What ISIS really wants, the plan to beat Hillary, how job stress may be harming unborn babies, atheist superstitions, the best ad campaigns ever, how the love song conquered all, and more
The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.
Can a new, professionalized generation of scandalmongers uncover more dirt on the Clintons—without triggering a backlash?
Research shows that babies are more sensitive to the prenatal environment than once believed. How should today's stretched-to-the-brink parents respond?
A quarter century after the Velvet Revolution, Václav Havel's legacy is in disarray. His life illuminates a dissident generation's dreams and the revenge that history has taken on them.
When President Obama tells Americans to stop worrying, he’s accused of fecklessness. But he has a point: we have never been safer.
No one is immune to magical thinking.
Why staunchly Democratic Massachusetts loves its new GOP governor
Can San Francisco reinvent the school cafeteria?
As more U.K. publications woo U.S. readers, British and American English are mixing in strange, sometimes baffling, ways.
No other place mixes affordability, opportunity, and wealth so well. What’s its secret?
The future of birth control, from remote-controlled implants to—at long last—a pill for men
How can we save lives if we don’t understand what threatens them?
Grandmothers are creating a ruckus in China's public spaces.
A very short book excerpt
A new book suggests that the love song has always been among the most revolutionary of musical forms.
Kazuo Ishiguro, master of buried secrets, on losing the past
Eric Foner explores how it really worked.
A centennial revival of too much of his work risks dooming America's poet of many voices to oblivion.
America’s losing fight against the insidious enemy within
Political mockery thrives on a more cynical spirit than Veep and the American House of Cards can muster.
Kirstin Valdez Quade’s theatrical new short-story collection
Responses and reverberations
Orange juice, cigarettes, Mac computers, and more
