Charles Siebert

Letter of Recommendation Feb. 11, 2020 Each day along the upper railings of my top-floor Brooklyn apartment’s fire escape, starlings alight and start holding forth in an ever-­evolving chorus of clown whistles, clicks and shards of expert mimicry. I’ve heard everything from them over the years: other bird calls, human voices, car horns, jackhammers, backup beeps, snippets of ice-cream-truck jingle.

The “Elephants of the Zambezi River Valley” enclosure at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kan., is a dreamscape idyll of an elephant’s natural home: five and a half sprawling acres of tree-dotted mock savanna and a 550,000-gallon pond where boated people and wading pachyderms can nearly meet on opposite sides of a discreetly submerged barrier.

Illustrations by Seymour Chwast When Adam Moss stepped down as editor of New York magazine last month, it marked the end of an era. Since taking the helm of the august title in 2004, Moss had helped set the industry standard for magazine journalism, documenting the life of the city in all its highbrow, lowbrow, brilliant, and despicable glory.