The New Republic

Stories We Tell is not just very moving; it is an exploration of truth and fiction that will stay with you long after repeated viewings. For a first screening of this picture is simply a way of getting in training for it. It is fiendishly difficult to review and to praise properly. This is not just documentary, but narrative magic. READ MORE >>

Last week, on the day that Sports Illustrated posted NBA player Jason Collins’s essay announcing his homosexuality, I was walking with Rebekah, our six-year-old. We were going to pick up our car at the auto mechanic’s shop on the corner, when across the street I spotted a neighbor going in the other direction, strolling hand-in-hand with her two-year-old son. They waved to me, and I said hi, and then we walked on. READ MORE >>

It’s been a few weeks now since Susan Patton—the veteran human resources consultant who made sure to tell the world she went to Princeton, and also made sure to declare that her two sons did (both the older, married one who she feels “could have married anyone” and his single younger brother)—wrote her blunt letter to the college paper there. In it, she urged young female Princeton Tigers (Tigresses? READ MORE >>

When choosing a spouse, a dictator must take care. Eva Perón proved a great asset; Eva Braun, less so. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, educated at Wellesley, got grown men to weep when she spoke before a joint session of Congress in 1943 (good), but behind the scenes she was notably high-maintenance, insisting, for example, on silk sheets that had to be changed daily, or twice daily, if she had an afternoon nap (bad). Imelda Marcos started strong (good singer) and went downhill. READ MORE >>

Friday morning, America woke up to Chechnya. Two Chechen brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had become suspects in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings, gunned down an MIT cop, and, in the ensuing chase, turned Boston into an eerily quiet war zone. Suddenly, everyone needed a primer on Chechnya, on the wars there, on its connections to Al Qaeda and the Free Syrian Army—despite the fact that we don't know whether their alleged acts were motivated by ideology. READ MORE >>

It was 5:30 in the morning when Kenya Mire looked down READ MORE >>

All parents outsource something. Even the most attached of parents, neurotically determined to be their children's omnipresent everything, outsource their children's education, unless they home-school. Although I know way too many parents who think getting a babysitter for one night a month is an unacceptable loss of control, they usually relent, eventually (or divorce). One friend of mine, who does not enjoy the water, lets his parents take his daughter to the pool one afternoon a week, where she is learning to swim with Grandma and Grandpa. READ MORE >>

The archive, indispensable to the historian, may prove an unreliable ally of the memoirist. This is the case in Alexander Stille’s sprawling effort to comprehend, catalog, and memorialize three generations—including his own—of his family. READ MORE >>

Recently, my mother unearthed my birth certificate and sent it to me. There, typed on a manual typewriter, were my name, the date and time of birth, the name of the hospital, and the names and race of both my parents. According to the certificate, I was not a twin or triplet, did not have siblings who died or were stillborn, had one sibling living. My mother did not live on a farm. READ MORE >>

I have three daughters, ages six, four, and two, and they are all in bed by eight o’clock at night. My wife, who rises much earlier than I do, retires by 9:30 or ten. I, however, am a night owl, and I find it hard to fall asleep much before midnight. So usually I find myself with about two hours alone in my house, puttering about, wishing I had a better cable-TV package. Late in the day, I don’t have the energy to write, or even to read much. READ MORE >>