Books and literature

THE ELISSAS: Three Girls, One Fate, and the Deadly Secrets of Suburbia , by Samantha Leach Like the Furies and the Fates of Greek mythology, the subjects of Samantha Leach’s “The Elissas” are troubled and troubling young women enacting a drama that feels both ancient and inevitable. If the addiction narrative has ascended to the level of myth in America (and it’s all too easy to argue that it has), then Elissa, Alyssa and Alissa are a familiar archetype: poor little rich girls, young and rebellious, their problems surely solvable by Daddy’s money. In this smart and gripping debut, Leach refreshes a familiar heartbreak by weaving the stories of these three lost young women into a larger, more complicated and ultimately tragic narrative of a nation not so much losing the war on drugs as on a death march every bit as doomed as the last battles in Sparta. Of the three protagonists, Elissa is the only one Leach knew personally. Growing up together in the wealthy suburbs of … [Read more...] about The Trouble With the Troubled Teen Industry

Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, of a gunshot wound to the head. He was 56 years old and 6 feet 4 inches tall: a giant, felled. He was the 16th president of the United States and the first one killed in office. (A madman once tried to shoot Andrew Jackson, but both of his pistols misfired.) An assassination is treason by way of murder. Lincoln’s assassination was more — an act of war. Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9. Lincoln was the last of the Union dead. His death had another meaning, too. It founded a civic religion, dedicated to the memory of Lincoln’s sacrifice and to the proposition that emancipation is redemption. What became of Lincoln began with an act of hatred. On April 11, John Wilkes Booth said, while listening to Lincoln deliver a speech about the terms of the victory, “That means nigger citizenship.” Booth shot Lincoln with a derringer at about 10:15 p.m. on April 14 — Good Friday — in Ford’s Theater, six blocks from the White House. A 23-year-old Army … [Read more...] about ‘Mourning Lincoln’ and ‘Lincoln’s Body’

In September 1970, when she was 12, Martha Hodes and her sister were flying home alone to New York from Israel when their plane was hijacked by armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It was redirected to an airstrip in the Jordanian desert, and joined by two others. Passengers were held hostage for six days before the hijackers released them unharmed, and blew up the planes . It was a shocking event that drew headlines around the world . But Hodes and her family barely talked about it afterward. “I love school!” she wrote in her diary the first week back. “Everything’s great!” Even decades later, Hodes, now a historian at New York University, brought it up only with close friends, and then only offhandedly. “They all said something similar — that I spoke about it in a way that was very dismissive,” she recalled. Historians are in the business of digging stories out of the archives. But in “My Hijacking,” published June 6 by Harper, Hodes … [Read more...] about An Infamous Hijacking, Revisited Through a Child’s Eyes

An African-American resort town in Michigan, circa 1970; a raucous family road trip from Kansas City, Mo., to New York state; a bittersweet return to Hyderabad, India; and a college student’s self-discovery in Australia: Four New York Times Travel contributors share their memories of trips that still impart a sense of wonder and hope. Lost in Time on the Shores of Lake Idlewild By Ron Stodghill At some point, even as I began racking up frequent-flier miles, I came to accept a simple truth: I’d find no sleep as peaceful as I found on Lake Idlewild. My slumbers in Michigan’s densely wooded, all-black resort started as a kid. Belly full of fried catfish, Jones Homemade Ice Cream and ZotZ penny candy from Lee-John’s Novelty and Soda Bar, I would curl up on a lounge chair by the lake and snooze for hours to the sound of waves gurgling along the shore, the purring of fishing boats motoring by, the crackling of the Detroit Tigers radio broadcast wafting … [Read more...] about Past Into Present: 4 Journeys That Changed Us