They said that peace had come to South Sudan, but Joseph Guloch knew he had to see it for himself.

So on Aug. 6, the morning after the country’s leaders signed a cease-fire agreement to end the five-year civil war, he walked out of the displaced-persons camp where he lives with his family in South Sudan’s capital, Juba. On a nearby road, he boarded a wheezing bus to the international airport, a cluster of dirt-streaked tents flanked by rows of humanitarian airplanes.

The president, Salva Kiir, was about to land from Khartoum, Sudan, where the peace deal had been inked, and Mr. Guloch wanted to be there when he did.

Like many of the 10,000 South Sudanese who gathered at the airport that day, Guloch was tired of hearing about peace secondhand. He wanted to know what the president had to say to people like him, the ones who’d spent years in the tented cities of the displaced that sprawl across this country and its neighbors, the ones still waiting for the signal that their lives could begin again.

“It’s one thing to talk of peace, it’s another thing to make it happen,” he says. The leaders who had gathered in Khartoum “are the people at the top level.” Was this peace just a thing that happened in air-conditioned conference rooms in far-away cities, he wondered, or was it a thing people like him – “the people at the bottom level” – could rely on too?

He still doesn’t know. 

In the days and weeks after Mr. Kiir’s jubilant return to Juba, negotiations have continued haltingly to fill in the details of that initial promise of peace. On Thursday evening, dignitaries gathered in Khartoum approved a peace agreement developed from the initial Aug. 5 deal. Negotiations will continue next month. However, Riek Machar, the most powerful rebel leader, warned that he opposed several of its provisions, suggesting that cracks may already be forming in the shaky alliance between the government and its former adversaries.

For many here, that wouldn’t be much of a surprise. South Sudanese know it doesn’t take much for peace to warp and crack. This, after all, is the second peace agreement in three years, and the latest in a long list of cease-fires in the course of the five-year civil war. And a large part of the reason for those continued failures, many say, is the very problem Guloch was concerned about – that a peace between leaders is not the same thing as peace for a country.

Indeed, many observers – including the United States – have warned that this round of peace negotiations, like those before it, will likely fail in the long run if it doesn’t include more than just top military and political leaders, whose rivalries have repeatedly stymied attempts at lasting peace.

“We remain steadfast that the best hope for sustainable peace is a process inclusive of ordinary men and women, civil society, religious leaders, ethnic minorities, and other excluded groups,” the governments of the US, Britain, and Norway said in a joint statement earlier this month. “Considerable challenges lie ahead, and we are concerned that the arrangements agreed to date are not realistic or sustainable.”

'Hope is not a strategy' 

The reasons peace has proven so elusive in the world’s youngest country also stretch deep into the region’s history. Shoved together by British colonialism, Sudan’s mostly Muslim north and its mostly Christian and animist south were at odds from the earliest days of the country’s existence in the 1950s. Resentment over heavy-handed northern governance of the south led to two civil wars, which sprawled across the entire second half of the 20^th century and scattered the southern Sudanese across the region and the world. Without a country they could relate to, most southerners’ strongest sense of community came from within their own regions and ethnic groups – a fact that continued after they won independence in 2011.

“For most South Sudanese, South Sudan itself is just an abstract idea,” says Jok Madut Jok, the executive director of the Sudd Institute, a South Sudanese think tank. Many people’s closest loyalties, instead, have always been to their own communities.

So when a power struggle between Mr. Kiir, the president, and his former deputy, Mr. Machar, turned violent in December 2013, it quickly spread. Kiir, who comes from South Sudan’s largest ethnic group, the Dinka, and Machar, who is Nuer, used South Sudan’s old ethnic fault lines to stoke the tension. In the years since, forces led by each of the two men have been responsible for widespread atrocities, including mass rape and murder of civilians and the recruitment of child soldiers. The conflict has displaced more than 4 million people – a third of the country’s population – and brought on repeated, man-made famines in several areas of the country.

David Lewis/Reuters

A UN peacekeeper keeps watch as children gather in a camp for displaced civilians in Juba, South Sudan, June 17, 2017. South Sudan's civil war has displaced more than 4 million people – a third of the country’s population.

