Table of contents for September 25, 2017 in TIME Magazine

EVERY PARAGRAPH MUST EARN ITS sentences, every sentence its words. To have worked with TIME editorin- chief Nancy Gibbs is to have heard it a thousand times. But this is no mere maxim of economy. It reflects her values as a journalist, values Nancy practiced over the course of an incredible 32-year career at the magazine, including her promotion as its top editor in 2013. Roughly: Be rigorous, bring your passions to work but leave your agendas behind and, above all, be focused on serving your readers. Or, as she might more elegantly put it: Every word has consequences, every silence too. On Sept. 12, Nancy told us, “It’s time for another chapter,” and said she planned to step down. So this space, normally reserved for TIME’s editor-in-chief, has been…

‘IT IS THE FIRST TIME ANY COURT HAS OVERTURNED A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OUTCOME IN AFRICA.’ —PAGE 14 FOR A MEDIA BARON WHO TRAFficks in bombast, Stephen Bannon has always seemed more comfortable backstage. As Donald Trump’s campaign CEO and then as his chief White House strategist, he liked to work in the shadows, always felt but seldom heard. Bannon fancied himself the battlefield general for the Trump agenda, the ruthless commander of a right-wing army that made liberals recoil and Republicans quiver. When he was caricatured as an all-powerful evil force in the White House, he didn’t exactly discourage the misperception. But since leaving the White House last month, Bannon has sought the spotlight in new ways. In his firstever major television interview, which aired Sept. 10 on 60 Minutes,…

IRAQ’S NORTHERN KURDISH REGION IS SET TO hold a vote on independence on Sept. 25, giving hope to nearly 30 million Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey who aspire to self-determination. But the central government opposes the referendum, putting it on a collision course with an ever more powerful separatist movement: DRAWING LINES The vote represents a challenge to Baghdad by Iraqi Kurdistan’s regional government over control of areas claimed by both sides. At the center of the dispute is Kirkuk, home to a million Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans, and the heart of Iraq’s oil wealth. Kurdish authorities took control of the city after Iraqi troops fled advancing ISIS forces in 2014. SPILLOVER THREAT Major powers in the region also oppose the referendum. Neighboring states like Turkey and Iran…

MODCLOTH In 2015 the online fashion retailer removed the “plus size” section from its website and grouped its XL and regular sizes together. “Plus is not a term that we love,” said co-founder Susan Gregg Koger. COSABELLA The luxury lingerie brand Cosabella dropped the word plus in descriptions of its larger sizes and replaced it with extended when rolling out its new collection in 2015. HEY GORGEOUS The New York digital boutique was known as Madison Plus Select before undertaking an official name change in May 2016. The company saw an initial boost after the rebrand but folded later that year.…

DIED French fashion tycoon Pierre Bergé, who helped his partner Yves Saint Laurent build his couture house into an empire, at 86. > Peter Hall, titan of British theater who at 29 founded the Royal Shakespeare Company, at 86. > Composer and lyricist Michael Friedman, whose work includes the 2008 rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, at 41. PLUNGED The Cassini spacecraft, toward Saturn’s atmosphere, after orbiting the ringed planet since 2004. The probe’s final encounter with Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, bent its trajectory and put it on course to hurtle into Saturn on Sept. 15. RESIGNED Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, after a fifth man accused him of sexual abuse dating to the 1970s. Murray, who in 2013 became the city’s first openly gay mayor, has denied all allegations. NAMED…

IN THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN Dream, retirement is supposed to be synonymous with leisure. Not so for the tens of thousands of Americans whose safety nets were decimated after the 2008 recession; in order to find work, many of them are leaving their homes and hitting the road in RVs, trailers and other makeshift mobile dwellings. Journalist Jessica Bruder profiles this cohort in her new book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. In many ways, she explains, their existence resembles those who fled the Dust Bowl in the Great Depression. To make ends meet, these formerly middle-class senior citizens take seasonal jobs as sugar-beet harvesters, Amazon warehouse workers and campground maintenance employees, moving on whenever a job dries up. “There is hope on the road,” Bruder writes. Of…

