This Week in History

August 19-25

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

94 articles from this week

Featured Pick

“The First Woman to Swim the English Channel”

Lurton Blassingame · Profiles · August 28, 1926

A Profile of Gertrude Ederle, a New York City teen-ager who won an Olympic gold medal in swimming and was later the subject of books and movies.

Also Notable

“Gangs à la Mode”

Alva Johnston · A Reporter at Large · August 25, 1928

Alva Johnston’s 1928 report on the gangster killing of Little Augie, the differences between New York gangs and Chicago gangs in Prohibition-era America, and the rise of Al Capone.

“The Swindling Presidente—I”

Janet Flanner · Annals of Crime · August 26, 1939

Janet Flanner on Marthe Hanau, the “spicy Paris personality” whose financial paper Gazette du Franc swindled millions of xenophobic investors in postwar France.

“It Isn’t the Money I Mind”

Shirley Jackson · Fiction · August 25, 1945

Fiction, from 1945: Now I know I just didn’t have sense enough to see the baby had talent.

“Curator Getting Around.”

Geoffrey T. Hellman · Profiles · August 26, 1950

Profile of Dr. Sidney Dillon Ripley II, one of the countrys outstanding authorities on, and collectors of birds of the Far East. Although he holds the …

“The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi”

Calvin Trillin · Letter from Jackson · August 29, 1964

From 1964: Calvin Trillin on an encounter with Martin Luther King, Jr., during a summer of pressure.