Mochileros, pandering, and shooting kangaroos

The best reads of the week

The Sunday

Published in

The Sunday

3 min readNov 29, 2015

Every week The Sunday features a carefully curated selection of the most thought-provoking, interesting writing from around the web. Today’s pick of the week is the story of Hattie and James Brazier. This long but rewarding slice of historical reality reads almost like a fictional nightmare, with the subjects trapped between out-of-control police, government officials, and the population that enabled them.

Hattie Brazier Stands Up

James and Hattie Bell Brazier had a reputation for a higher standard of living than most…

Mary Kelly | The Big Roundtable

They Shoot Kangaroos, Don't They?

We spot 40 kangaroos in the distance and creep toward them. "Act like they do," Don Fletcher whispers. "Put your head…

Paul Kvinta | Outside

The Serial Swatter

Early one weekend morning in January 2014, Janet was sleeping fitfully in her parents' home in Toronto. A junior…

Jason Fagone | The New York Times Magazine

Mekong: a river rising

The fate of 70 million people rests on what happens to the Mekong river. With world leaders meeting in Paris next week…

John Vidal | The Guardian

Syria's media war

The driver stops on a crowded, dusty road lined with cars. Used SUVs and sedans are parked two deep in front of tired…

Elizabeth Dickinson | Columbia Journalism Review

How Walmart Keeps an Eye on Its Massive Workforce

The retail giant is watching. From In the autumn of 2012, when Walmart first heard about the possibility of a strike on…

Susan Berfield | Bloomberg Businessweek

The Mochileros

High stakes in the high Andes - the young backpackers risking their lives in cocaine valley…

Linda Pressly | BBC

The Moment That Changed the Cold War

My father wrote about his role in one of the defining moments of the Cold War in…

James B. Donovan | Literary Hub

What It Was Like to Work at Sony After the Hack

Every morning, like so many of her colleagues, a television writer would drive from her Hollywood apartment to the…

Amanda Hess | Slate

On Pandering

This essay, which is featured in our forthcoming Winter issue, was originally given as a lecture during the 2015 Tin…

Claire Vaye Watkins | Tin House

Terror at the Stadium

Five days later, France started to bury its dead. The friends and family of Manuel Dias gathered in a small church an…

Wright Thompson | ESPN

Written on Beasts

For a thousand years, the societies of the Western world transmitted and preserved much of their written cultures on…

Bruce Holsinger | The New York Review of Books

Pakistan's political Islamists tried to kill me

It was a November night in Islamabad, not too different from that evening when the assassins came for me. The two…

Raza Rumi | Aeon

Transgender Navy Seal Kristin Beck's Greatest Challenge

Back when she was a member of SEAL Team 6-Kristin Beck liked to grow her beard real long. But as disguises go, that was…

Devin Friedman | GQ

Marco Rubio's Political Dexterity

Evan Osnos on the Republican Presidential candidate and junior senator from Florida.

Evan Osnos | The New Yorker

My Family Came to This Country Legally, But We Were Almost Deported

Ben is the founder and former-CEO of the Cheezburger Network and co-founder of Circa currently filming drone videos…

Ben Huh | Medium

What I Learned At Active Shooter Training

I work in a nondescript multi-story county building in a university city in the United States. People have mistaken our…

Ander Morgan | The Toast

Agony to ecstasy

My engagement with museums has been a game of three parts - so far - and in all three of them the question of children…

John Lanchester | Intelligent Life

Inside Enya's Irish Kingdom

Everyone knows how to get to Enya's castle. At least everyone in Killiney, the sloping oceanside village 45 minutes out…

Anne Helen Petersen | BuzzFeed

Foiling the Nazis’ Nuclear Plans

The Secret War in Scandinavia

Yonatan Zunger | Medium

A Dream of Secular Utopia in ISIS' Backyard

One of the safer crossings into Syria is at a small town called Fishkhabour, in the far northwestern corner of Iraq. In…

Wes Enzinna | The New York Times Magazine

If you enjoyed this week’s selection please give us a recommend and follow! Medium folks featured here are Jason Fagone, Elizabeth Dickinson, Amanda Hess, devin friedman, Ben Huh and Yonatan Zunger