Still deeply suspicious of one another, Kiir and Machar have repeatedly tussled in these peace negotiations over issues like how many seats in government each man’s party should have, and how to carve up the country into states in ways that would be most beneficial to their supporters.

And so, in camps like the one where Guloch lives, South Sudanese wait out this peace process as they have those before it – with a hope weighed down by history.

“Hope is a limitless quality in South Sudan, but people here also know hope is not a strategy for forming a country,” says Dr. Jok. “In addition to hope, you need plans, you need roadmaps, you need negotiations made in good faith, and we know that too.”

7,000 stories

And few people know that better that Guloch and the other residents of Mahad, an internally displaced persons camp huddled between abandoned buildings on the sunbaked grounds of an old university campus in Juba, where more than 7,000 South Sudanese have taken shelter over the past five years.

7,000 people means 7,000 stories of flight, tales told to outsiders in blunt, simple summaries.

“When the war came, it didn’t come only for those who carried the guns,” says Nyoyam Won, who came to the camp four years ago with her husband and seven children from the northern city of Malakal. “That war came for everyone. We had to leave.”

For Guloch, too, the end of normal life came quickly. “There was fighting. There was no food. So we ran,” he says.

In the camp in Juba, his old life gave way to a new one that seemed to play out in slow motion. On the dirt floor of his flimsy donor-issued tent, his wife had given birth to a baby boy, Baba. On that same floor, Baba had learned to crawl and then to walk, tottering between the bed frame and the two plastic chairs pushed against the wall. But even as his boy grew into a gangly toddler, Guloch himself felt frozen. Life went on, and also it didn’t. Some days, he wandered out of the camp to a nearby street corner, where he sat watching the city – the men gossiping in nearby tea shops, the motorcycle drivers loitering in the shade waiting for customers, the gaunt street children tracing circles in the dirt with sticks.

“You look at your family and you see your kids have nothing, your wife has nothing, and you just feel ashamed,” he says. “So you go out to get away from it all.” But there wasn’t really anywhere to go. Without money, he could only get so far. And so, he always came back.

“Truth be told, there is nothing for us here, but what can we do except wait?”

Silvano Yokwe and Samir Bol contributed reporting. Support for the reporting of this story was provided by the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Charles Krupa/AP

Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, who is challenging incumbent US Rep. Michael Capuano, greets supporters after a debate at the University of Massachusetts in Boston Aug. 7.

Two minutes after she slides into the pew, Ayanna Pressley is back on her feet. She walks to the dais, thanks the church leaders who invited her up to speak, and turns her smile on the 50 or so African-American worshippers at the Berea Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

It’s the final leg of the state primary campaign and Ms. Pressley, a city councilor, is running for a congressional seat in this Democratic stronghold. Her challenge is less about ideology – the incumbent Rep. Michael Capuano is a solid progressive – than a generational push for change from within the party’s base, which is younger and more diverse than its leadership. Her slogan, “Change can’t wait,” speaks to a national frustration with the party’s top ranks.

Today Pressley, a 44-year-old African-American, makes her pitch in the language of devotion. She reminds the congregation that she was the first woman of color ever elected to the council. “Amen,” they cry. And the top vote getter, three times. “Amen,” they cry again. 

She runs briskly through her public service and the Sept. 4 primary ballot, then pivots back to the power of prayer. “I’m reminded of an African proverb that says when you pray, move your feet,” she says. The crowd whoops. She repeats it, and adds: “So I’m moving my feet.”

Pressley’s run has drawn comparisons to that of first-time candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in June toppled New York Rep. Joe Crowley, a 20-year veteran and member of the House leadership, in the biggest upset of the Democratic primary cycle. And it’s an outcome that Congressman Capuano, a former mayor first elected to Congress in 1998, is anxious not to repeat. He has racked up local and national endorsements (though not the Boston Globe), debated Pressley four times, and hustled for votes all summer.

On the stump, Capuano hammers his progressive voting record, constituency work, and anti-Trump activism, including visits to detention centers in Texas to probe family separations. He also reminds voters of his seniority in Washington and his success in securing federal spending for his district. Should the Democrats retake Congress, his position on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee could bring home more of that bacon.

