Backblogged: National Magazine Awards Nominees: The New Yorker It's this letter, more than almost anything else, that makes Irv feel the weight of the years ahead, when he expected to be an active father and grandfather but instead finds himself endlessly turning over the details of a botched C.I. operation. From "The Throwaways," Sarah Stillman's article on the use of young offenders as confidential informants, a finalist in the Public Interest category. Syria is at war with itself, and, inevitably, all sides will misrepresent their foes and conceal aspects of their own agendas. From "The Implosion," by Jon Lee Anderson, about Syria's civil war; a finalist in the Reporting category. What the dead don't know piles up, though we don't notice it at first. From "Over the Wall," Roger Angell's Personal History piece on his memories of deceased family and friends (subscription required), a finalist in Essays and Criticism. How was it that he and his buddies, all good and patriotic young men, had been thrust into a situation where they were almost certain to kill innocent people? From "Atonement," Dexter Filkins's article on an Iraq veteran seeking out the family he harmed, a finalist in Feature Writing. Only when the needle was in his arm did he overhear the doctors saying that he had been given something lethal. From "Secrets of Edgewood," an online package built around Raffi Khatchadourian's article on the American military's experiments with psychochemical warfare; it's a finalist in the Multimedia category. Photograph by Tomás Munita/The New York Times/Redux.