Harry Truman was a classic American striver, and a failure, until politics intervened.
November/December 2012
Posted inBooks, Government, Magazine, November/December 2012
Brass Backwards
Thomas Ricks explains the declining competence of America’s senior military commanders.
Posted inEducation, Higher Education, Magazine, November/December 2012
Memoirs of an Academic Fraudster
Inside the shadowy business of ghostwriting college students’ papers.
Posted inBooks, Magazine, November/December 2012
Spread Too Thin
Scholars have discovered that certain everyday food items have played pivotal roles in the history of civilization. Apparently, peanut butter is not one of them.
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, November/December 2012, The Monopolized Economy
Last Call
Industry giants are threatening to swallow up America’s carefully regulated alcohol industry, and remake America in the image of booze-soaked Britain.
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, November/December 2012, The Monopolized Economy
Obama’s Game of Chicken
The untold story of how the administration tried to stand up to big agricultural companies on behalf of independent farmers, and lost.
Posted inBooks, Magazine, November/December 2012
Drone On
It’s probably a matter of when, not if, al-Qaeda in Yemen successfully strikes the U.S. Yet the drone attacks currently keeping the organization at bay are also helping recruit more terrorists. Can you say “no-win situation”?
Posted inBooks, Government, Magazine, November/December 2012
Act of Recovery
Only one national reporter, Michael Grunwald, bothered to take a detailed look at how well the $787 billion stimulus was spent. What he discovered confounds the Beltway conventional wisdom.
Posted inLaw and Justice, Magazine, November/December 2012, Politics
The Conservative War on Prisons
Right-wing operatives have decided that prisons are a lot like schools: hugely expensive, inefficient, and in need of root-and-branch reform. Is this how progress will happen in a hyper-polarized world?
Posted inEconomy, Government, Magazine, November/December 2012
How We Could Blow the Energy Boom
America’s vast new surplus of natural gas could lead to great prosperity and a cleaner environment. But if we don’t fix our decrepit, blackout -prone electric grid, we could wind up sitting in the dark.