But Capuano also calls the primary – his first in 20 years – a “family fight” that distracts from the party’s bigger battle with President Trump and Republicans in Congress. “We don’t have very many differences, none that I can really articulate,” he says, referring to Pressley.

Pressley concedes that her opponent’s record on key issues is in sync with her own politics. But she argues that there is a distinction. “By and large, we will vote the same – but we will lead differently,” she says, pointing to her record of activism and coalition building.

Pressley’s supporters argue that she can galvanize a diverse national coalition that Democrats need to roll back the Republican grip on power in Washington. That so many women and people of color are running for office this year in Democratic primaries shows that President Obama’s departing call to action is being heard, including in deep-blue Massachusetts.

“Elections are about hope and the idea that things can get better. If Democrats want to win this cycle and in 2020, we’ve got to get back to that place of providing hope, and Ayanna is that hope,” says Quentin James, co-founder of the Collective PAC, which is supporting Pressley and other African-American Democrats seeking elective office, including state and local races.

“I think we need more leaders who are women, and women of color particularly,” says Shauna Helton, who works for a nonprofit in Boston. “I think it’s a fairer representation for the people in the district.”

The Seventh Congressional District includes most of Boston and Cambridge and a coterie of blue-collar towns reshaped by rising immigration. In 2011, it was redrawn to create a first in Massachusetts: a seat in which blacks, Hispanics, and Asians made up the majority of voters. Democratic officials said this would make it easier in the future for a minority candidate to win office.

Capuano points out that his seat had become majority-minority even before the map was redrawn, and says he welcomes its changing makeup as its representative. “Anybody who gets elected in this district has to work with people who don’t look like them, don’t worship like them, don’t think like them. I think that’s what democracy is all about,” he says.

By taking on Capuano, Pressley is jumping the line for Democratic advancement, says Robert Boatright, a political science professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., who studies primaries. Incumbency remains powerful, and so is party leadership. Still, analysts say that hierarchy – waiting your turn for higher office – didn’t stop Elizabeth Warren from making her successful run for the Senate when the seat became vacant.

Capuano’s district, a safe seat for Democrats, is understandably appealing to a rising star like Pressley, even if it’s a tough fight, says Professor Boatright. “If you’re an ambitious officeholder in one of those districts, you don’t want to wait around for a retirement,” he says.

Pressley says she’s been a “foot soldier” for the party and rejects the idea that she should wait to run for higher office. “My [late] mother who sacrificed so much... did not raise me to ask permission to lead, and I’m not raising my 10-year-old daughter to do that either,” she says.

Pressley is one of three women challenging incumbents in the state’s Democratic primary. In the eighth district, Brianna Wu, a software engineer, is challenging Rep. Stephen Lynch, a centrist Democrat. A third incumbent, Rep. Richard Neal, faces a neophyte challenger in western Massachusetts, though neither race has gotten as much attention as Pressley’s.

Polls have shown a solid lead for Capuano. While whites are now in a minority in the district, they still tend to cast a majority of votes in low-turnout elections like party primaries, according to MassINC Polling. Still, estimating minority turnout can be tricky: This week, Andrew Gillum, a progressive Democrat serving as mayor of Tallahassee, overcame a steady deficit in the polls to become Florida’s first African-American nominee for governor.  

On a recent afternoon, Capuano and a small group of supporters stood at a busy Boston junction, hoisting signs and waving to passing cars. Some honked when they saw the lawmaker, who wore shirtsleeves and a wide grin.

Among the volunteers that day was Danny McCauley, who runs a nearby funeral home and calls himself an independent. He voted for Trump in 2016, a decision he says he’s begun to regret. Now he wants to see the Democrats retake the House and reckons that Capuano would be a great asset for his district. “It’s not time for change when the gentleman is doing his job,” he says.

Rich Pedroncelli/AP

Dr. Garen Wintemute is an emergency room physician at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center and one of the country's leading gun violence researchers. He is leading a team researching whether owning a gun makes an individual more or less likely to die.

