The Real Power Behind the ISIS, the Lure of $300,000 Handbags and The Greatest Says Goodbye: What We’re Reading

Our editors are a diverse lot, and are constantly perusing a long and broad list of publications. Fashion? Art? Architecture? Culinary studies? Semantics? It’s all here. In What We’re Reading, PaperCity shares the wealth.

Joseph Mitchell and Joe Gould are forever entwined. Mitchell, a superb writer whose tenure at The New Yorker is legendary, spun tales of his adopted city (New York) for many years at the magazine, but Gould stumped him, in a big way. Jill Lepore’s new book, Joe Gould’s Teeth, is a “marvelous” read, says Scott W. Berg, and goes a long way toward explaining the Mitchell-Gould relationship.

ISIS has been in the news for a while now, and though the group has suffered losses, it seems its recruiting powers are still intact. Thousands of men and women from countries far and wide have joined its ranks, offering to sacrifice themselves for the good of a caliphate. Wherein lies the group’s power? An anthropologist set out to find it.

Handbags are — at least some of them — the stuff of legend. The Birkin Bag makes people swoon. Question: Would you pay $300,000 for a handbag? Click here for some heady auction action.

Finally, the world lost a giant this past week. His name was Muhammad Ali, and he was for a long time the most famous human being alive. Youngsters in Africa and housewives in New Jersey admired him, and he took boxing to its heights. He was a warrior, but also a man of conscience and defiance. Read this for a personal take on the man and his soul.