Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
Bad Professor: The Rise and Fall of John Donovan (Ian Frisch / Town & Country)
Donovan, dialing 911 and placing his cellphone to his ear, didn’t know the depths to which his family name would sink in the coming years, the heights of bitterness to which the rivalry with his children would rise, or the lengths he would go to wrest control of the money that hung over his family like a cloud. All John Donovan knew at that moment was that he had a story to tell the dispatcher on the other end of the line. He claimed that his eldest son, James, had used his high-profile job at Goldman Sachs to launder $180 million—and now had sent two Russian assassins to kill him.
In that moment, John Donovan appeared to be the victim of a family spat that had become violent, but the truth—which has been laid bare in thousands of pages of court documents spanning nearly two decades—was quite the opposite.
Doctors Are Failing Patients With Disabilities (Emma Yasinski / The Atlantic)
About a decade ago, Lagu was discharging a patient who was partially paralyzed and used a wheelchair. The patient’s discharge notes repeatedly recommended an appointment with a specialist, but it hadn’t happened. Lagu asked why. Eventually, the patient’s adult daughter told Lagu that she hadn’t been able to find a specialist who would see a patient in a wheelchair. Incredulous, Lagu started making calls. “I could not find that kind of doctor within 100 miles of her house who would see her,” she says, “unless she came in an ambulance and was transferred to an exam table by EMS—which would have cost her family more than $1,000 out of pocket.
Joe Lycett to David Beckham on Qatar
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Image: Meiying Ng