Longreads

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in Gone With the Wind (MGM) If I say the word "Mammy," you're likely to conjure up the character from Gone With the Wind. Or, you may think of Aunt Jemima, in her trademark…

When Jerry enters the pizza place next to Boston’s Government Center, he shakes Bruce Western’s hand heartily. Jerry, who has served 25 years for armed robbery and aggravated rape, was…

Wikimedia Commons, Seth Tisue/Flickr "I grew up on Ayn Rand," Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) recounted in a

2012-05-23, Issue 586 http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82378 Printer friendly version INTRODUCTION On 5 December 2011, GRAIN received the 2011 Right…

Even the most bitter opponents of Roger Williams recognized in him that combination of charm, confidence and intensity a later age would call charisma. They did not regard such traits as assets,…

1.Struggle in the House: Barney and Newt“The Republican party in the House is the most disciplined political party we have ever seen in the history of America… Newt Gingrich has greater…

The intelligence failure of the 9/11 attacks leveled intense criticism at the FBI. While some critics declared the agency completely broken, others argued that it needed to be radically…

A rocket scientist, a mathematician, a brain surgeon, and a lawyer walk into a room. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but at Intellectual Ventures it's something more serious—a business model. IV traffics in a single product: invention. On June 17 it invited 10 of the most blindingly brilliant doctors and scientists in the country to a daylong brainstorming session at its headquarters in a nondescript office building next to a swamp in Bellevue, Wash. Assembling around a conference table, the diverse group, which included physicists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, physicians from several major medical centers, and a Stanford University postdoctoral fellow in bioengineering, spent the day pondering a complex question: How can surgery be improved? The goal wasn't just incremental advances but multibillion-dollar lightning bolts that could change the world and, not incidentally, make all of the participants rich.

Before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, Charity Hospital was the pride of New Orleans. A 1930s Art Decostyle icon built with WPA funds, Charity was one of the oldest continually operating public…