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Best New Yorker Articles of 2006

Explore 47 featured picks from The New Yorker's 2006 issues.

47 picks · 47 issues · Top author: Elizabeth Kolbert (2)

Most featured section: Q. & A. (website)

Featured Picks

Butterfly Lessons
Elizabeth Kolbert · Annals of Science · January 9

Elizabeth Kolbert on the effects of global warming on butterflies, other insects, and plant species around the world.

Name That Source
Jeffrey Toobin · Annals of Law · January 16

Why are the courts leaning on journalists?

Hot on the Trail
Ben Greenman · Q. & A. (website) · January 23

Tad Friend talks with Ben Greeman about police car chases in Los Angeles and what they mean to the city.

Code-Breaker
Jim Holt · Books · February 6

The life and death of Alan Turing.

The Nuclear Edge
Amy Davidson Sorkin · Q. & A. (website) · February 13

Steve Coll talks with Amy Davidson about the tensions between India and Pakistan, the role of jihadis, and the nuclear black market.

The Memo
Jane Mayer · Annals of the Pentagon · February 27

Writing in 2006, Jane Mayer investigates how an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees at Guantánamo Bay was thwarted.

Under Siege
Keith Gessen · Books · March 6

Keith Gessen on the Soviet writer’s life and work.

The Terror Last Time
Caleb Crain · Books · March 13

What happened at Haymarket.

Gleason
Louise Erdrich · Fiction · March 20

Fiction by Louise Erdrich: “The boy stood, frail and skinny, in the snow with a sad look on his face and a gun in his hand.”

After the Warlords
Amy Davidson Sorkin · Q. & A. (website) · March 27

Jon Lee Anderson talks with Amy Davidson about President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, of Liberia, her country’s civil war, and his time as a boy there.

Citizen Penn
John Lahr · Profiles · April 3

John Lahr’s 2006 profile of Sean Penn. “He is warm but no hail-fellow, polite but without that come-hither thing. ‘You see me from ten feet away, everyone thinks I’m gonna bite or something,’ Penn says.”

The Lesson of Tal Afar
George Packer · Letter from Iraq · April 10

Is it too late for the Administration to correct its course in Iraq?

Faith Matters
Matt Dellinger · Q. & A. (website) · April 17

Peter J. Boyer discusses the controversy and the changing face of religion in America.

The Ecstatic Truth
Daniel Zalewski · Profiles · April 24

Werner Herzog’s quest.

Whole Hog
Matt Dellinger · Q. & A. (website) · May 1
The Road to Welles
Richard Brody · DVD Notes · May 8

DVD NOTES about Orson Welles’s “Mr. Arkadin.”

The Perfect Mark
Mitchell Zuckoff · Annals of Crime · May 15

After John Worley, a Massachusetts psychotherapist, received the first e-mail, he replied, “I can help and I am interested.”

Dog Days
Ben Greenman · Q. & A. (website) · May 22

Malcolm Gladwell discusses Cesar Millan, the host of the National Geographic TV show “Dog Whisperer.” and what canine behavior tells us about human …

Big Bird
Thomas Mallon · Books · May 29

Thomas Mallon discusses a biography of Harper Lee and her process in writing “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Dimension
Alice Munro · Fiction · June 5

Fiction by Alice Munro: “None of the people she worked with knew what had happened. Or, if they did, they didn’t let on. . . . Also, the job they had found for her was in a town a good distance away from where she used to live.”

Waiting for Death in a Hotel
Italo Calvino · Fiction · June 12

Italo Calvino’s short story, set in Italy during the Second World War, about fighters imprisoned in a hotel by Nazi forces.

Watching the Waterfront
William Finnegan · A Reporter at Large · June 19

A REPORTER AT LARGE about mobsters, terrorists, and port security at New York Harbor. Global Terminal, in Bayonne, New Jersey, has one clear advantage …

Fifa’s Fiefdom
James Surowiecki · The Financial Page · June 26

From 2006: James Surowiecki writes about the gap between the professed ideals of soccer’s governing body and the corruption-riddled reality.

Cheney’s Cheney
Blake Eskin · Q. & A. (website) · July 3
The Agent
Lawrence Wright · A Reporter at Large · July 10

Did the C.I.A. stop an F.B.I. detective from preventing 9/11?

Folie à Deux
William Trevor · Fiction · July 24

Fiction, from 2006: They were nine years old then, when secrets became deception.

At Sea
Blake Eskin · Q. & A. (website) · July 31
THE “IC” FACTOR
Hendrik Hertzberg · Comment · August 7

Hendrik Hertzberg on what the President calls his opposition party.

The Philosopher Stoned
Adam Kirsch · Books · August 21

What drugs taught Walter Benjamin.

Manifold Destiny
Sylvia Nasar · Annals of Mathematics · August 28

David Gruber and Sylvia Nasar on the math world’s war over who solved the Poincaré conjecture. Among the contenders are Shing-Tung Yau and Grigory Perelman.

The Searchers
Dana Goodyear · Annals of the West · September 4

Dana Goodyear on the isolated education offered at Deep Springs College.

The Master Plan
Lawrence Wright · Annals of Terrorism · September 11

For the new theorists of jihad, Al Qaeda is just the beginning.

The Wanderer
David Remnick · Profiles · September 18

David Remnick on the former President, the work of the Clinton Foundation, and Clinton's efforts to elect Hillary.

For “Four Poems” by Ko Un
Brother Anthony of Taizé · Poems · September 25

I’d like to buy her some toffee

Command Performance
John Lahr · Profiles · October 2

The reign of Helen Mirren.

Battle Royal
Anthony Lane · The Current Cinema · October 9

Stephen Frears’s “The Queen.”

The Formula
Malcolm Gladwell · Annals of Entertainment · October 16

What if you built a machine to predict hit movies?

Rewriting Nature
Adam Gopnik · Life and Letters · October 23

Adam Gopnik on why the evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin spent so long preparing to write his masterpiece, “On the Origin of Species.”

Working Poets
Alice Quinn · Q. & A. (website) · October 30

The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Alice Quinn, talks with these two longtime contributors about how they discovered their vocation, the impact of the …

DEAD RECKONING
Elizabeth Kolbert · Books · November 6

The Armenian genocide and the politics of silence.

Seeing Things
Cynthia Zarin · Profiles · November 13

The art of Olafur Eliasson.

Night Train to Frankfurt
Marisa Silver · Fiction · November 20

Short story about a woman taking her mother, who is ill with cancer, to an alternative treatment center in Frankfurt, Germany… They were going to boil …

The Next Act
Seymour M. Hersh · Annals of National Security · November 27

Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?

“Borat”: the Memo
George Saunders · Shouts & Murmurs · December 4

SHOUTS & MURMURS about a fictional memo regarding the Sacha Baron Cohen’s controversial comedy “Borat.” The writer suggests various ways to …

Tango
Thomas McGuane · Fiction · December 11

Acknowledging that there is a difference between being naive and being innocent, I will say that I was entirely naive back then.

Ask the Optimist!
George Saunders · Shouts & Murmurs · December 18

Reporting, Profiles, daily news, cultural coverage, podcasts, videos, and cartoons from The New Yorker.

Bedside Reading
David Cantwell · Books · December 25

Contributors to the Winter Fiction Issue recommend books that they particularly enjoyed in 2006.

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