Just over 4.6 million people live in the state of Louisiana, a state well known for its music, food, and festivals, many of which take place in its largest city, New Orleans. From the northern uplands to the Mississippi River Delta, here are a few glimpses of the landscape of Louisiana and some of the wildlife and people calling it home.This photo story is part of Fifty, a collection of images from each of the United States.

Cole Burston / Bloomberg / GettyOn the Fourth of July, I drove across the border from the United States into Canada. Two months later, I drove the other way. Both times, I crossed at the same point: just east of Lake Ontario, amid the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River. Both times, I was driving a rented U-Haul, carrying household effects I was swapping between city and vacation house. And there the similarities stopped.

Tim EnthovenAround 597 a.d., Pope Gregory I dispatched an expedition to England to convert the Anglo-Saxon king of Kent and his subjects. The leader of the mission, a monk named Augustine, had orders to shoehorn the new Christians into Church-sanctioned marriages.

A weary friend of mine—another working mom—recently texted to say she couldn’t decide which aspect of daily life during the coronavirus pandemic was worse: “the insanity or the monotony.” Either way, the misery will not end when 2020 does. The new year will inherit many of the same problems that have become so grindingly familiar in 2020.

This might seem a very strange time to publish a book recommending that we read the voices from the past. After all, isn’t the present hammering at our door rather violently? There’s a worldwide pandemic; a presidential election is about to consume the attention of America; and if all that weren’t sufficient, we are entering hurricane season. The present is keeping us plenty busy.

The death of Chadwick Boseman last week revealed the ability of art to imagine new, daring possibilities for the future. In his roles as T’Challa, Jackie Robinson, and James Brown, Boseman expertly portrayed Black icons and heroes, providing visions of hope by embodying individuals who challenged power narratives. That is, in many ways, the core of Afrofuturism, a tradition represented in a long line of books written by Black writers such as Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany.

LATROBE, Pennsylvania—President Donald Trump has long signaled that if he loses reelection, it would surely be illegitimate. With his base primed to believe that victory is the only acceptable outcome, the post-election period could be the most combustible in memory.