“Death is always getting Rwandans”
This is how a friend of mine from Butare put the news of the Rwandan earthquake to me. I couldn’t help but wonder, when…
Read MorePlaces
The Day A Subway Hero’s Year of Swag Comes to An End
NEW YORK — Being a hero sometimes means, among other things, that commuting costs less. And so Wesley Autrey Sr. – “Subway Hero,” says…
Read More
Meet Lee Hamilton, Washington’s Bipartisan Power Broker
WASHINGTON — Political crises are supposed to be a thing of the past for Lee Hamilton. Lately – most notably as vice-chair of the…
Read MoreForget fish. Teach a man–an Afghan man–to make soap. And then take all his money.
This is a tantalizing–and for that reason, far too short–look at the way U.S. foreign aid works. Albeit in a single country. In a…
Read More
World Artists Use Biography To Move CDs
It could have been your average reggae concert: undulating vocals, punctuated keyboard riffs, rhythms that make you want to roll your hips. But these…
Read More
Meet The Kids Who Want to Kick The Rebels Out of Darfur
WASHINGTON — There’s disagreement about how often Mark Hanis wore the powder-blue United Nations peacekeeping beret around campus.
Read More
The Worst Book on Female Writers Ever Written (Maybe)
I represent half of Maureen Adams’s likely audience for Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton…
Read MoreWho Betrayed Anne Frank?
After a certain point, and if you’re the creative sort, the only way to engage with a myth, perhaps, is to rewrite it.
Read More
Behind Every Great Fiddler Is a Word You Can’t Say
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Bob Childs lifts a naked, pale piece of maple wood up to the window. “We’re looking for shapes,” he says.
Read More
The Things People Will Say In Public (Like, Seriously – These Things)
When George Washington was 16, he copied out 110 “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior” from a list the Jesuits had crafted in the…
Read More