Harper's Magazine May 2024

Billie’s Blues My father’s birth name was James Brown. Changing his surname was his expression of solidarity with Billie Holiday, and mandatory if he wanted to make it as a soul singer in the era of “The Payback”: there could be no duplicate James Brown. She wore her stage name like skin; identities can change, even after death. The goal, if we love her enough to live in her name, as I do by inheritance or luck, is to make sure we don’t collude with those who would make her a relic of entertainment, an idea or a set of grandiloquent myths. Best to recall, as Ian Penman does [“Lady Day of the Alhambra,” Review, March], that the more Holiday’s life “has been fact-checked and untangled and demystified, the more…

In bookstores in Rome, you can buy a poster headed, in English, I HAVE A DREAM. It has nothing to do with Martin Luther King Jr. or the civil-rights struggle, instead being a map of an imaginary subway system that seamlessly connects all the neighborhoods of the city. In reality, Rome’s public-transportation infrastructure is shaky. Buses come infrequently. Many people resort to rented bikes or scooters. There is a subway system, with just three lines, connecting the central station to a few major places, but since it opened in 1955, it has grown at a sluggish pace. Each time construction begins, yet more important archaeological remains are discovered and it has to be halted again while experts work out how to proceed. “We want to serve history only to the…

By George Beebe and Anatol Lieven, adapted from “The Diplomatic Path to a Secure Ukraine,” a paper that was published in February by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. More than two years into Russia’s invasion, it is increasingly clear that the Ukrainian army is not capable of reconquering the territories lost to Russia; instead, without continued and massive Western aid, the Ukrainians will suffer eventual defeat owing to Russia’s huge economic and demographic superiority, and the long-term continuation of such aid cannot be guaranteed. Sanctions have not cratered Russia’s economy or crippled its war effort. Russia has corrected many of the problems that plagued its forces during the war’s first year and pursued an attrition strategy that is steadily exhausting Ukraine’s supply of fighters, emptying Western weapons stockpiles, and…

From transcripts of calls made to the Welsh Ambulance Service in 2023. OPERATOR: Tell me exactly what’s happened. CALLER: Yesterday evening, we had some kebab, and I might have had a little bit more than I’m used to. This morning, I have a very painful stomach. CALLER: I have a bottom-part denture, and I went to clean my teeth, and I said, “Where’s my false teeth?” Could I have swallowed my false teeth? OPERATOR: So you don’t know where your false teeth are? OPERATOR: Is the patient awake? CALLER: Yeah, it’s me, my hand’s stuck in the door. OPERATOR: Is the door locked at the moment? CALLER: Yeah, it’s locked. Mum! No, my hand’s stuck in the fucking letter box. OPERATOR: How old are you? CALLER: Open the door—my hand’s…

By Ghassan Zaqtan, from Strangers in Light Coats: Selected Poems, 2014–2020, which was published in November by Seagull Books. Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger. I was born into the Christian households of Beit Jala,the spacious stone homesover the olive presseswhere in autumn the heavy millstones turnand the Arab women cross themselvesas the oil gushes down the runnels and the deep odor curlsbeneath the arches, beneath the decades. I was born among womeninto the stream of hymns,when Sundays had the scent of mint teaon the Muslim women’s balconies,and between the robes of women fasting and virtue’s palisades.The gift of patience clung to me,and the bird thoughts which they store beneath their pillows,and the joyful dispositions that they set looseinto the close air of the villages of the south. I…

By Mark Kurlansky, from The Core of an Onion, which was published in November by Bloomsbury. James Beard once wrote, “I can easily make a whole meal of onion sandwiches, for to me they are one of the greatest treats I know.” According to legend, Beard built his name on an onion sandwich. Bill Rhode was famous for hors d’oeuvre recipes, one of which was finely sliced onion on a piece of brioche. Most great food writers lifted recipes from others, and so Beard, until then a little-known caterer, got a great deal of attention when he published his onion-sandwich recipe, which was a slice of onion on a buttery brioche. Even if this story is apocryphal, it is true that, to Beard, an onion sandwich made a great meal.…