Recommendations

What our editorial team is reading, watching, and listening to.

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Aging
Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville give outstanding performances in the new film ORDINARY LOVE, from Bleecker Street, and they are helped by a powerful, semi-autobiographical script by Owen McCafferty. Image is of the two actors sitting together and smiling in a hospital waiting room. Credit: Aidan Monaghan/Bleecker Street

“Ordinary Love” and Extraordinary Compassion

by Jason Socrates Bardi, Caroline Kantis

New film starring Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville depicts the gloomy, gray uncertainty of modern breast cancer treatment

Environment
Attitudes toward leprosy are represented in this watercolor commissioned by Henry S. Wellcome around 1912 from Richard Cooper, a graphic artist known for his advertisements for the London Underground. Painting shows people scrambling to get away from a leper who strolls by, ringing a bell. In their haste, the crowd has left an infant on the roadside. CC-BY 4.0 from Wellcome Collection.

“Less a Leper Than I Have Been”

by Christopher Lee Manes

Book of documentary poetry recalls Louisiana's Carville Hospital and early 20th century experience of leprosy in America

A boy dives into a crater filled with water in Aleppo's al-Shaar district on July 10, 2014. Activists said the crater was caused by barrel bombs dropped by forces of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. The photo shows a boy leaping in mid-air into a water-filled hole. The water is muddy brown, and two other boys can be seen swimming in the hole with their heads bobbing out. Surrounding them is rubble. This is a powerful image. REUTERS/Hosam Katan
Gender

Baby in a Bomb Shelter

by Jason Socrates Bardi

Oscar nominated documentary “For Sama” gives powerful if gruesome glimpse of what it’s like to raise a kid in a war zone

Close-up photo of the surface of a silicon semiconductor chip: WELLCOME COLLECTION/Paul Griggs. CC BY
Governance

Global Health by the Numbers: December 2019

by Thomas J. Bollyky

Celebrity photo of Anna Paquin at the premiere of The Irishman in London, 2019
Environment

TV Review: Global Warming at the End of The Affair

by Jason Socrates Bardi

Showtime ends daring, bleak series with desperation, hope, and a future long island threatened by rising sea levels