A boom in the production and export of cotton made Iran the richest region of the Islamic caliphate in the ninth and tenth centuries. Yet in the eleventh century, Iran's impressive agricultural economy entered a steep decline, bringing the country's primacy to an end. Richard W. Bulliet advances se[...]

Photographer and painter Richard Billingham (born 1970) grew up in a cramped, high-rise tenement apartment with his mother and father in Birmingham, England. His father, Ray, was an unemployed, chronic alcoholic, often sleeping the whole day through, while Liz, Billingham's overweight and heavily ta[...]