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    Waging War in Zeros and Ones

    The U.S. dominates the fields of hardware and software. But it remains uniquely vulnerable because its so connected to the Internet.

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    Who ‘The ’Hood Is Good’ For

    The owner of a seedy trailer park earns roughly $447,000 a year. But if the profit were less, would those accommodations remain available?

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    Lives of the Selfie-Centered

    What do teenagers use their phones for? Bonding, backbiting, bullying—and texting naked pictures. Lots and lots of naked pictures.

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    In Defense of Government Snooping

    Critics charged that Stellarwind was nearly worthless as an intelligence tool. Hayden has no doubts about the program’s effectiveness.

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    How Culture Beat Religion

    Evangelicals reject the feminist label, yet they support feminist principles like equal pay for equal work and political equality.

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    Trapped by the New Iron Curtain

    Romania, having suffered under two of the nastiest dictators of the Soviet period, is now in the crosshairs of Putin’s new cold war.

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    The Bridge to Somewhere

    Techniques for smoothing the passage of humans and vehicles date to the Romans, whose famous roads were lined with hand-laid stones.

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    He Made the Great Leap

    Fang Lizhi’s name is banned in China. But everyone there who continues to push for democratic rights owes a debt to the dissident.

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    The Power of Positive Thinking

    Churchgoers seem to live longer than non-churchgoers—an effect that may have more to do with stress reduction than divine intervention.

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    The Enduring Mystery of Sappho

    Was Sappho a priestess? A teacher? A wedding planner? Was she even
    a ‘lesbian’ in the modern sense of the word?

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    The End of the Third World

    The rapid rise of China seems to contradict the author’s assertion that democracy is better than autocracy at facilitating rapid economic growth.

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    Everyone’s a Critic

    Is watching all the ‘Star Wars’ films in a single sitting (‘for purposes of research, naturally’) a reasonable way for an adult to make a living?

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    Stumping in Nixon’s Shadow

    Nixon was the master triangulator. Clinton adopted the template while enacting welfare reform. W. applied it to expanding Medicare.

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    The Rise of Islamic State

    Donald Trump and Ted Cruz say they would keep Assad in power to defeat the Syrian jihad. But ISIS is a product of the Assad regime.

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    The Prince of the Smugglers

    Smuggling was an affirmation of the gospel of free trade—a fundamental tenet of 19th-century liberalism—and a protest against protectionism.

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    The Unabomber’s Brother Speaks Out

    David Kaczynski looked up to his brother. Ted went to Harvard at 16 and was on the faculty at Berkeley by 25. But then he became a terrorist.

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    The Iranians Devoured by the Revolution

    The longtime aspiration of Iranian leftists—that gradual, peaceful change could come from within the system—is now a pipe dream.

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    Planning for the Unpredictable

    Knowing the facts is not the same as knowing the future. Who could have foreseen that the Arab Spring would begin with a fruit vendor?

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    The Jihadist Threats From Within

    Somewhere between mentally unstable drifters and the superstars of global jihad are lone wolves like the San Bernardino killers.

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    A Cold Warrior Haunted by the Bomb

    Perry helped introduce GPS and stealth innovations to the U.S. military. But not all military problems have a technological fix.

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    A New Dawn for a Dashing Casanova

    One of the most erotic yet discreetly hushed works of literature ever written.

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    Getting Away with Murder in the Balkans

    The Balkans in the 1990s were not unlike Syria and Iraq today. The international community condemned the slaughter but did little to stop it.

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    A History of the Hirsute

    The ancient Hebrews honored beards. Peter the Great taxed his shaggier subjects. Lincoln grew one to make his mug look more presidential.

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    Science, Sorcery and Sons

    Kepler believed in witches. He probably even wondered about the potions his mother brewed. But when she was accused, he came to her aid.

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    Second Only to the Rothschilds

    Speyer banks funded the London underground, placed the first Union Civil War bonds in Europe and built the Madeira-Mamore railroad.

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    Advice From the Anti-Steve Jobs

    Gates preaches the value of civility and of work-life balance. While heading the Pentagon, he says, he never went to the office on a Saturday.

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    The Power of Persuasion

    Wilson’s wartime ‘information’ bureau was, in reality, about indoctrination. FDR spoke of closing financial institutions as ‘bank holidays.’

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    In Praise of the Political Insider

    Thanks to technology, officeholders have never been more in touch with their constituents. It is communication with each other that needs help.

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    How to Survive in an Open Office

    Yes, open offices cultivate camaraderie—among coworkers who all cringe as a colleague shouts at her soon-to-be ex-husband over the phone.

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    When America Went Boom

    Will the best brains of the future build things resembling our past innovations, or will they dedicate their time to tasks like making Twitter more user-friendly?

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    Why Japan Makes Cooler Jeans Than America

    The Japanese preserved ‘American traditional’ style, then repackaged it again stateside.

