Francis Brooke, a Democrat, joined GOP efforts to depose Saddam Hussein, serving as right-hand man to controversial Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi. His motivation, he says, sprang from a combination of religious calling and noblesse oblige. Originally published in Duke Magazine. Above: A 2004 C-SPAN interview with Brooke. FRANCIS BROOKE WAS STILL ASLEEP in Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood when […]
Rethinking the Commune
Across the United States, bold pioneers are building a new kind of housing for the 21st century. Originally published, in a slightly different form, in AARP The Magazine. BY THE TIME HE WAS IN HIS MID-40S, Bob Gilby had his retirement plans all worked out. An engineer with a copper-mining company, he had purchased some land […]
Creation Nation
Ken Ham says creationism and the inerrancy of the Bible are the solution to the world’s ills. Welcome to the world of Answers in Genesis. Originally published in Indy Week. ON THE RED-CARPETED DAIS of a church the size of a department store, a man with a Lincolnesque beard is addressing a sanctuary full of evangelical […]
When a Woman Goes Bald
A scientist’s painful battle with balding drives her to find the genetic basis for hair loss. Originally published in Discover. ON A FRIDAY MORNING LAST JUNE, Efrat Fadida threw a denim jacket over her white summer blouse and caught a ride with her father from the small Israeli town of Gedera east to Jerusalem. Walking into Hadassah […]
Age in Place… But Not Here
Originally published in the AARP Bulletin. BLANCHE BELL, TO HEAR HER FAMILY TELL IT, had the determination of a bulldog—from studying physics at the University of Michigan in the 1940s because it was the toughest major offered to presiding over a family of six. “She was only 4-foot-11, but she was larger than life,” says her son […]
Whitewash
In his new autobiography, Jesse Helms sees himself as a humanitarian—not a racist supporter of brutal right-wing regimes who turned obstructionism into a foreign policy. Originally published in Indy Week. I’VE ONLY MET JESSE HELMS ONCE. I was profiling him for two national magazines during his 1996 Senate race, and for two days I shadowed him […]
Prisoners of Pain
Why are millions of suffering Americans being denied the prescription drug relief they need? Originally published in AARP The Magazine. DEBORAH HAMALAINEN WAS FEELING more and more agitated by the minute. Waiting to see her neurologist, she was silently rehearsing a confrontation that had been building for months. She planned to look the doctor directly in the […]
Fall of a True Believer
How Jack Abramoff gained the whole world and lost just about everything. Originally published in Mother Jones. ON THE FIRST MORNING of the Republican National Convention, the stocky former weightlifter waited nervously for his turn to speak. Just 25 years old, he was impeccably dressed in a dark gray suit and red tie. But he had slipped […]
Whose House Is It Anyway?
A city’s quest for renewal can mean the death of an old neighborhood. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. WILHELMINA DREY HAS LIVED HER ENTIRE 87 YEARS in a blue sea captain’s house near the banks of Connecticut’s Thames River. From the ground floor, her family ran a grocery where the neighborhood’s Italian women congregated Saturday mornings, […]
Biking The Netherlands’ Hothouses
The Wadden Islands are environmental jewels—and easy to pedal. Originally published in Attaché. FROM WHERE I SIT ON MY BICYCLE, the dunes of Terschelling Island look less like sand structures and more like well-decorated woolly mammoths. Covered in luxurious marram grass, adorned with the orange berries of the rowan tree, and layered in the subtle purple of […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- …
- 33
- Next Page »
