In India, companies routinely assess applicants by considering the educational level of the parents, the employment history of brothers and sisters, and whether the applicant lives in the city or the country. The process often leaves many outside the meritocracy.
The war on terror isn’t America’s first battle against an amorphous Muslim “quasi-state.” Early in the country's history, it tried to quell the Barbary pirates. It eventually succeeded, but it wasn't easy.
Supreme Court appointees who come from "outside" Washington often drift Left during their term on the Court. Washington insiders—Chief Justice John Roberts is a prime example—are usually immune to ideological shifts.
America's enemies have shifted battlefields to cities, jungles, and mountains, where the U.S. military’s technologically superior machines are ineffective. As a result, U.S. infantry soldiers now suffer four of every five combat deaths.
The world’s coastal nations are scrambling to stake out territory on the last international frontier, on the floor of the Arctic Ocean. The rush to secure potentially valuable mineral and oil rights is shining light on the convoluted laws regarding sovereign territory.
A science historian dares to mount a defense of luck: "Chance disrupts tidy lives, unsettles habits—and taps unplumbed resources, both personal and social.”
It's easy to figure out that a college degree is a sound investment for an individual. Whether all those college graduates are good for the economy is a much trickier calculation.
Winifred Gallagher inspects two books on dirt: both offer rich details, but she finds one more scholarly, the other "livelier...riddled with gossipy anecdotes about the rich and famous."
Gary Alan Fine discovers why it's so hard to keep secrets nowadays.
Brooke Allen reviews Janet Malcolm's book on Gertrude Stein and her long-time companion Alice B. Toklas, in which Malcolm "comes close to declaring Stein an artistic fraud."