Dean Winslow sat before the Senate Armed Services Committee last fall as President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the Pentagon’s top health official. His confirmation hearing, occurring two days after an Air Force veteran shot and killed 26 people inside a Texas church, appeared routine until a senator asked a question about the gunman’s military discharge status.

Dr. Winslow, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who deployed six times to Iraq and Afghanistan with the Air National Guard, offered his thoughts on the military’s discharge system. The retired colonel then added a personal aside born of outrage at the country’s latest mass shooting. 

“But I also would like to — and I may get in trouble with other members of the committee — just say how insane it is that, in the United States of America, a civilian can go out and buy a semi-automatic assault rifle like an AR-15, which apparently was the weapon that was used,” he said.

The trouble arrived within moments. The late Sen. John McCain, (R) of Arizona, the panel’s chairman and a longtime gun supporter, reproached the nominee. “Dr. Winslow,” he said, “I don’t think that is your area of responsibility or expertise.”

McCain’s admonition foretold the end of Winslow’s nomination. The committee placed an indefinite hold on his appointment, and he withdrew from consideration a few weeks later.

But Winslow’s comment gave rise to an idea that could have deeper impact. He harnessed his frustration over mass shootings to co-found Scrubs Addressing the Firearm Epidemic (SAFE), a nationwide coalition of physicians, nurses, and other health care providers, along with medical students and professors. The nonprofit group supports public health research to shape strategies for reducing gun violence and advocates for public policy to encourage firearm safety.

“What happened at my confirmation hearing really galvanized me,” Winslow says. “A lot of us in health care have seen what guns do to the human body up close, and it’s not pretty. We need common sense ways to address the problem.” 

SAFE has established chapters at medical schools in 16 states that will hold campus events on Sept. 17 to bring attention to the cause. The group joins a growing number of organizations formed by physicians in recent years to approach gun violence as a public health crisis. Their efforts sidestep politics and instead focus on gathering data to arm doctors with treatment guidelines for responding to a national scourge that claimed 38,658 lives in 2016.

“Physicians and health care workers deal with the effects of guns every day,” says Dr. Christopher Barsotti, who last year co-founded the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine (AFFIRM) in Williamstown, Mass. “So the question is how to mitigate those effects upstream from policy. And the answer is that we need high-quality research, and we need a lot of it.”

‘We’re just guessing’ 

Congress gutted funding for gun violence research more than 20 years ago. Lawmakers passed an amendment to a spending bill in 1996 that barred the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from seeking to “advocate or promote gun control” and eliminated funding for firearm studies.

The chilling effect proved immediate and lasting, and in another setback for scientists, funding has expired for a National Institutes of Health gun research program launched in 2012. That further curtailed the agency’s limited work in the field aside from an initiative to examine gun-related deaths and injuries among children and a smattering of smaller projects. 

The gun lobby’s success in pressuring legislators to slash federal funding has forced physicians to rely on stale data about the causes and effects of gun violence in a country where civilians own more than 393 million firearms. Stephanie Bonne, a trauma surgeon at University Hospital in Newark, N.J., explains that doctors, hampered by decades-old statistics, struggle to identify, treat, and refer patients who might present a threat to themselves or others. 

“If we don’t have the evidence, we’re just guessing,” she says. For Dr. Bonne, co-chair of a gun violence prevention task force that the American Medical Women’s Association created in 2015, the daily flow of shooting victims through the trauma center reveals the human cost of outdated research.

“You feel so helpless as a physician because these wounds are just so devastating,” she says. “It’s so frustrating to talk to families and mothers over and over and tell them their children are dead from gunshot wounds.”

The campaign to cast gun violence as a public health crisis parallels earlier crusades that raised awareness about the hazards of smoking, unprotected sex, and failing to wear a seat belt. Yet broaching the topic of firearms with patients poses a dilemma for doctors because of the lack of evidence-based treatment practices and the country’s radioactive gun debate.

Suicide by firearm accounted for almost 23,000 deaths in 2016, or 63 a day. Dr. Barsotti, an emergency physician at hospitals in western Massachusetts and southern Vermont, recalls a pair of recent cases involving patients who had shown signs of suicidal intent. He found himself unsure of how — or whether — to talk about guns with them or their families even in the context of suicide.

