Volume 301 No. 5 | June 2008
Articles with headlines in gray are unavailable online.
Why smoggy skies over Beijing represent the world’s greatest environmental opportunity
by James Fallows
How Silicon Valley made Barack Obama this year’s hottest start-up
by Joshua Green
THE INTERNET PRESIDENCY
How would Obama’s success in online campaigning translate into governing?
by Marc Ambinder
The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth. An instructor at a “college of last resort” explains why.
by Professor X
The odds that a potentially devastating space rock will hit Earth this century may be as high as one in 10. So why isn’t NASA trying harder to prevent catastrophe? [Web only: Video: "Target Earth"]
by Gregg Easterbrook
POETRY
by Jane Hirshfield
POETRY
by Robin Robertson
COMMENT
The national memory often confuses hubris with greatness. That’s good news for George W. Bush.
by Ross Douthat
Spies like us; naked biking; schismatics in Jerusalem; iPhones lose their cool
by Matthew Quirk
Emboldening the enemy; carry more cash; socially green; GPS gets lost
THE WORLD IN NUMBERS
Can better highways save Afghanistan?
by Philip Smucker
REPORT
How an early gaffe and an excruciatingly long primary season helped Barack Obama find a distinctive voice on foreign affairs
by Matthew Yglesias
REPORT
Climate-change litigation is heating up. Will the legal strategy that brought down Big Tobacco work against Big Oil?
by Stephan Faris
Editor’s Choice: A panoramic new history brilliantly mixes the seismic and the everyday.
by Benjamin Schwarz
Barbara Walters got the story by giving her subjects what they wanted.
by Caitlin Flanagan
A blinkered and besotted account of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign succumbs to the erotic entanglements of biography.
by Cristina Nehring
The enduring, untamable appeal of Saki's short stories
by Christopher Hitchens
A guide to additional releases: the real Jack London; Britain's favorite blood sport; Bolshevism at its birth; and more
FOOD
At Irma’s in Houston, Mexican food is in the right hands—mothers’ and grandmothers’. [Web only: Slideshow: "Lunch With Irma"]
by Corby Kummer
Web-only
THE PUZZLER
by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon
Plurals at the Pentagon; identifying flying objects
by Barbara Wallraff
