April 2010

The story of Timothy Geithner’s rise is one of hard work, bureaucratic mastery, and the culmination of a 40-year evolution in Democratic thinking about finance. His experience made him indispensable to saving the economy—and quite possibly the wrong person to reform it.

It’s not just Al-Qaeda. Water shortages, collapsing oil supplies, war, refugees, pirates, poverty—why Yemen is failing.

His elderly father insisted that he could manage by himself. But he couldn’t. The author found himself utterly unprepared for one of life’s near certainties—the decline of a parent. Millions of middle-aged Americans, he discovered, are silently struggling to cope with a crisis that needs to be plucked from the realm of the personal and brought into full public view.

Will General Stanley McChrystal be our deus ex machina in Afghanistan? Or just the latest commander to succumb to the impersonal forces of history and geography?

Less traffic through the Suez Canal means less of everything else for Egyptians—including hope.

The short and brutal life of a Nascar engine

Australia’s bush meat is tasty, healthy, and enviro-friendly. But can you get people to eat it?

James Agee’s Depression classic still stings the family of its subjects.

Hooch isn’t just for hillbillies anymore.

By the skin of his teeth, Dubai’s ruler opens the world’s most ambitious—and outrageous—racetrack.

Is one of aviation’s most enduring technological hopes about to become a reality?

A grand history and an elegiac new film explore Britain’s recent, and irrecoverable, past.

Bill Simmons has set a new and unbeatable standard by writing like a fan—just far better.

Mrs. Bridge is an American masterpiece of prewar repression and postwar realism.

Kai Bird’s affecting personal history of the Arab-Israeli tangle

Snake eyes; the asylum seeker

Drug-addicted healers are elevating hospital drama to metaphysical art.

No matter who wins the battle between the Kindle and the iPad, it marks the return of machines as market-makers.

Am I crazy, or is the commentariat ignoring our biggest economic threat?