“We have treatment guidelines for everything — alcoholism, opioid addiction, cancer,” he says. “But we don’t have any for this really pressing issue that has a tremendous impact on health care.”

The Violence Prevention Research Program based at the University of California, Davis launched an initiative earlier this year that offers suggestions to health care providers for discussing guns with at-risk patients, including counseling them on firearm safety. The Davis program houses a second research center devoted solely to gun violence that opened last summer with a five-year, $5 million grant from state lawmakers.

Prevention groups led by physicians seek to raise state and private funding for firearm research that would help medical professionals update treatment methods. Megan Ranney, the co-founder of AFFIRM and an emergency physician at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, describes the opposition in Congress to funding gun studies as misplaced.

“Research isn’t for or against gun control. It isn’t political or partisan,” she says.“At its core, it’s about saving lives.” 

Cold, hard, nonpartisan facts

Winslow served as commander of an Air Force hospital in Iraq in 2008, and in that role, he signed the death certificates of US troops killed in combat and those who died by suicide. The sight of young lives cut short by their own hand influenced his perspective on firearm safety.

The annual toll of civilian suicides and a litany of mass shootings in recent years inspired SAFE and convinced him that the harm wrought by firearms deserves status as a public health priority. 

“We have a gun violence epidemic in this country that we can’t afford to ignore. We don’t want any more children to die,” Winslow says. Mindful of the polarized nature of the gun debate, he regards the high public standing of physicians, nurses, and other health care practitioners as a buffer against charges of partisanship as SAFE and similar groups nurture research efforts. 

“Ultimately, people always bring politics into the discussion with guns,” he says. “But my hope is that the credibility of physicians will help defuse some of the political concerns.”

The American Medical Association, American Public Health Association, and other major medical groups have declared gun violence a national crisis, advocating for legislative reforms and federal funding of firearm research.

Lobbying by prominent health care organizations contrasts with the neutral line of nonprofits that doctors have formed in recent years. They view their mission asdefined by gun violence rather than gun ownership.

“It should be no different than talking about cars as a potential mechanism of injury,” Dr. Ranney says. “We can acknowledge that guns are allowed by the Constitution and still talk about how to keep people safe. These things are not mutually exclusive.”

The rallies held in Washington and cities nationwide to protest gun violence earlier this year after the fatal shooting of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla., failed to persuade Congress to consider new gun laws.

The inertia has motivated a handful of states to act. David Studdert, a professor of medicine and law at Stanford University, asserts that the prospects of policy change at the state level could improve as SAFE, AFFIRM, and other organizations amass fresh data on gun violence. 

“The political climate is not really ripe for federal legislation,” says Dr. Studdert, who has joined researchers at UC Davis to analyze whether owning a gun in California affects the likelihood of a person’s death. “But what happened after Parkland shows there is momentum for change, and physicians are a powerful constituency. White coats showing up in Sacramento could make a difference.”

In his work with AFFIRM, Barsotti, a gun owner, skirts mention of the Second Amendment to avoid provoking suspicions about the group’s purpose. He believes cold, hard, nonpartisan facts will light the path to reducing gun-related deaths and injuries by grounding the decisions of policymakers in research instead of rhetoric.

“It’s specious when talking about violence prevention to say that physicians want to take away guns,” he says. “We’re focusing on science and knowledge. Science informs policy and law. It always has in America.”

Sara Miller Llana/Staff

Fenelon Falls has drawn a small but determined number of year-round 'cottagers' who are helping to revitalize main street.

Two pre-teen girls shriek as their inner tube cuts a path on the lake. A couple picks up mallets for a croquet game on a nearby lawn. At nightfall around a campfire, a grown man delights children with his best loon call.

It’s a perfect slice of summer, this scene from “cottage country” in Ontario. And across the northern hemisphere, as Labor Day weekend turns, the curtain will come down. Along coasts, seafood shacks will shutter. Canoes and kayaks will be stored. Cars will be packed to the brim and driven away from town centers.

But not everywhere.