1 BEING DUMPED FOR ANOTHER PERSON REALLY DOES HURT MORE Research in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin including over 500 participants who were interviewed about their experiences with rejection found that people reported feeling worse in scenarios like dating or a job search when they were passed over for another person vs. other reasons. 2 DIET MAY TREAT ACID REFLUX AS WELL AS DRUGS A study in JAMA Otolaryngology— Head & Neck Surgery found that a eating a Mediterranean diet with alkaline water was just as effective as proton-pump inhibitors, the strongest form of acid-reflux medicine, in alleviating symptoms for a type of reflux that affects the upper throat. 3 WALKING YOUR DOG CAN MAKE YOU HAPPIER, TOO Research in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found…

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MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN The novel won the Man Booker Prize in 1981 and was later voted the best book ever to win the prize THE SATANIC VERSES The fanciful story of two Indian actors who survive a catastrophe is Rushdie’s most controversial work JOSEPH ANTON Rushdie wrote about the fatwa and his time in hiding in this third-person memoir TWO YEARS EIGHT MONTHS AND TWENTY-EIGHT NIGHTS The title adds up to 1,001 nights, and this saga is as whimsical as its namesake…

FUTURE HOME OFTHE LIVING GOD By Louise Erdrich After a kind of reverse evolution plagues babies worldwide, a pregnant woman evades capture by government forces and goes in search of her mother. MANHATTAN BEACH By Jennifer Egan A Brooklyn woman becomes the only female diver to work on a World War II ship, learning about her past and mingling with gangsters along the way. DINNER AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH By Nathan Englander An anonymous man lingers in an Israeli jail cell while the general who imprisoned him lies dying in a hospital bed in this genre-bending novel of espionage. FRESH COMPLAINT By Jeffrey Eugenides This new story collection from the author of Middlesex offers up character portraits of a musician struggling with fatherhood, a poet turned embezzler and…

BIG NAMES FROM YOUR STREAMING QUEUE WILL APPEAR ON your reading list this fall. For several actors and directors, these titles are debuts in fiction, essayism and spiritual guidance; for others, they’re new additions to past series or first installments of new ones. To help navigate which books are best for you, we devised Netflix-esque recommendations based on books you previously enjoyed. Because you read JAMES THURBER ... TOM HANKS,Uncommon Type Across 17 stories—each featuring a typewriter, which Hanks collects— the actor introduces characters like a World War II veteran, a small-town newspaper columnist, some friends who go bowling and to the moon and an actor, albeit not an A-lister. They are often as charming and as (the descriptor has become unavoidable) all-American as the author himself. Because…

‘The first time Ben and I made love to each other was just an incredibly spiritual experience. I had never even imagined I would feel that way.’ What inspired you to write this book? Taking care of Ben was the most spiritual thing I ever did in my life, but at that time I didn’t see it that way. A week or two after he died, I thought, I want to do this book. I have to do this book. You describe yourself as more of a magical person than a religious person. What is the difference? Magic takes you into another realm. Believing in magic is in some ways surrendering or reaching for something that is transcendent, is the divine. Any religion is magic. If you believe that Jesus…

No charges in Freddie Gray case Citing “insufficient evidence,” the Department of Justice said it will not bring charges against six Baltimore police officers involved in the fatal injury of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American whose death sparked citywide protests. U.N. steps up North Korea sanctions The U.N. Security Council unanimously stepped up sanctions against North Korea following the country’s sixth nuclear test. The fresh sanctions restrict oil imports and ban textile exports. States sue Trump over ending DACA California, Minnesota, Maryland and Maine sued the Trump Administration over its decision to end DACA, a program that protected undocumented people brought to the U.S. as children. The suit claims that the President violated the Constitution and other laws when he rescinded the program. ‘Monkey selfie’ legal fight settled Photographer…

THE RESULTS OF ANY NATIONAL ELECTION tell us something important about the country in question. Beyond who won and who voted, we also learn whether the country’s institutions have earned the public’s trust. Take Kenya, for example, East Africa’s promising power. A decade ago, ethnic violence triggered by a disputed Kenyan election killed an estimated 1,400 people. That conflict centered mainly on rivalries between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin, two of Kenya’s largest ethnic groups, particularly in the Rift Valley region north of Nairobi, where the two groups live side by side. In 2013 the Kikuyu and Kalenjin struck a deal to avoid a repeat of that bloodshed, and a national election that year came off without similar violence. In August, Kenya held another presidential election. The incumbent, Uhuru Kenyatta, was…

