Jeffrey Goldberg

At home, armed with an automatic weapon, the novelist Tom Clancy lets down his guard. More »

The Shopping Avenger: Slate to the rescue of oppressed consumers everywhere. More »

But, in the event of a shopping disaster, settle for an apology and a big gift certificate. More »

A weeklong electronic journal. More »

John J. Gotti, the bloody-minded truck hijacker who led the Gambino crime family to ruination, has a friend in Joseph Castellano, whose father Gotti murdered. The murder took place in midtown Manhattan on a December evening in 1985, in front of Sparks Steak House, which, owing to the death of Paul Castellano at its threshold, is now a popular tourist destination. John Gotti did not actually shoot Joseph Castellano's father, but he arranged the killing and… More »

It's shocking how little your new baby needs. More »

It's hip to hate the Irish. More »

Azerbaijan is a former soviet republic located in a disagreeable spot just south of Russia and just north of Iran. It is known for nothing except oil, and the smell of that oil is inescapable, even inside the cabin of an arthritic helicopter desperately trying to gain altitude for a trip across the Caspian Sea. The helicopter, a rusting Soviet Mi-8, seems unable to move forward, which is problematic, because we are already hovering 25 feet above the ground. Our… More »

Kenneth Starr makes Howard Stern look obsolete. More »

Midway through the so-called Million Youth March, a teenager, perhaps 15 years of age, brushed by me on his way to the stage. I was standing near the densely packed corner of 119th Street and Lenox Avenue, surrounded by members of the Assata Shakur Freedom Fighters, the Socialist Workers Party, the Umoja Nation, along with a seller of disposable cameras, a lone Garveyite and my friend Tamar Jacoby, the author of the recently published "Someone Else's House," which… More »

'So," says the Mayor, breaking his silence, "how was the hearing?" "City Council?" asks the Police Commissioner. "The usual--a battle of wits with unarmed men." The alpha males of the Giuliani administration, seated helter-skelter about the Mayor's office, get a kick out of that one. Silence again, as the Mayor continues reading. He is sunk low in his chair. Seated to his left is the Police Commissioner, the square-jawed Howard Safir, who sits erect, in the… More »

What we learn from newsmagazines. More »

Steven F. Goldstone, the chairman and chief executive officer of one of the four most reviled corporations in America, looks like a man in need of a cigarette. A dismal funk has settled over the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., which is where his company, RJR Nabisco, is about to open its annual shareholders' meeting. The meeting won't be pleasant for him, but what is these days? It's reefer madness out there--not so much in Winston-Salem, one of… More »

It has been several months since I loosed myself from the choke hold of investment mania, several months since I've had a conversation like this one: Wife: We need to buy Pampers. Me: That's a good move--doubling-up on Procter & Gamble isn't a momentum play, but it's long-term growth, a hedge against our exposure in the volatile high-tech area. Wife: What? Me: Procter & Gamble. The Cincinnati-based consumer-products giant. Maker of Pampers, Ivory Snow,… More »

After spending a delightful afternoon with Minister Louis Farrakhan in his Chicago home, I can report that the leader of the Nation of Islam is actually a chasid of the Satmar sect. Or so he suggests. I consider this a scoop. We were sitting at his immense dining room table, along with his chief of staff, Leonard Farrakhan Muhammad, who, unlike his boss, doesn't believe that it is worth the Nation of Islam's while to sit down with Jewish journalists. It's not that… More »

And you thought the unisex bathrooms were supposed to be funny? More »

Several years ago, at one of the money-wasting general assemblies the Jewish federations fete themselves with, Malcolm Hoenlein, the major American Jew who runs the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, spotted me in a hallway and called me over for a huddle. It turned out that Mr. Hoenlein had a warning for me. Read more More »

The so-called glamour of the Jewish mob. More »

There are only two issues of overwhelming importance facing the American Jewish community today: the survival of Israel in the face of Iranian and Iraqi nuclear, biological and chemical terror, and the survival of the American Jewish community itself, in the face of intermarriage, assimilation and general ennui. The rest, as the saying goes, is commentary. Or something even less than that. Read more More »

Janis Lipke lived and died in a squalid and freezing hut by a river in Riga, Latvia. He and his wife, Johanna, lived there without money and without honor. Many of their countrymen saw them as traitors. When I met the Lipkes in their hut in the winter of 1986, there were even rumors afoot in Riga that they were part-Jewish. How else to explain their inexplicable behavior during World War II, when they rescued Jews from the Riga Ghetto, a ghetto maintained -- and… More »