Every week, we feature a handful of notable works of reportage or criticism, with a focus on timely writing from publications large and (mostly) small. 

This week, the dark side. Inside Africa's burgeoning narco-state of Guinea-Bissau, the elitist aesthetic's condemnation of provincialism, and the new revelations surrounding the criminal unseemliness of conservative shock-jocks James O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart.

Africa's Cocaine Hub: Guinea-Bissau a 'Drug Trafficker's Dream's

Alexander Smoltczyk | Der Spiegel

All of this wouldn't matter much to the rest of the world if this hot and humid little African country merely supplied global markets with cashew nuts and timber -- instead of an estimated annual 40 metric tons of a substance that doesn't appear in any foreign trade statistics: cocaine. General Indjai, who has now seated himself among the other generals, guests of honor and first ladies, also allegedly controls the country's drug trade. Everyone stands at attention for the national anthem: "Sun, sweat, verdure and sea … "

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 Dr. Eckleburg's Myopia

Sarah Churchwell | The Junket

What I didn’t know then, and what most people, I suspect, still don’t realize, is that Steinberg’s 1976 satire of New York’s inability to see beyond its own boundaries was not the first recognition of such American short-sightedness. Fifty years earlier, The Chicagoan, a forgotten 1920s magazine created as a response to the popularity of The New Yorker, got there first. In February 1925, Harold Ross, The New Yorker’s founder, famously articulated The New Yorker’s vision: 'The New Yorker will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.'

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The Trials of Nadia Naffe

Chris Faraone | The Phoenix

Nadia Naffe could have been a part of the Republican party’s future, symbolizing the appeal of conservative values to new constituencies. Instead, at every turn, she was insulted, abused, abandoned, and ridiculed. This is her story.

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