EDITH WINDSOR, WHO DIED ON SEPT. 12 AT 88,WASN’T seeking sweeping social change at first—just fairness. Her claim to the estate of Thea Spyer, her late wife, was taxed thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act, which forbade federal recognition of same-sex unions. (With gay marriage widely unavailable stateside, the pair had been married in Canada in 2007.) But as Windsor’s case moved to the Supreme Court—where, in a 2013 decision, the act was struck down—the sweetly blunt widow from Greenwich Village became the captivating face of a national revolution. U.S. v. Windsor had immediate impact—allowing gay couples many benefits of marriage—and resounded in the years to come. Two years after Windsor, the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law of the land. But the woman whose love for her…

FORGET WILL AND KATE. FORGET GEORGE AND AMAL. AND forget, even, Barack and Michelle. The ideal modern marriage is the one between Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu and her American husband Shane Tusup. Did their epic love story slip by you? Until 2012, Hosszu was a talented but unremarkable swimmer. After the London Olympics, in which she entered four races but won no medals, she asked her then boyfriend Tusup to take over as her coach. The volatile Tusup worked Hosszu much harder, pushing her to enter more races and to lift more weights, and often got visibly angry poolside at meets if she did not win. “We agreed that the goal was never to settle for O.K.,” Tusup said about their relationship. “We’re going to keep pushing, even if we…

Thirty years after everything happened— and 31 years since he had first set foot in Southeast Asia—my father, a soldier of the Fourth Infantry Division, wrote me a letter. It was 1999, and the note came with a set of recently rediscovered photographs he and his friends had taken with an old 35-mm Minolta in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. There were images of impossibly young men, their helmets heavy on their heads, carrying M-16s, smoking cigarettes and trying to look happy—itself a form of bravery. There were pictures of the lush landscape and of villagers going about their business, drawing water and sitting, watching, some blankly, all warily. My father’s words, though, were the most poignant part of the package. “I thought you might like to have these,” he…

‘If there was an Asian boy, the other kids would be like, “Oh, you two are going to have an arranged marriage.”’ IN MANY WAYS, CELESTE NG’S HOMETOWN OF SHAKER Heights, Ohio, was all about conformity. When the best-selling author of Everything I Never Told You was growing up there, she says the affluent town’s rules included mandatory lawn mowing (infractions were penalized with a $100 fine) and a regulation putting only one mailbox and one street number on two-family homes, to disguise them as single-family homes. On the other hand, it was relatively diverse—at least in terms of black and white—and racial prejudice was frequently discussed and dissected. But when the 37-year-old Ng was growing up, there were few Asian families like hers, and slights were not uncommon. “If…

THE STARS BENEATH OUR FEET By David Barclay Moore After the murder of his older brother, a Harlem boy finds an outlet for his grief. NEVERMOOR: THE TRIALS OF MORRIGAN CROW By Jessica Townsend An 11-year-old heroine avoids death by escaping to a magical new land. WISHTREE By Katherine Applegate A 200-year-old oak tree offers solace to a Muslim girl facing discrimination in her new neighborhood. RELEASE By Patrick Ness In this modern retelling of Mrs. Dalloway, a 17-year-old confronts his feelings for his ex-boyfriend. TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN By John Green A teenage girl with OCD investigates the disappearance of a local billionaire. I AM NOT YOUR PERFECT MEXICAN DAUGHTER By Erika L. Sánchez When her “perfect” sister dies, 15-yearold Julia reconsiders…

WHAT HAPPENED Hillary Rodham Clinton has an answer to the biggest question of 2016. PROMISE ME, DAD Joe Biden remembers his most critical year of personal and political pressure. AN AMERICAN FAMILY Khizr Khan, of Democratic National Convention fame, keeps things personal. WE WERE EIGHT YEARS IN POWER: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY Ta-Nehisi Coates compiles his essays on the Obama era. BILLIONAIRE AT THE BARRICADES Laura Ingraham explains the American populist history behind President Trump.…

‘THE SITUATION SEEMS A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE OF ETHNIC CLEANSING.’ ZEID RA’AD AL-HUSSEIN, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, accusing Myanmar authorities of intentionally driving out the more than 313,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, in a keynote address before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva ‘I was punched!’ POPE FRANCIS, joking about his black eye, which he got when he lost his balance riding the Popemobile through Cartagena, Colombia, on Sept. 10 ‘I LOVE HEARING HIS VOICE.’ TIM COOK, Apple CEO, after kicking off the reveal of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X with an extended sound bite from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs Cheese Chipotle officially rolled out its version of chile con queso at all chains GOOD WEEK BAD WEEK Wine Record heat in California…

