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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Aaron Parsley’s survivors account of the flash floods in Texas earlier this month that swept him and six members of his family away is an extraordinary account of terror, courage and loss.
(Texas Monthly, approx 23 mins reading time)
“We’re moving. We’re moving,” Patrick said. The realization was terrifying. The rushing, still-rising water had lifted the house off its pillars. It was afloat. And then it wasn’t. I saw part of the deck rip away. I heard windows break from every corner. Cracks split the walls. We crashed into something, probably a tree. I don’t know how long it took—ten seconds, maybe fifteen—for the house to come apart. Alissa managed to keep both kids on the countertop, one hand on each, still trying to reassure them. As the house came undone, she grabbed one in each arm. This is the part that will forever haunt me. If I or anyone else had been closer to them, we would have helped her. We would have grabbed one of the kids. But we didn’t know that we were about to be plunged into the water. We simply didn’t know. Alissa remembers two things after she and her children hit the water. She heard Clay coughing. And she heard Rosemary saying “Mama.” This is when our stories diverge.
Sophie Elmhirst’s excellent reporting brings readers inside the trial of two parents, who were this week found guilty by a jury of the manslaughter of their newborn baby in a case that shocked the UK.
(The Guardian, approx 43 mins reading time)
The next day, Marten didn’t turn up. It felt like a direct challenge to the judge, testing his resolve the way a child tests a parent’s boundaries. The trial had become a tussle for control: Lucraft could demand Marten’s compliance all he liked, but he couldn’t force her to attend. The linear, rule-based system on which a trial depends had met its perfect enemy in Marten, who felt no deference to that system and who seemed to operate in a kind of swirl of impulsivity, knocking logic off its tracks at every turn. When Lucraft entered, Fitzgibbon rose and the two men stared at each other in loaded silence. “Mr Fitzgibbon,” said Lucraft, eventually.
“Well it’s a conundrum isn’t it,” said Fitzgibbon. “There are two possibilities. One is that this is a sham and that she simply doesn’t want to come to court. The other is that she’s telling the truth and has a debilitating toothache.” Fitzgibbon suggested the judge should lean towards the second option. Lucraft allowed his frustration to flow. He had bent over backwards for Marten already, he said. She was on trial for very serious offences. “Constance Marten is not running this trial, I am,” he declared, his voice resonating round the room in an uncharacteristically dramatic pronouncement, as if he had to remind himself of his authority.
It is a sport that is seen by many as exclusive to the elite. In this piece, Matt Reynolds reports on how a deal made on a superyacht between a businessman and a player to clone his best horse became the sport’s biggest scandal.
(WIRED, approx 29 mins reading time)
As the US polo season rolled around in the spring, Meeker and his son would often visit the Cambiasos in Florida. His son was similar in age to Poroto, and the two boys would play polo together, sometimes roping in their fathers for practice games. “If he ever runs away from home I will have to call you and [Cambiaso’s wife] Maria, because that’s where he would go!” Meeker messaged Cambiaso in 2018. The polo player promised that he’d help Meeker’s son with anything he needed in polo. Meeker told Cambiaso he dreamed of a day when his son, Aiden, would sponsor Poroto Cambiaso’s team and the two boys would ride on cloned horses together. More than anything, the men trusted one another. Loyalties shift quickly in polo, and with the clones garnering so much attention there was always the possibility that a jealous rival would try to come between them. Still, the oilman and the polo star had been through enough to know they could rely on one another. “I appreciate your friendship more than anything,” Meeker messaged in August 2018. His friend agreed. “Me to [sic] thank you Alan. i feel safe with you.” He shouldn’t have.
Kelsey McKinney on the benefits that come from reading The Bard.
(Defector, approx 9 mins reading time)
I have the collected works of Shakespeare in the New Temple editions. I bought these editions because they have red spines, and I think that they look very nice all lined up on my shelf. When I purchased them a few years ago, I didn’t give much consideration to their interior style, but as I’ve read more and more of them, I’ve really fallen in love. The New Temple Shakespeares do not divide the text very prominently. The acts and scenes are noted in the top right corner of each page, but otherwise the editors chose not to chop up the action with section breaks. Because of this, the plays are easier for me to read as stories without getting bogged down thinking about the staging of it. To read this way—slowly and with difficulty—reminded me of childhood. It’s mentally exhausting to read something that you cannot digest easily and quickly. But unlike other times, when I had been so desperate to understand it all, I allowed myself the freedom to miss things, or to have a joke go over my head. I let the play open itself up before me, and to my surprise, I found myself having so much fun reading it.
A professor of Holocaust and genocide studies outlines why he believes Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
(The New York Times, approx 18 mins reading time)
Israel’s actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population. I believe the goal was — and remains today — to force the population to leave the Strip altogether or, considering that it has nowhere to go, to debilitate the enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation and medical aid to such an extent that it is impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to maintain or reconstitute their existence as a group. My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.
As Tim Spiers writes, it takes more than few quid and a nice car to get players to sign for a club these days. He’s got the details of some of the methods and sweeteners that clubs use to make sure they get the player they want.
(The Athletic, approx 10 mins reading time)
“The higher up the chain you go, the more outlandish the demands get,” an agent with Premier League players on his client roster, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships, told The Athletic. “It can be something very specific — like helping to bring their pet into the country if they’re moving from overseas to England — or something fairly normal, like a corporate box for their family and friends in the stadium, which is a pretty common stipulation. The vast majority of the time, it’s the player instigating these perks, and it’s always better to bring them up early in my experience, especially if it’s really important to them. You don’t want to be throwing extras at a club when negotiations are close to being finalised because that can risk annoying the buying club when a deal might be in the balance.”
On this day, 56 years ago, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. This longread from 1969 immerses you in what it was like to watch the historic event in New York City.
(The New Yorker, approx 28 mins reading time)
The noise was a constant, high-level mixture of automobile engines, horns, police whistles (twenty policemen were patrolling the area), the shouts of venders (they moved through the crowd selling pennants, souvenir buttons, pretzels, and ice cream), the voices and beeps from the TV audio system, and the chatter of the people crowded on the sidewalks behind police barricades. But as the time for the astronauts’ exit from the LM drew near, the crowd began to grow quiet. Anticipation was obvious in people’s faces, and the talk became a sort of nervous undertone. At ten-fifteen, a newcomer—a young man carrying a pack on his back—approached a man in a blue jacket and said, “I presume they’ve got to the moon.” “You don’t know?” the man in blue asked. “Where have you been all day?” “Just flown in. English,” said the young man. “Hell, they’re about ready to step out any second now,” the man in blue said. The young man said, “Stone me! They must be way ahead of schedule. Oh, great! This is fantastic!”
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.
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