The Last Stand of Somalia’s Jihad

Foreign Policy   December 17, 2012

Will Kenya’s invasion of Somalia put an end to al-Shabab?

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The Tunnels of Gaza

National Geographic   December 2012

The tunnels of Gaza are a lifeline of the underground economy but also a death trap. For many Palestinians, they have come to symbolize ingenuity and the dream of mobility.

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In Rebel Country

Foreign Policy   November 27, 2012

How did 1,000 militiamen in rubber boots conquer a city of 1 million people in a matter of hours?

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The Cult of Massoud

Foreign Policy   November 23, 2012

How Afghanistan’s Che Guevara still haunts the country.

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Prisoners Rule

Foreign Policy   November 2012

Welcome to the deadliest city in the deadliest country in the world.

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Posthuman Pop

Wired   November 2012

How virtual singer Hatsune Miku became a star.

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Christopher Nolan’s Games

The New Yorker   July 19, 2012

Nolan’s films are contests with rules and phases, gambits and defenses, many losers and the occasional victor, usually a Pyrrhus type.

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The Fast and the Ridiculous

Foreign Policy   July 27, 2012

In Mexico, it’s taken as fact that the United States is backing the drug cartels.

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Obama’s Deportation Problem

Washington Monthly   July 2012

By giving a reprieve to 800,000 undocumented immigrants, the president put out a fire of his own making. How Obama’s immigration enforcement policies got away from him.

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This Must be the Song

The New Yorker   June 14, 2012

In the late 1970s, in primordial downtown Manhattan, Talking Heads sonified longing and regret.

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A Terrible Act of Reason

The New Yorker   May 17, 2012

Suddenly, self-immolation is everywhere.

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Bernard Hopkins and the Endless End of Boxing

Grantland   January 25, 2012

A look at the always-changing prizefighter.

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The Obama Effect

Slate   October 5, 2011

A surprising new theory for the continuing crime decline among black Americans.

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An UNconvenient Truth

Foreign Policy   September 22, 2011

For years, even Israelis have known that Palestine is a state.

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Mexican Roulette

Foreign Policy   August 30, 2011

A deadly gun-running gamble just cost America’s ATF chief his job. But the gun lobby gave him little choice but to try.

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The Unquiet Life of Franz Gayl

Washington Monthly   July 2011

A Marine who made too much noise, helped save the lives of countless troops in Iraq, and paid with his career.

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The Good Bad Son

New York Magazine   May 22, 2011

Seemingly overnight, Saif Qaddafi became a new man: not the deliverer his supporters had hoped but someone indistinguishable from his father.

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The Curious Case of Joseph and Nicholas Brooks

New York Magazine   February 7, 2011

The father was an Oscar-winning songwriter. The son, a college dropout bon vivant. Their alleged crimes: serial sexual assault and a  murder in a hotel bathtub.

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The Great Cyberheist

New York Times Magazine   November 14, 2010

According to the prosecutor in the case of hacker and government informant Albert Gonzales, “The sheer extent of the human victimization caused by Gonzalez and his organization is unparalleled.”

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Obama=Bush?

Boston Globe Ideas   November 14, 2010

Barack Obama isn’t the new Jimmy Carter, but he may be the new (first) Bush

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Show Him the Money

Washington Monthly   July 2010

Tom Donohue scares millions of dollars out of corporations. Is his U.S. Chamber of Commerce good for business?

Show Him The Money

The Real Deal

Slate   June 15, 2010

The unjustly unheralded Michael Winterbottom blurs the line between fiction and documentary.

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The Vatican Loves a Good Story

Slate   June 3, 2010

It takes money, a medical miracle, and a compelling vita to make it as a saint.

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Lost Exile

Vanity Fair   February 2010

The unlikely life and sudden death of Russia’s angriest newspaper.

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D’Escoto Inferno

The New Republic   June, 2009

Meet the Sandinista who runs the U.N. General Assembly.

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Meth Mouth

Fast Company   May 2009

A tech tycoon believes keeping teens off crystal meth is a matter of scary advertising. Could he be right?

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Arming the Drug Wars

Portfolio   June 2008

American demand for drugs provoked the cartel wars in Mexico, and American guns smuggled over the border have made them staggeringly lethal.

Arming the Drug Wars

Big Brother Inc.

Vanity Fair   December 2007

Knowing your business is big business for Aristotle Inc., whose  database of voter records has been an essential campaign tool for every president since Ronald Reagan.

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Putin’s Power Grab

Portfolio   November 2007

The Russian president’s real power comes not from the KGB, but from the oil and gas in his country’s far east.

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The Devil’s Advocate

The New Republic   September 2007

Is Environmental Defense Fund an ecological savior or a corporate stooge?

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A Budding Invasion

Men’s Vogue   March 2007

Mexican cartels have made marijuana a cash crop worth billions by infiltrating America’s national forests.

A Budding Invasion

The Pruner

Washington Monthly   June 2006

Arizona’s other maverick.

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Will Success Spoil MySpace?

Vanity Fair   March 2006

MySpace has become the most popular social-networking site on the Web, a virtual city of sex and youth culture, with its own celebrities, Casanovas, and con artists. Its most unlikely character is its conservative new owner, Rupert Murdoch.

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Two if by Sea

The American Prospect   March 2005

The Port of Los Angeles may be the country’s most attractive target for economic terrorism.

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