ORYX IN CHAD In August, Abu Dhabi’s Environmental Agency released 54 captivity-bred scimitar-horned oryx into the wild on the edge of the Sahara desert in Chad. The species of antelope was driven to extinction in the Central African country following civil unrest in the 1980s. SNAKES IN THE U.S. Twelve threatened eastern indigo snakes, the longest snake native to the U.S., which can grow up to 9 ft., were reintroduced to northern Florida in July by a coalition of local conservation groups. They hope to release indigo snakes into the wild every year for a decade. BEAVERS IN THE U.K. Beavers from Norway were released in Scotland’s lochs and rivers in 2009, almost 400 years after being hunted to extinction in the U.K. The rodents have since created new wetlands…

Court restores Trump travel ban The Supreme Court allowed the Trump Administration to continue to bar most refugees from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S., blocking a lower-court ruling that would have limited the travel ban’s scope. Macron’s reforms spark unrest Thousands of protesters took to the streets across France on Sept. 12 to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s changes to labor laws that would provide businesses with more flexibility to hire and fire employees. Macron was in the Caribbean assessing Hurricane Irma damage when the protests occurred. A female President for Singapore Halimah Yacob was named Singapore’s first female President. Controversially, no election took place, since the former Parliament Speaker was the only candidate the government deemed eligible for the largely ceremonial role. Philippines grants $20 for human rights…

WHEN KATE MILLETT’S book Sexual Politics was published in 1970, its author, who died on Sept. 6 at 82, revolutionized a revolution. She showed feminism’s adherents and opponents alike that they were dealing with a movement in every sense of the word, complete with its own theory and philosophy. TIME would call her the “high priestess” of women’s lib—and her book its bible. The success of Sexual Politics thrust Millett into an unsought limelight and subjected her (and her sexuality) to scathing criticism. That fame, as well as its later ebbs and flows, could be seen as an unexpected turn in the life of a woman who had been a sculptor and scholar. And yet it was also the culmination of a journey that began, she would later recall, when…

THE EFFECTS OF HURRICANES LIKE HARVEY and Irma are hard to imagine before they strike. But one thing is certain in advance: their names, taken from the World Meteorological Organization’s rotating lists of alphabetically organized male and female monikers. That system is relatively new, however—and it took years of feminist advocacy to get there. Between the 1940s and ’70s, U.S. meteorologists—who the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says were inspired by a novel in which a meteorologist names storms after ex-girlfriends—gave traditionally female names to all hurricanes. The idea was that names made storms easier to remember, which they did. But the side effect was decades’ worth of puns about women being unpredictable and destructive. In 1972, with the women’s movement in full force, National Organization for Women vice president…

IN THE PANTHEON OF LITERATURE, THE BEST novels manage to feel timeless even as they capture a snapshot of history, from Jane Austen examining Regency-era social mores in Pride and Prejudice to John Steinbeck depicting the Great Depression in TheGrapes of Wrath. But writing about the present is a delicate balance—include too many gadgets, apps and cultural reference points, and your story quickly feels irrelevant. Salman Rushdie has deftly walked that tightrope for decades. From his 1981 breakout novel Midnight’s Children, which covered everything from India’s bloody partition to the pangs of unrequited love, to 2005’s Shalimar the Clown, which took jihadism from Kashmir to Los Angeles, Rushdie has become a luminary by marrying the literary to the geopolitical. He takes on that task once again in his new novel,…

MONARCH OF SUSPENSE STEPHEN King is abdicating, sort of. The blockbuster author wrote his latest novel, Sleeping Beauties, with his son Owen King, the author of 2013’s Double Feature. In the father and son’s first collaboration, all but one woman in the small town of Dooling fall prey to a mysterious sleeping sickness, leaving the men to fend for themselves in an increasingly violent world. Television rights to Sleeping Beauties were snapped up by Anonymous Content in the spring, months ahead of the novel’s Sept. 26 release. Sleeping Beauties is just one of the elder King’s projects that fans can consume this month: It, published in 1986, has joined the ranks of other King novels adapted to film, with a new movie starring Bill Skarsgard as the evil clown. Opening…

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