An increasing number of seasonal residents are deciding to live year-round in summer towns, and opening up new businesses, restaurants, and cultural opportunities. A report from the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations (FOCA) showed a significant number already working from their waterfront properties. And more than a third of those surveyed say they’d consider it – which could help to sustain summer vibrancy off-season.

Some have been priced out of the Greater Toronto Area, or, because they are no longer bound to desk jobs, want to opt for quieter lifestyles. And local officials see seasonal visitors beyond their tourist potential, as an untapped resource for community and economic revitalization. Terry Rees, executive director of FOCA, calls it a win-win for rural towns and people who now are calling themselves townspeople. “It offers something different than what is increasingly an urban existence in Ontario,” he says.

Sara Miller Llana/Staff

A view of Lower Buckhorn Lake in Ontario's 'cottage country,' which will empty out after summer's high season.

Summers at the “cottage” are part of the seasonal ritual for city dwellers across Canada. Tim Wisener spent each of his on one of the 250 lakes and rivers that dot the municipality of Kawartha Lakes, east of Toronto. He still recalls what it felt like when their car made the last turn. “It was freedom at the end of road,” he says. “You had a bicycle, and your mother did not want to see you until dinner.”

Last fall, he and his husband Chris Van Lierop decided to relocate to that cottage, setting up their design company, Home By Tim+Chris, in the town of Fenelon Falls. Their market is other cottagers who want to prepare their properties beyond simply summering, and their growth shows the demand: they’ve expanded to eight employees in a year.

They’ve also joined the chamber of commerce and downtown revitalization committee. Mr. Wisener is working to bring a theater company to Fenelon Falls for a run next summer. This summer they opened a gallery space on the town's main street, in a former radio station and dance studio that were both shuttered.

“One of our reasons for opening a gallery was that we really wanted to give another opportunity for the lights to be on,” Wisener says. “Things don’t need to shut down."

It becomes a virtuous circle. Anna Radey, the owner of Slices ‘n Scoops in Fenelon Falls – a quintessential summer joint where kids walk out with blue ice cream smeared on their faces – normally would be closing her doors after Labor Day weekend. This year she has decided to stay open through Thanksgiving.

“Things have changed,” says Gail McCormack, the founder of Kawartha Waterfront Realty. “There are many, many people who live year-round in our area now that was not heard of even five years ago.”

That’s an envious position for many summer towns. Michael Goodman, the executive director of the Public Policy Center at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, researches the historic summer destinations of coastal Massachusetts. He says aging populations and growing inequality, with second homes more out of reach for the middle class, have exacerbated seasonal use and winter depopulation. “These communities are having a very difficult time recruiting and retaining people of working age who want to live year-round,” he says.

Kawartha Lakes is still very much a summer boom town, too. The population is 75,000, but the municipality attracts 1.6 million domestic visitors throughout the year. And while the overall population declined between 2006 and 2016 according to census figures, among those ages 20 to 34 there was a slight bump.

Cheri Davidson, communications manager of the municipality of Kawartha Lakes, says that costs and lifestyle drive that change. And as more make the move, infrastructure follows which draws more long-term residents. “Our culture is shifting to be much more attractive [to those] used to a bigger city who want all the benefits of a cottage lifestyle,” she says.

Living year-round changes the notion of summer escape, admits Wisener. But it’s his extended family – packing up on a recent day to return to their homes – whom he pities. “I feel so badly for my little cousins,” he says. “There are tears.”

That sense of angst is real, as the days wane and the “summer afternoon” – what author Henry James called “the two most beautiful words in the English language” – vanishes. Therapists even talk about “August blues.”

Of course not all experience it. Fenelon Falls librarian Heather Saigeon says she supports the cottagers and those moving here long-term. But she looks forward to the end of Labor Day weekend as much as others might dread it.

“Kids go back to school, the cottagers disappear. You can drive down main street and get a parking spot,” she says. “I can’t wait.”

 A Monitor reader recently asked an excellent question: What are the best books on the Russia scandal - the meddling in the 2016 election, and the investigations that have followed?

