Interviews

Sex Slaves, Scandals Drive Fairstein’s `Hell Gate': Interview When the rusty Ukrainian freighter ran aground on a sandbar near New York City’s Rockaway Beach, the bodies started washing ashore. The boat was crammed with human cargo, poor men and women desperate for a new life, exploited by traffickers known as “snakeheads.”

Severed Nose Takes a Walk Through St. Petersburg, Met: Review A nose goes rogue, running off to experience life at its absurd best.

Mithradates Poisoned Mom, Wed Sis, Blitzed Rome: Lewis Lapham A comet lit up the sky at the conception of Mithradates in 135 B.C., heralding the birth of a great savior-king. But when his mother, Queen Laodice, poisoned his father so she could sit alone on the throne of Pontus, a worried little Mithradates fled the capital with a small band of teenage friends.

David Rockwell Keeps Swarovski Curtain for Oscars: Interview David Rockwell takes a short break in the lobby of the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, where he has been handling one small emergency after another during preparations for the Academy Awards this weekend.

Consider Pleasures of Goat Herding, Cheese: Manuela Hoelterhoff Brad Kessler wanted to see fewer people and more trees, as he tells us at the start of his splendid “Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese.”