The Journalist Who Photographed the Burning Monk

The Man Behind an Iconic Vietnam War Image Captured ‘the Ugliest Events of Our Time’

While President John F. Kennedy was talking by phone with his brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, on the morning of Tuesday, June 12, 1963, he suddenly exclaimed: “Jesus Christ!”

The president’s outburst had nothing to do with their conversation. Rather, he was responding to a photograph taken the day before, splashed on the front pages of the newspapers just delivered to him. The photo showed 73-year-old Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc engulfed in flames on a street in Saigon, South Vietnam while sitting calmly—it seemed—in the lotus posture. He hoped …

by Ray E. Boomhower | June 8, 2023

How Do Pandemics End?

Argentina’s 19th-Century Cholera Outbreaks Show the Myth of a Single, Definitive Conclusion

by Carlos S. Dimas | August 8, 2022

The study of epidemics has routinely centered around what medical historian Charles Rosenberg calls a “dramaturgic structure”: a story of infection that builds to a climax of widespread illness and …

Can a Maximum-Security Prison Be a Place of Connection?

How the Men in Pelican Bay State Prison Impact the Community Outside, One Another, and Inmates Across California

by Paul Critz | March 16, 2022

avid stands with his feet in the foamy water, his arms outstretched, smiling face turned up to the February sky. From where I’m standing among the driftwood, the line of …

When Kazakhstan Turned Off the Internet

Did a Five-Day Crackdown and Flood of Misinformation Send a Message to Activists or Ignite a Movement for Political Reform?

by Colleen Wood and Sher Khashimov | January 20, 2022

This was no ordinary internet blackout. For five days, the ninth largest country in the world was a black box.

On the evening of January 5, 2022, we set our respective …

Joan Didion Helped Me Tell My Own Story

Her Language and Landscapes Carved Out a Literary Space for My San Bernardino Childhood

by Kathleen Alcalá | January 11, 2022

When I arrived at Stanford, I was immediately confronted with the clues of my inferiority.

The other students had straight white teeth, more than one week’s worth of clothing, and “pocket …

New Yorker Staff Writer Nicholas Lemann

Most Students Underestimate the Importance of Reliability

November 16, 2021

Nicholas Lemann is the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and dean emeritus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He is a staff writer at …

journalism