The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons

By C.J. Chivers, New York Times

From 2004 to 2011, American and Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and at times were wounded by, chemical weapons that were hidden or abandoned years earlier.

“If we run and they kill us, so be it. But we have to run now.”

By Sarah A. Topol, Matter

Six months ago, 276 Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram. The handful who escaped that night have never told the full story of their ordeal — until now.

The Holder of Secrets

By George Packer, New Yorker

Laura Poitras’s closeup view of Edward Snowden.

The Art of Arrival: Rebecca Solnit on Travel and Friendship

By Rebecca Solnit, Orion

The word “journey” used to mean a single day’s travels, and the French word for day, jour, is packed neatly inside it, like a single pair of shoes in a very small case. Maybe all journeys should be imagined as a single day, short as a trip to the corner or long as a life in its ninth decade.

When Women Become Men at Wellesley

By Ruth Padawer, New York Times Magazine

What’s a women’s college to do when students born female also identify as “masculine-of-center genderqueer”?

My Terrifying Night With Afghanistan's Only Female Warlord

By Jen Percy, New Republic

I’d been living in Afghanistan three weeks when my guide, a young Afghan named Sharif Sahak, showed me a photograph of the country’s only known female warlord, Bibi Ayisha, nom de guerre: Commander Pigeon.

Russell Brand: ‘I want to address the alienation and despair’

By Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian

Power to the people is Russell Brand’s new manifesto. He tells us why he’s ‘ready to die for this’