Weekend Reading: Rape in a Mennonite Community, Lions' Social Lives: The New Yorker This weekend's reading opens darkly: at Vice, Jean Friedman-Rudovsky writes about an isolated community of ultra-conservative Old Colonist Mennonites in Bolivia that experienced a case of serial rapes that went on for years and might still be going on. Nine men were convicted, in 2011, of orchestrating the attacks. They had developed a method of releasing airborne cow tranquilizers into the homes of their victims and attacking them while they were asleep. For a long time, the rapes were attributed to demons, and the community simply ignored them and carried on with their lives. Friedman-Rudovsky's story examines the hermetical culture of Old Colonist Mennonites and how power dynamics of that culture might have perpetuated this systematic sexual abuse. We read about a very different kind of closed community with David Quammen's story in National Geographic about the social lives of lions. Lions are the only cats that live in social groups, and prides exist through a continually unfolding drama of shifting alliances and rivalries. Quammen follows scientists with the Serengeti Lion Project, a study of group dynamics among lions that has spanned decades. The animals in the story are subjected to some dubious anthropomorphization, but it's still difficult not to read to the end to find out what happens to C-Boy, the protagonist lion who may or may not have the house cat's nine lives. And finally, at The Verge, Jesse Hicks writes about what might be an unsolved historical mystery: the theory that John Wilkes Booth was not killed in a Virginia barn after fleeing the scene of Lincoln's assassination, but rather escaped to Oklahoma and lived as a vagrant under the name of David E. George. Some Booth descendants are among the believers in this theory. There are also a few independent researchers who have taken it up as a private obsession. They are now one DNA test away from settling the matter, but so far have been denied permission for the necessary exhumations. The case offers an interesting alternative version of a key event in our country's past and serves as a reminder that history could have been written very differently if different people had been in charge.