Jan. 1, 2011 | Hegel goes west. In the 1870s, an odd idea took hold on the American frontier: History had a direction, and it pointed toward St. Louis... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | At MIT, everyone is eccentric - and it certainly pays. Alumni have founded 25,800 companies, which generate revenues of about $1.9 trillion... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | By all accounts, Vivian Maier was a quiet, standoffish woman. Her street photographs, however, are intimate, even exhilarating... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | Excavation of the oldest known religious structure has unearthed a tantalizing question: Did a sense of the sacred give rise to human civilization?... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'At the border between knowledge and belief, where science flirts with philosophy, you''ll find experimental physicist Rolf-Dieter Heuer '... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'In January, 1917, Lenin described a Communist uprising in the near future as exceedingly unlikely. Let''s face it: Revolutions are hard to predict'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'Bello Maasaba believes in marriage. He has 86 wives and 133 children. So how does he...' "If I didn''t satisfy them, they would leave"'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'In Bloomsbury, wedged between a cafe and a beauty salon, is the School of Life, Alain de Botton''s latest venture in telling us how we ought to live'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | Are creative-writing programs to blame for the homogenization and deterioration of literary culture? The short answer: No... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | In France, intellectuals are lionized - and even listened to. In Britain, this is evidence that the French are unsound... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'Diagnosing Darwin. The naturalist''s chronic vomiting has been attributed to any of 40 diseases. Now there''s a new diagnosis'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'The most extensive, expensive Judaica library was sold at auction in December for more than $25-million. So why is it still languishing at Sotheby''s?'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | The art of biomathematics: Viruses are geometrically arranged bundles of genetic material. To attack them, change their shape. Paging Dr. Euclid... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | For hawkish humanitarians, Libya is a necessary intervention. Doing nothing while others suffer is not an option. Or maybe it is, suggests Tolstoy... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'In a remote corner of Shenzhen, the world''s largest genome-mapping facility shares a cityscape with an auto-repair shop and a scrap yard'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'The deep future for humans looks grim. Only .01 percent of species that ever existed still do so. You think we''re special?'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | The vanity of Uncle Sam. Sagging with debt, America has taken to nipping, tucking, and Botoxing its economic indicators... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | Wily tactician of seduction, the bad girl is supposed to be everything men want - and fear. What explains her diminished allure?... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | David Eagleman is a man transfixed by the mutability of time. Supposedly fixed and defined, time is stretched and compressed inside our minds... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | A manly man: Werner Herzog has walked across a rain forest, arranged to kill a man, and been shot in the stomach. All of it pleases him... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | The data ninjas of Silicon Valley are obsessed with eyeballs. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads"... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'What''s left of the left is Paul Krugman, whose self-certain empiricism amounts to this: Important people have no idea what they''re doing'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'Maurice Sendak sees his death drawing near. "I''m getting out just in time," he says. "We''ve lost the knack of living in the world"'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | 'That the archaeologist Zahi Hawass, Mubarak''s friend, is praising the revolution is a surprise. That he is allegedly corrupt is not'... more »
Jan. 1, 2011 | Why is it that Martin Amis - maligned as a spent talent, and a racist, self-hating reviler of women to boot - arouses such antipathy?... more »