I could simply suggest “Crime and Punishment,” the 19th-century classic by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and leave it there. But aside from being flip, that would ignore the growing pile of more immediately relevant journalistic accounts of President Trump’s travails.

You might start with “Russian Roulette” by investigative reporters David Corn and Michael Isikoff, who promise “the inside story of Putin’s war on America and the election of Donald Trump.”

Their book runs through events as they happened, explaining the origins of the “Steele dossier” – a document containing raw, unsubstantiated private intelligence about Trump and Russia – and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s history of campaign work for the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine.

Or you could choose “Collusion,” by reporter Luke Harding of the Guardian. This one provides more insights into the origins of Mr. Trump’s Russia links. In particular, Mr. Harding offers first-hand knowledge of Mr. Manafort, whom he first met in Ukraine in 2008, and who now faces prison after his Aug. 21 conviction for financial crimes.

If you are already convinced that Trump has been collaborating with the Russian government for decades, “House of Trump, House of Putin” by journalist Craig Unger, will confirm your opinion. For those looking to affirm the view that there is no such thing as a Trump-Russia conspiracy, there’s the new book by Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, called “The Russia Hoax.”

Twelve

Putin's favorite author

In short, there’s something for everybody, just like cable news. But, alas, any book that claims to offer the definitive story on Trump and Russia can’t possibly deliver. That’s because the story isn’t over. Special counsel Robert Mueller hasn’t finished his investigation, and there’s no smoking gun proving any collusion between Russia and Trump associates. There hasn’t even been an indictment that points to collusion. There's lots we don't know.

So here’s another idea: Read a different sort of book about Russia, one that helps you better understand how Russia’s past shapes its present, or one that gives you a glimpse into the Russian soul.

“More than anything, I always recommend reading as much Russian history and literature as one can, which is the best way to be an informed observer,” says Matt Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington.

A great place to start would be “The Icon and the Axe” – an interpretive history of Russian culture by former Librarian of Congress James Billington. My well-worn copy still sits on a bookshelf, a relic from my days as a Russian language and literature major in college. Above all, the book captures the essential duality of Russian life – the spiritual and the material.

If you’ve got a taste for the classics, you might find Nikolai Gogol especially instructive; he is said to be a favorite of Russian President Vladimir Putin. One of Gogol’s best-known works, a satirical play called “The Inspector General,” depicts a man pretending to be a government inspector, and reveals the folly and corruption of 19th-century Russia.

Or you could try Dostoyevsky’s novella “Notes from Underground.” “Here you get the psychopathology of Russia, an envy of the West,” says Michael Kimmage of Catholic University. It’s the story of a man who says “no” so that he’ll be heard. “That’s Russia on the world stage at this moment.”

First-hand accounts

In a different vein, Bill Browder’s 2015 memoir, a real-life thriller called “Red Notice,” paints a brutal picture of today’s Russia. (The Monitor review is here.) Mr. Browder is an American-born businessman who made a fortune in Russia, called out government corruption, and infuriated President Putin.

When Browder’s tax lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in prison, the businessman became a human-rights activist, the driving force behind a 2012 US law punishing Russian officials believed to be responsible for Mr. Magnitsky’s death. The Magnitsky Act plays a supporting role in the current Trump-Russia drama.

At the Helsinki summit last month, Putin made the extraordinary suggestion that Trump allow the Russian government to question Browder, now a British citizen. “Red Notice” provides the back story. The New Yorker just published a well-reported followup, “How Bill Browder Became Russia’s Most Wanted Man.”

Putin also proposed that Washington hand over a former US ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, for questioning about his supposed “illegal activity” – another shocking idea, which the Trump administration seemed briefly to entertain. And that leads to another book recommendation: Mr. McFaul’s new memoir, “From Cold War to Hot Peace," reviewed here by the Monitor.

McFaul faced constant harassment by Russian authorities during his tenure in Moscow (2012-2014), dooming the “reset” in US-Russian relations that he helped craft. His memoir, like Browder’s, is a very readable cautionary tale.

Both men can be accused of naiveté. Browder was clever enough to buy Russian assets at bargain-basement prices, and naive enough to think he could get away with it. McFaul, an academic, failed to realize that his job as ambassador wasn’t to reform the host country but to manage relations, says Mr. Kimmage.

