Ben McGrath

Dec 4, 2024 | countercurrents.org | Neeraj Jain |Ben McGrath |Khairi Janbek |Suresh Khairnar

The mindboggling concessions given to the super-rich discussed in the previous article of this budget series have led to a massive increase in their wealth. This article presents some estimates of the wealth of our super-rich, which has made India one of the most unequal countries in the world. The mindboggling concessions given to the super-rich discussed in the previous article of this budget series have led to a massive increase in their wealth.

Nov 18, 2024 | newyorker.com | Ben McGrath

In 1868, horse-drawn carriages delivered the ten-thousand-odd components of a giant pipe organ from the factory of Henry Erben, near Manhattan’s Five Points neighborhood, to St. Patrick’s Basilica, on Mott and Prince. The parish, then largely Irish, was still grieving the loss of so many young men from the Fighting 69th at Bull Run and Antietam. Moneyed interests were moving uptown. Erben’s organs, meanwhile, were regularly shipped thousands of miles, to Havana, Caracas, the Western frontier.

Oct 7, 2024 | newyorker.com | Ben McGrath

“The Wind and the Rain,” a play about Sunny’s Bar, in Red Hook, Brooklyn, begins in the fall of 2012, as floodwaters from Hurricane Sandy rise through the floorboards, laying waste to a gentrifying neighborhood and its most beloved institution. The play is staged on a railroad barge—the Waterfront Museum, a long fly ball from Sunny’s—and, if a recent rehearsal is any indication, audience members will have little trouble reckoning with the persistent threat posed by the harbor.

Aug 19, 2024 | newyorker.com | Ben McGrath

Jessie Stone likes to call herself a medical doctor with a kayaking problem. For much of the year, she runs a clinic in Uganda that provides primary care as well as malaria education. The clinic sits next to the Nile, near its headwaters. “Lucky for me!” she said recently, though the more she elaborated, the less luck seemed to play a part. Stone, who is fifty-six, is a six-time member of the U.S. women’s freestyle-kayaking team.

Jul 29, 2024 | newyorker.com | Ben McGrath

Take note: in the days and weeks to come, your local playing fields and arenas may be awash in political gesturing and sloganeering from the very people who used to grumble that they prefer their sports free of politics. Consider the recent ballgame at Truist Park, where the St. Louis Cardinals slugger Alec Burleson souped up his home-run trot by raising one hand to an ear—as if it had just been shot?—and extending a raised fist with the other—in defiance of an assassination attempt?