April 2012 Archives
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This Week
There Is No Simple Answer
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. From the difficulties of dealing...
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Personal Essays
The Storm Comes Around
Tornado season is a distant concept for most people. For some, it’s a scary but known part of life. Then there’s what happens when one of the South’s deadliest storms in history destroys your house.
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Spoofs & Satire
Our Future National Pastime
Predictions for the baseball season ahead from someone who hasn’t paid attention to sports statistics since the 1992 Orioles.
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Gallery
Little, Big
Irresistible paintings don’t always need giant frames. An interview with the painter who electrified this year’s Whitney Biennial.
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This Week
Science Tells Us What We Need to Know
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. Scientific findings, methodical studies, and...
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Where We Should Live
Athens of the Now
Twenty years ago—or even 10—Nashville was falling to the bottom of any list of top U.S. destinations. Music City’s recent resurgence is a reminder of what Americans really value.
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Opinions
A Coalition of Dunces
Last week, the Pulitzer Prize board refused to give its prestigious award to any novel published in 2011. Something is clearly broken. We roused our commentators from the Tournament of Books, Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner, for their remarks.
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Letters From Tel Aviv
Smells Like War
Israel and Iran are swaying on the brink, if you listen to the international media. A peek inside the Israeli capital finds people acting blasé, but not making summer vacation plans just yet.
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Gallery
Priti Baiks
Portraits of young men in Panama showing off their bikes—strikingly decorated, variously macho, and altogether priti.
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New York's Roadside Attractions
Fraunces Tavern Museum
Today the site is still very much a functioning tavern, as I discovered upon arriving last Thursday and being hustled through one dining hall and a whiskey bar by a...
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This Week
Remembrance of Things Painful
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. Many of this week&rsquo...
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A Pennsylvania Story
When the Town Stops Burning
For 50 years, a fire has been raging in mining tunnels beneath Centralia, Pa. With the town mostly evacuated long ago, what’s left? Mostly journalists and other outsiders looking in.
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Portraits by Other Means
Misogyny Soup
Aristotle There is no doubt that Aristotle’s texts are misogynist; he thought that women were inferior to men and he said so explicitly. For example, to cite Cynthia...
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The Masculine Mystique
Come as You Are
To be a male clothing wearer in the early 21st century, you must do what men do, and wear trousers, whether or not the style fits you. Lessons in breaking through fashion anxiety to find yourself—in a pair of Comme des Garçons drop-crotch pants.
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New York's Roadside Attractions
Floyd Bennett Field
During his freshman year at Kansas State in 1972, he joined the Air Force ROTC and took the Air Force Officers Qualifying Test, which he nearly aced. Then during a physical...
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Letters From Dallas
Nobody Says I Love You Anymore
I’ve spent my life complaining and arguing and telling stories about the city I came from. Then I changed—but it did, too.
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Portraits by Other Means
To Sleep, Perchance to Lose Consciousness
Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí wrote about this technique that he called “Slumber with a key.” He featured it as one of his 50 secrets of magic craftsmanship....
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Birnbaum V.
Thomas Mallon Redux
The rise and fall of Richard Nixon has been the subject of many histories, but perhaps none so insightful as Thomas Mallon’s latest novel Watergate. A conversation about crime, ambition, booze, and Christopher Hitchens.
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Husband, Father, Writer, War
Inertia
I squirmed in my seat, an American in the Middle East, needing very badly to pee. I was already shaking from cold, and—reaching for my gloves—I...
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Our Passions, Our Day Jobs
Hammer of the Dads
Joining a band at middle age can feel like a juvenile, shameful pursuit, until you consider all the gear you get to buy. A report on purchasing earplugs and playing live—but why are the crowds so small?—when you’re 40.