How Brexit Became a Political Circus
In early July, Theresa May summoned her cabinet to Chequers, the British prime minister’s country residence 40 miles from Downing Street, where Churchill used to escape from the Blitz to plan the war...
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Overdose and Punishment
The evening before Chad Baker died, his fiancée, Katie Offenburger, came home from her job as an account manager at a credit card company, let the dog out, and smoked a cigarette on the back porch of...
View ArticleWho Gets to Be a Nobel Prize Winner?
Of all the human endeavors that lend themselves to cinematic depiction, the act of writing—as opposed, say, to painting or playing music—has always seemed to me the most difficult to portray. The...
View ArticleDo Conservatives Know Much About Conservative History?
Writing in Politico on Sunday, historian Geoffrey Kabaservice argued that liberals, and particularly liberal historians, have done conservatism a profound disservice in recent decades. Under the...
View ArticleHe Was the Resistance Inside the Obama Administration
Last week, in an anonymous New York Times op-ed, a senior Trump official attempted to reassure the public that members of the administration were actively impeding their boss’s wishes. One member of...
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The Tyranny of Personality Testing
“When it comes to accuracy,” organizational psychologist Adam Grant has written, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is better than a horoscope but less reliable than a heart monitor. Fashioned in the...
View ArticleAndrew Gillum’s Unconventional Pick for Lieutenant Governor
Chris King wasn’t the person most Florida liberals expected Andrew Gillum to name as his running mate in the state’s gubernatorial race. A white, evangelical Christian who made a fortune buying up...
View ArticleShould Cops Be Immune From Lawsuits?
In October 2013, two investigators from the Texas Medical Board arrived at Dr. Joseph Zadeh’s medical practice in suburban Dallas with an administrative subpoena for the medical records of more than a...
View ArticleBoJack Horseman’s Brilliant Crack-Up
It’s hard to think of a show currently on air that could make me want to watch a single character speak in one long, despairing stream for nearly a whole episode. Prolonged expressions of angst can...
View ArticleThe French Plan to Fix Inequality—by Ignoring It
In Paris, a highway called “the periphery” separates the privileged in the city from the marginalized “banlieues” or suburbs. Some residents of the banlieues even joke that they may as well need a...
View ArticleCan an Organic Farmer Win in Appalachian Virginia?
Virginia’s 9th congressional district, in the largely mountainous southwestern corner of the state, is one of the most conservative districts in the state—even the country. Cook Political Report says...
View ArticlePenguin Random House Is Building the Perfect Publishing House
When Penguin and Random House announced in the fall of 2012 that they intended to merge, Hurricane Sandy was barreling toward New York City, America’s publishing capital. It was an instant metaphor for...
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Greek Economic Recovery Has Nothing to Do With Odysseus
In 2010, at a picturesque port on the island of Kastelorizo, then Prime Minister George Papandreou announced the start of “a new Odyssey for Greeks”: entry into an austerity-focused International...
View ArticleHow to Win in Trump Country
At an August rally in West Virginia for Patrick Morrisey, the crowd at the Charleston Civic Center was largely there to see Donald Trump. The president had flown in to give Morrisey, the state’s...
View ArticleHurricane Florence Is a Public Health Emergency, Too
Florence, the hurricane charging toward the Carolina coast, has been called a “monster,” a “Mike Tyson punch,” and the “storm of a lifetime.” On Wednesday, it was generating waves up to 83-feet high....
View ArticleNew York Elects Its Next Anti-Trump Warrior
By winning the Democratic primary to be New York’s next attorney general, Tish James is now virtually guaranteed to become the state’s top legal officer this November. That position will almost...
View ArticleWhy the Gubernatorial Glass Ceiling Is So Hard to Shatter
For the first time in American history, white men comprise a minority of Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives: The party has nominated 180 women and 133 people of color for the...
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Britain’s Boarding School Problem
When socially privileged children are separated from their families at a tender age, some develop what psychotherapists have called “Boarding School Syndrome”: “a defensive and protective encapsulation...
View ArticleRobert Mueller Is Winning
Robert Mueller first dropped Paul Manafort into the criminal-justice system last October, and he’s been tightening the vise ever since. The special counsel has flipped Manafort’s close associates and...
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Behind Hurricane Florence’s Poop Lagoon Crisis, a Nation of Pork Lovers
Even before Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina on Friday morning, it had an impact: introducing the phrase “poop lagoon” to the nation. As forecasters cemented the storm’s track,...
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