This Week in History

June 17-23

The best New Yorker articles published during this week across 100 years of the magazine.

91 articles from this week

Featured Pick

“The Preacher Who Claimed His Money Fell from the Sky”

A. J. Liebling · Profiles · June 27, 1936

Part 3 of St. Clair McKelway and A.J. Liebling’s Profile of Father Divine. Through his ministry in Harlem, Father Divine preached peace and equality—all while acquiring blocks of brownstones, two newspapers, restaurants, and a fleet of limousines.

Also Notable

“How Duke Ellington Took Jazz from the Back Yard to Buckingham Palace”

Richard O. Boyer · Profiles · June 24, 1944

Part 1 of Richard O. Boyer’s “The Hot Bach” Profile series about the jazz musician Duke Ellington and how he composes his songs, including “New World A-Coming.”

“The Lottery”

Shirley Jackson · Fiction · June 26, 1948

Fiction, from 1948: “The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the directions; most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around.”

“Princess Elizabeth, Heiress Apparent”

Mollie Panter-Downes · Letter from London · June 23, 1951

Mollie Panter-Downes reports from London on the Trooping of the Colour ceremony, in 1951, and its outstanding figure, Princess Elizabeth on horseback: “the lone apex of an otherwise massively masculine show.”

“Silent Spring—II”

Rachel Carson · A Reporter at Large · June 23, 1962

Part II of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking 1962 series on the environmental impact of DDT and other pesticides.

“Immortal Gatito”

Mavis Gallant · Annals of Justice · June 26, 1971

Mavis Gallant on the case of Gabrielle Russier, which scandalized France.