Last week, with a rollout that included an endorsement from George Lucas and a letter from Larry Ellison, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett announced that dozens of billionaires had pledged to give away half their fortunes. The list, which included corporate raider Ron Perelman, mortgage billionaires Marion and Herbert Sandler, Citigroup architect Sandy Read More
Two Weeks is another of those Fatal Disease of the Week movies about death, grief and saying goodbye forever that even the television networks have abandoned. In feature films, every dying movie star smiling bravely through her tears, from Margaret Sullavan in No Sad Songs For Me to Meryl Streep in One True Thing, has Read More
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond. Viking, 576 pages, $29.95.
In the summer of 2003, when shells killed 20 people sheltering in the U.S. Embassy compound in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city, and fighting so bad it was called World Wars I, II and III had been raging for weeks, Liberians Read More
Who was the self-described “historical pessimist” who wrote last March-when it was still unclear whether the invasion of Iraq would proceed-”War or no war, things will get worse.”
Oh, right, that was me. (In a March 2003 issue of The Observer .) I still hope I’ll be proven wrong in the long run. I take Read More
There’s a new monument in Washington, D.C. honoring the
Japanese-Americans who were wrongfully interned during the Second World War, as
well as those who fought in the United States armed forces. Well, why not? It
is the height of fashion to make much of the mistakes-even the crimes-of the
past, and there is no doubt Read More
