December 2010

To environmentalists, clean coal is an insulting oxymoron. But because coal so dominates the world economy, any meaningful effort to arrest climate change will require using dirty coal in more-sustainable ways. Quiet collaboration between American and Chinese businesses and scientists is pointing the way.

The physicist Freeman Dyson has reshaped thinking in fields from math to astrophysics to medicine. Yet he is also one of the world's foremost global-warming skeptics. How could someone as smart as Dyson be so wrong about the environment? A cautionary tale about science and faith.

In Pakistan, the CIA's remote-controlled bombing campaign heats up.

Shockingly error-prone and brutally expensive, our federally funded system of dialysis care is failing. A year-long investigation reveals why—and what may lie ahead for health-care reform.

A new ranking shows that even privileged kids in our best public-school systems do poorly compared with their peers in other countries.

U.S. universities are still on top, but Asia is rising.

With the 2016 Olympics looming, the city’s embattled police invade the favelas.

An antidiscrimination icon finds a new frontier in trash culture.

Getting supplies to Afghanistan may be worth cozying up to Uzbekistan—for now.

How to spin pharmaceutical research

How barcodes and touch screens are resuscitating a casket factory

Recalling the splendid isolation of travel by freighter

Online matchmaking is getting better at telling us whom we ought to like—and that's not good.

The Atlantic's literary and national editor selects the best in a crowded field.

How to survive—and even thrive—in the new age of austerity

Bill Bryson brings it all back home; England's gilded monuments; and more

Information technology is on the brink of revolutionizing health care— if physicians will only let it.

Miscast in the age of viral humor, the late-night star remains eternally freaky—and oddly reassuring.