If you think the American middle class has it bad, consider life in debt-ridden Italy or Greece. Best-selling financial writer Michael Lewis portrays the downfall of several European countries with his usual verve, in Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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James McBride won the National Book Award for "The Good Lord Bird," his novel about the abolitionist John Brown. He explains why he doesn't like most fictional portraits of slavery and how he tried to tell a different story.
John Leland is a Style writer at the N.Y. Times. He talks about the IKEA phenomenon and the company’s corporate and social vision
Patti Smith was born in South Jersey. She grew up determined to become an artist.
So romance is about sex, right? By definition?
Not so, says David Jay. He founded the Asexual Visibility & Education Network.
Mark Barrowcliffe wasted his youth playing Dungeons and Dragons. Now he's turned his obsession into a book.
Architect Lisa Mahar is the author of “American Signs: Form and Meaning on Route 66.” She says that the signs started out plain, but became grandiose neon monuments by the 1950s.
About a year ago, independent producer Karen Michel moved from Brooklyn to Pleasant Valley, New York, near the Hudson River. She prepared this piece as a way of getting to know her new neighbors
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