Recently added articles from The Washington Monthly:
Marathon man: Henry Waxman's climate change bill won't make it into law this year. That's why he's the right guy for the job.(Cover story)
May 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's a drizzly spring evening on Capitol Hill, and an Indiana congressman has placed himself in an unenviable spot: between Representative Henry A. Waxman and the tobacco industry. At issue tonight on the floor of the House of Representatives is ...
Radical Streak: why Leonard Bernstein's politics can't explain his best music.(ON POLITICAL BOOKS)
May 01, 2009; ... Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician by Barry Seldes University of California Press, 269 pp. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Leonard Bernstein took a lot of flak for his antics on the podium. Patrons of the New York Philharmonic ...
Green zone on the green line: the Department of Homeland Security goes house hunting in one of Washington's most troubled neighborhoods.(TEN MILES SQUARE)
Mar 01, 2009; ... When the U.S. Office of Personnel Management surveyed the job satisfaction of the federal workforce in 2008, the Department of Homeland Security ranked at or near the bottom in nearly every category. It was another dubious distinction for the department, which had launched with much ...
Washington's turnaround artists: think government can't fix the auto industry? Then how did it manage to fix the railroad industry--twice?
Mar 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The massive corporate bailouts that Washington is undertaking as a result of the economic crisis have left most of us feeling deeply nervous. It s not just the price tag, measured in incomprehensible trillions. It's also the fear that the problems of the ...
No return to normal: why the economic crisis, and its solution, are bigger than you think.(Cover story)
Mar 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Barack Obama's presidency began in hope and goodwill, but its test will be its success or failure on the economics. Did the president and his team correctly diagnose the problem? Did they act with sufficient imagination and force? And did they prevail ...
Soldiers of misfortune: how American private security contractors in Iraq became victimizers and victims.
Mar 01, 2009; ... Big Boy Rules: America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq by Steve Fainaru Da Capo Press, 288 pp. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] They were on every flight from Amman to Baghdad: hard-faced men dressed in civilian khakis and boots, their bodies solid and ...
Straight away: don't ask, don't tell is on its way out, and not a moment too soon.
Mar 01, 2009; ... Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America by Nathaniel Frank Thomas Dunne Books, 368 pp. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One of the ugliest moments of the 2008 presidential campaign involved a room full of people ...
Yes he did: what Barack Obama learned from Cesar Chavez.
Mar 01, 2009; ... Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century by Randy Shaw University of California Press, 368 pp. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For the record, "Yes we can" emerged as a slogan later and less deliberately ...
Hybrid vigor.(Letter to the editor)
Jan 01, 2009; ... "The Plug-in Revolution" (by Jeffrey Leonard, August/September/October 2008) gets the general prescription (an all-electric future) right, but going directly to an all-electric road transport system is as unlikely today as it's been for the last ninety years. The "plug-in" piece that ...
The little unions that couldn't: card check is worth fighting for-except for the "card check" part.
Jan 01, 2009; ... As Barack Obama prepares to get a stimulus plan launched this winter, carefully planting seeds of cross-party warmth and nurturing each rare shoot, he may wish to avoid unrelated matters that cause bitter partisan showdowns and lay waste to the whole damn thing. At least, that seems wisest ...
Back on tracks: a nineteenth-century technology could be the solution to our twenty-first-century problems.
Jan 01, 2009; ... Six days before Thanksgiving, a truck driver heading south on Interstate 81 through Shenandoah County, Virginia, ploughed his tractor trailer into a knot of cars that had slowed on the rain-slicked highway. The collision killed an eighty-year-old woman and her one- and four-year-old ...
Bad reactors: rethinking your opposition to nuclear power? Rethink again.
Jan 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Seven years ago, Finland was faced with a daunting energy dilemma. To keep its domestic industries up and running, it needed to double its electricity supply by 2025. At the same time, it had to cut carbon emissions by fourteen million tons a year to ...
Toy story: does the reform of a small agency herald the return of competent government oversight?
Jan 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In late July, when the presidential race was a dead heat and the country's banks were not yet nationalized, Congress--opposed by just four Republicans--quietly voted for the return of big government. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act ...
We are all Keynesians again: why Ben Bernanke isn't listening to Robert Samuelson.(on political books)
Jan 01, 2009; ... The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence by Robert J. Samuelson Random House, 299 pp. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The heroes of Robert J. Samuelson's The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future ...
Our man in Tel Aviv: what will be Hillary Clinton's strategy for Middle East peace? The memoir of her husband's ambassador to Israel may provide hints.(ON POLITICAL BOOKS)
Jan 01, 2009; ... Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East by Martin Indyk Simon & Schuster, 512 pp. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Just the thought of another book about Middle East policy under President Bill Clinton might ...
Good fortune: Malcolm Gladwell rethinks the secret to success.(ON POLITICAL BOOKS)
Jan 01, 2009; ... Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell Little, Brown and Company, 310 pp. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Before he became the peculiar boss of the Manhattan Project, the physicist Robert Oppenheimer was a peculiar young man. On a train to ...
Lost in their Bloomberg terminals: the Wall Street wizards who brought on catastrophe by pretending to eliminate risk.(ON POLITICAL BOOKS)
Jan 01, 2009; ... Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity edited by Michael Lewis W.W. Norton, 352 pp. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For those of us who enjoy watching twenty-two behemoths maul each other on autumn weekends, no figure of speech beats a good football simile ....
Told ya.(Editor's Note)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Four years ago, we published a cover story on Barack Obama ("The Great Black Hope," November 2004). He had recently given his tour de force speech at the Democratic convention, and was about to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Already there was buzz about Obama possibly running for ...
Tilting at windmills.
Nov 01, 2008; ... The view from the ground In our last issue, as a part of the effort to educate the new president on the culture of the executive branch of government, I emphasized the need for a president to reach down the chain of command and outside it to learn what is really going on beneath ...
The big night: what Obama's victory looked like in Washington.(TEN MILES SQUARE)(Barack Obama)
Nov 01, 2008; ... Barack Obama's acceptance speech will always be inseparable in my memory from the rasp of a blown out subwoofer. The sound came from the open window of a black Cadillac whose owner, surveying the impenetrable throng of people that dogged the intersection of 11th and U Streets in ...