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    The Lives of the Disappeared

    In the late 1970s, North Korea began a bizarre kidnapping campaign to groom leaders for the communist wave about to sweep across Asia.

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    The Other Refugee Crisis

    Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, is also a city replete with movie theaters, soccer leagues, markets, hotels and hospitals.

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    Who Was John Birch?

    Shot by Chinese Communists, the U.S. soldier was posthumously enlisted in a club that made his name synonymous with Cold War paranoia.

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    Sore Winners of the Culture War

    The author claims that ‘anti-Catholicism is largely a thing of the past.’ Perhaps he hasn’t heard about the Little Sisters of the Poor.

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    David Hume: The Commercial Philosopher

    The Enlightenment is often miscast as the ‘Age of Reason.’ In truth, it dethroned rational philosophy in favor of sociology and psychology.

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    A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places

    Art and thought thrived in ancient Athens, medieval Florence and fin-de-siècle Vienna. What do such disparate places have in common?

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    Ukraine’s Split Personality

    Will Ukraine become part of the West, like Poland? Or will it be drawn back into Moscow’s shadow, like a larger version of Belarus?

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    How Cicero Lost His Head

    Cicero saved the republic from conspirators in 63 B.C., only to lose his own life (and hands) as Rome slid into civil war and dictatorship.

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    The Cowboy At Commerce

    During tense talks over steel imports, Baldrige insisted the tired Europeans work through lunch. He’d hidden snacks for his team nearby.

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    The God Profusion

    Europe’s churches are empty—but don’t take that as a sign of reason’s triumph. More than half of Icelanders believe in elves and trolls.

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    There’s No Place Like Home

    Our desire to be tied to a specific place may be linked to burying the dead: Home was where ancestors could be close to loved ones after death.

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    We Stand on Guard for Thee

    Canada—that oft-parodied frozen realm of hockey arenas and Celine Dion—is more interesting than half of the American states.

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    How to Deal With Terrorists

    Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin thought rescuing the hostages was infeasible. His rival, Shimon Peres, insisted that surrender wasn’t an option.

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    Alex Haley’s Mythical Roots

    Haley produced two of the top-selling books of the second half of the 20th century.Was he a flawed artist or a ruthless hustler?

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    Taking Swipes at Publius

    Our politics has changed irreversibly since the founding, yet the Constitution has survived. Might that be because it rests on eternal truths?

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    The Many Lives of Saint Augustine

    Augustine was a man obsessed with sex. It was the cause of his conversion crisis, which ended when he heard a child’s voice saying ‘tolle, lege.’

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    When Kennedy Stared Down Mao

    Mao rather richly presented the withdrawal from Indian territory as a show of ‘restraint’ when pressing for a seat on the U.N. Security Council.

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    All the Dictator’s Men

    Stalin targeted the relatives, assistants and friends of his inner circle. Yet his lieutenants kept the Soviet state together after his death.

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    To Fight Poverty, Raise IQ Scores

    Smarter people, on average, are more patient and interested in saving. And indeed national savings rates correlate with IQ scores.

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    Arms Across the Atlantic

    American and British officers made uneasy allies. Eisenhower compared their early encounters to those of a bulldog and tomcat.

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    Conservatism’s Mythic Roots

    Does the brutal treatment of California farm workers in the 1930s explain the ideas of Goldwater, Reagan and the Koch brothers?

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    The Most Democratic Food

    The convenient and inexpensive hamburger combines the white bread and red meat that until recently were available only to the rich.

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    Big Data Before the Web

    In the 1950s, social scientists tried to preserve an archive of human experience on microcards. Their experience is a parable for our digital era.

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    Is Football Safer Than Riding a Bike?

    The NFL is arguably ‘an athletic interpretation of a core issue facing the United States: how to use incredible power with self-restraint.’

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    Groupthink in the Ivory Tower

    How did an ideology supposedly predicated on struggle and revolution become the worldview of tenured professors with hefty pension plans?

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    The Science of Shooting Stars

    There is persuasive evidence that large bodies have smashed into the Earth on a regular basis —every 20 million to 30 million years or so.

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    How Breast-Feeding Became a Moral Crusade

    Privileged women have turned breast-feeding—considered repulsive a few decades ago—into yet another arena for maternal competition.

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    The Fed’s Faustian Bargain

    Excessive credit growth and bubbles—the consequence of over-easy monetary policies—are more dangerous than the threat of deflation.

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    Karl Rove’s 1896 Playbook for the 2016 White House

    McKinley’s rise to the presidency is one of the major turning points in U.S. history, but it has never received the attention it deserves.

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    Don’t Feel Guilty About Your $5 Cappuccino

    We should celebrate the luxury of craft beer and organic coffee beans—but also the fact that millions are fed thanks to industrial agriculture.

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    The Earthquake That Destroyed Optimism

    No disaster in recorded history compared to the Lisbon cataclysm. Some asked why God allowed such evil. Others saw it as divine punishment.

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