This Week’s Issue: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

Plus: ballet in the age of social distancing, searching for refuge after the Second World War, and new fiction by George Saunders. View in browser | Update your preferences Coronavirus Chronicles How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System At a laboratory in Manhattan, researchers have discovered how SARS-CoV-2 uses our defenses against us. By James Somers A Reporter at Large Why Trump Can’t Afford to Lose The President has survived one impeachment, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if Joe Biden wins. By Jane Mayer Annals of National Security How a C.I.A. Coverup Targeted a Whistle-blower When a Justice Department lawyer exposed the agency’s secret role in drug cases, leadership in the intelligence community retaliated. By Ronan Farrow Onward and Upward with the Arts How New York City Ballet Took On the Pandemic With its season—including “The Nutcracker”—cancelled, the company created a video series that asks, What can dance, so dependent on bodies sharing space, become in the age of social distancing? By Michael Schulman Comment The Trouble with Election Projections Projecting a winner isn’t the same as counting votes—and that’s true more than ever in 2020. By Jill Lepore Books Does Knowing God Just Take Practice? For both the faithful and the doubtful, the source of religious experience can seem mysterious. One anthropologist explores belief in more mundane terms—as a form of expertise. By James Wood Books Searching for Refuge After the Second World War The end of the war brought a sense of possibility—a chance to redefine civilization. But for Jews displaced throughout Europe more doors closed than opened. By Amy Davidson Sorkin The Theatre Reënacting the Trial of a Black Woman Convicted of Voter Fraud “Why Would I Dare: The Trial of Crystal Mason” echoes Langston Hughes’s “The Ballot and Me.” By Vinson Cunningham Fiction “Ghoul” “I guess one never realizes how little one wants to be kicked to death until one hears a crowd doing that exact same thing to someone nearby,” I say. By George Saunders Newsletters Sign Up for The New Yorker’s Books & Fiction Newsletter Book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature, twice a week. Humor from The New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs Wile E. Coyote, Republican Strategist “What if we put the polling place at the end of a shaky rope bridge?” By Nicky Guerreiro and Ethan Simon Cartoons From The Issue Cartoons from the Issue Drawings and drollery from this week’s magazine. This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker. To insure delivery, we recommend adding newyorker@newsletters.newyorker.com, to your contacts, while noting that it is a no-reply address. Please send all newsletter feedback to tnyinbox@newyorker.com. For more from The New Yorker, sign up for our newsletters, shop the store, and sign in to newyorker.com, where subscribers always have unlimited access. Contact us with questions. View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2020. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.