Longreads

We buried my grandfather last spring. He had died in his sleep in his own bed at 95, so, as funerals go, it wasn’t a grim occasion. But it was a historic one for our small rural…

Military involvement and research in neuroscience generates unique ethical, legal, and social issues that require careful elucidation and consideration in order to align the potentially conflicting…

On the way to visit my mother one recent rainy afternoon, I stopped in, after quite some constant prodding, to see my insurance salesman. He was pressing his efforts to sell me a long-term-care policy with a pitch about how much I’d save if I bought it now, before the rates were set to precipitously rise. For $5,000 per year, I’d receive, when I needed it, a daily sum to cover my future nursing costs. With an annual inflation adjustment of 5 percent, I could get in my dotage (or the people caring for me would get) as much as $900 a day. My mother carries such a policy, and it pays, in 2012 dollars, $180 a day—a fair idea of where heath-care costs are going.

Fresno was a mistake from the beginning. I was five when we moved there. My dad and I drove from Texas in a rented Ryder truck; we finally pulled off the highway in a dingy business district…

Demographics exert a significant influence on both economies and financial markets, an impact that will grow in the coming years. Executive SummaryDemographics exert a significant influence on both…

In March 2008, the New York Public Library announced a $100 million gift from private equity billionaire Stephen Schwarzman and a sweeping plan to radically remake its landmark main building on 42nd…

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons When Trisha comes to town we have to go out. She’s the bitterest soccer mom of all time and as part of her escape from home she wants to get drunk and complain…

As reliably as autumn brings Orion to the night sky, spring each year sends a curious constellation to the multiplex: a minor cluster of romantic comedies and the couples who traipse through them,…