Consulting the hive-mind

Just for fun, I threw out my “best books on Russia” question to the hive-mind of my Russian and Russophile friends. “Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?” by Karen Dawisha got rave reviews.

“She does an extraordinary job of presenting the rise of Putin as the leading edge – and, to some degree, logical consequence – of the rough-and-tumble crony capitalism of the Yeltsin era,” writes Vladimir Klimenko, a Russian-American history teacher in New York.

Vladislav Zubok, a historian at the London School of Economics, recommends Arkady Ostrovsky’s “The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News.”

Jill Dougherty, former Moscow correspondent for CNN, suggests a more offbeat choice: “Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing,” by Anya Von Bremzen.

“I ADORE this book,” writes Ms. Dougherty. “Totally unique approach to Russia, her family, Russian (and Soviet) food … and why, in spite of the horrors of communism, some Russians have nostalgia for the old Soviet Union.”

It also sheds light – albeit indirectly – on current events. But for a more straightforward account, perhaps it would be better to wait for “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy,” a new book by veteran Washington Post reporter Greg Miller and colleagues, due out Oct. 2.

Like the other books, it won’t spill all the beans because it can’t. But at the very least it will provide a narrative sweep and a useful reference guide to what's known so far in what Mr. Miller calls “the craziest and most complicated [story] that any of us have ever seen.”

AP Photo

Bettors wait to make wagers on sporting events at the Borgata casino in Atlantic City, N.J., hours after it began accepting sports bets in June.

In a decision last May, the Supreme Court said that individual states can, in effect, “Play ball!” on legalized sports betting. The ruling overturned a 1992 federal ban on the practice. In just three months, seven states have approved sports wagering while 14 others have bills pending. More could follow. The rush is on to tap the estimated $150 billion now spent in illegal sports gambling each year in the United States.

Wait a minute, say two key leaders in Congress. In August, Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah and Chuck Schumer (D) of New York each proposed federal guardrails to prevent problems inherent to sports betting. The big issue: how to protect the integrity of sports from attempts to fix a game, shave a point, or simply gain insider information about a player’s injury. Individual states are now coming up with their own rules – or no rules – to deal with this issue.

Such risks are very real in Asia and Europe where legalized sports betting is already allowed. Last year, for example, a World Cup qualifying game between Senegal and South Africa had to be replayed after a referee was accused of trying to fix the match. In a few overseas sports leagues, corruption has diminished fan interest. Such a loss of reputation now worries US sports officials if states are able to expand interest in sports betting beyond its current levels.

To really protect a sport from gambling interests will take more than a new federal law. It will require a deeper understanding of a sport’s basic worth to both players and fans. In a speech on the Senate floor, Mr. Hatch defined the integrity of sports as “honest and genuine competition,” free from outside influence.

“There is a reason predetermined outcomes in professional wrestling attract a small fraction of the following enjoyed by baseball, football, basketball, and other sports,” he said.

Sports are popular largely because they are authentic displays of talent, effort, and teamwork. Gambling, on the other hand, is a display of a belief in something called luck. To get around the implicit problem of relying on “chance,” sports gamblers may try to “game the odds” by cheating, such as bribing a player to throw a game.

In college sports, where student athletes still enjoy some reputation of participating as amateurs, some federal protection is especially critical. “We need to continue to educate them about the challenges associated with gambling and the importance of the integrity of the game,” says James Delany, commissioner of the Big Ten conference of college football teams.

He and other top sports officials are asking Congress for a federal framework to protect sports from an upsurge in gambling. Hatch plans to introduce legislation in coming weeks while Mr. Schumer laid out a few basic  ideas. One is to set a minimum age for betting at 21 years old. Another is to ensure that betting entities use only official data from sports leagues. “The integrity of sports is too precious to not protect as best we can,” Schumer said.

State-sanctioned sports gambling should not turn athletes into something akin to roulette chips. For centuries, sports have served a nobler purpose in the demand for – and pleasure in – displays of excellence. Luck has nothing to do with that.