings, we sit in our yard and say hello to our neighbors; in the autumn we rake leaves. A year ago we adopted two cats. This is a life that no one I knew in the pre-Internet, pre-marriage equality South I grew up in, at the height of the early AIDS crisis, could have imagined. When I got a scholarship to music school, art opened an escape from that world, and until my mid-30s, my life was shaped by one of the models of artistic life America allows: I moved every few years, collecting degrees, then pursued teaching gigs. Eastern Iowa was just another stop on an itinerary that led I wasn't sure where. I would always be in motion, I thought, always on my way somewhere else. I loved it, not least because it was what I thought an artist's life should be: always unsettled, full of possibilities, free from the obligations of rootedness. |
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The Tecovas Johnny Is the Western Boot You—Yes, You—Should Bring Into Your Stable of Shoes |
I was born in Texas, but I'm a Northern boy at heart. I don't even recall my first few months of life down in the Lone Star State. My memory kicks in where I grew up: Pennsylvania, nestled in the Brandywine Valley between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. And now? I live in Brooklyn. What I'm saying here is that I have no grand cultural claim to cowboy boots. And yet, I'm about to tell you why I've started wearing them, and why you should, too. |
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The Re-Taking of Nova Basan |
Nova Basan, a town sixty miles east of Kyiv, was not the first town the all-volunteer Bratstvo battalion liberated from Russian forces, or the second, or the third. It was the fourth. What's more, Sunday's counter-offensive pushed the Russian forces—already in retreat, but still fighting—decisively out of the region. With support from the Ukrainian army, special forces and police, the hastily assembled volunteer unit has had a dramatic effect on the course of battle for Kyiv. The volunteers of Bratstvo, Ukrainian for "brotherhood," are a mix of men who first served during Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea, and younger men eager to fight alongside on the frontlines this time. |
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