New In Paperback: June 20-26

Saints And Sinners by Edna O’Brien Don’t look for twinkles in this new story collection by the grande dame of Irish letters. Darkness is everything in these 11 tales about matters of sex, love, home and death, whether set in Ireland or London or New York. The reason that love is so painful, O’Brien has [...]

NFL Player Turns To Teaching During Lockout

As the NFL tries working through its lockout, one professional football player decided to teach youth from grades one through 12. In April, Denver Broncos safety David Bruton started giving social studies and math lessons at Jane Chance Elementary School and Miamisburg High School (his alma mater) in Ohio. Bruton says he got the idea [...]

The End Of Gender?

Look closely and you may see signposts. • Kathy Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, are raising their four month old child, Storm, without revealing the child’s gender. According to the birth announcement from the Toronto couple: “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place [...]

To Keep Off Pounds: Pass The Nuts, Hold The Chips

To keep from gaining weight as you age, the conventional wisdom says you have to cut calories and exercise more. But exactly what you eat and drink can make a big difference, too, according to provocative findings just published by Harvard researchers. “All foods are not equal, and just eating in moderation is not enough,” [...]

An ‘Ocean’ Of Loss, Through A Poet’s Prism

There was once a cultural moment — though not one that is easy to remember — when only a select few writers got the privilege of publishing a memoir with a big house. Those writers had to either a) be famous, b) have such a compelling story that it screamed to be told, or c) [...]

How Much Water Is There On Earth? Magellan Would Be Shocked

Water feels good when we’re thirsty, cools us when we’re hot, looks great in a pond, a lake, a cloud. Because we ourselves are two-thirds water, we like the stuff, we’re drawn to it. We search the universe looking for signs of water and when we look back at our planet, we are small and [...]

Fugitive Mobster ‘Whitey’ Bulger Caught In Calif.

James “Whitey” Bulger, the notorious Boston mobster accused of murdering 19 people, is in custody in California after an epic 16-year manhunt that turned him into a global sensation. The FBI finally caught up with the 81-year-old Bulger on Wednesday at a residence in Santa Monica, Calif. He was apprehended along with his longtime girlfriend, [...]

‘The Bully Project’ Finds Its Moment

Director Lee Hirsch started filming The Bully Project in 2009, about a year before bullying fully came of age as a high-profile crisis with the launch of what became the It Gets Better project. (That’s not to say that’s when bullying started, obviously — it’s when the current wave of popular media coverage swelled after [...]

GOP Finds Itself At A ‘Pivot Point’ Over Afghanistan

Not so long ago, when the question was war, the response on Capitol Hill was an automatic blank check. A largely compliant Congress, and presidents and politicians who were fearful of looking “weak on defense” or “unpatriotic,” rubber-stamped massive military spending. Funny how 10 years, two wars that have cost a combined $1 trillion, a [...]

GOP Hopefuls Divided Over Anti-Abortion Pledge

For the first time in memory, every Republican candidate running for president in 2012 proclaims him or herself to be anti-abortion. But just how anti-abortion are they? Marjorie Dannenfelser wanted to find out. So Dannenfelser, the head of the Susan B. Anthony List — a group founded to elect anti-abortion candidates — created “The Pro-Life [...]