After September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda and one of its leaders, Osama bin Laden, became household words. News organizations monitored the organization’s every move, and the media broadcast almost daily the messages that various political... Read More

The cost of health care per American in 2007 was $7,600, and U.S. life expectancy has reached a record high of seventy-eight years, the National Coalition on Health Care states. Yet as costs rise, Americans still don’t live as long as... Read More

Few relationships are as complex as the mother—daughter bond, that web of interconnecting threads coursing through both lifetimes. Editor Kathryn Kysar, writer and poet, examines this bond in twenty-one essays by daughters of various... Read More

We’re all consumers of insurance at one point or another in our lives: most of us will drive cars, have health problems, will be involved in accidents, fires, have business disputes, and even be sued. “For all these and other reasons... Read More

Wearing an elegant Yves Saint Laurent suit with a black cowl, Patrizia Gucci stood up and listened to the magistrate in a Milan courtroom read the verdict. Guilty—for the murder of the father of her children, Maurizio Gucci, the... Read More

In her eloquent retelling of this evocative selection of Chinese myths and legends, Victoria Cass (a retired professor of Chinese) transports us into a marvelous, disturbing, and often magical realm. There is a refreshing lack of... Read More

By day poets masquerade as mere mortals: insurance clerks, teachers, librarians. But by night they prowl like panthers, seizing words on the run and crunching raw emotion. —Unattributed, The Times, 4 September 2006. Poetry: What is it?... Read More

“Democracy is a form of government responsive to the people, it is flexible, singing with innovation, ingenuity, riffing on old ideas, the whole process of change accelerated by the creators,” says Susan Griffin in this intriguing... Read More