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Because I was one of four journalists who’d been given a pre-release iPhone for review, Fox News asked me to do an on-location interview. But as soon as I saw the swarming crowds of rabid fan boys and girls, it was clear that even a glimpse of the thing would set off a near riot. When the interview began, the crowd smelled iPhone, and ominously closed in. Suddenly a young man swooped behind us and made a grab—not for the iPhone, it turned out, but for the interviewer’s microphone....

The lives of Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong and David Sarnoff were as improbable as any radio melodrama. De Forest, a shameless self-promoter of dubious ethicality, invented the vacuum tube that made radio practical-without ever quite understanding how it worked. The discoveries of Armstrong, a brilliant if naive idealist, formed the basis for virtually all radio reception today. Sarnoff, an impoverished Russian immigrant who rose to the presidency of RCA, hit upon the notion of mass broacasting....

“Walden” by Henry David Thoreau. It got me thinking hard about American attitudes toward the natural world, and the relationship between the two. “Changes in the Land” by William Cronon. This helps you see that the landscape is a historical creation, not just nature. “The Art of the Commonplace” by Wendell Berry. His essays show the choices you make in everyday life have political consequences. “Homer’s Odyssey”. I understood, for the first time, how a book written years ago could teach you how to live....

Trinidad’s euphoria was short-lived. Hospital officials told her that her doctor holds a financial stake in the clinic to which he had referred her. Worse, that facility had no on-site radiologist reading X-rays. Trinidad now believes she was sent to an inferior clinic and put through a terrifying ordeal just to line her physicians pockets. “If you can’t trust the doctor who sees the most private parts of your body,” she wonders, “who can you trust?...

I was in the midst of a five-day hiking and camping trip – sometimes called a “walking safari” – in Soysambu Conservancy in Kenya, a 48,000-acre animal and nature preserve in the Great Rift Valley. Walking among herds of zebras, watching unfazed giraffes munch leaves from tall trees, or trying to avoid getting eaten by a lion was not the only reason we were here. Most of the dozen people in my group – from Eugene, OR, Seattle, WA, southern Maryland, Richmond, VA, and Southern California – were in this East African nation for a more specific purpose: hiking to raise money for the Makindu Children’s Program, a 20-year-old Oregon- and Kenya-based NGO that fundraises money (and creates awareness) for a children’s center in southeastern Kenya that supports, educates, and feeds around 500 children who have been orphaned by the AIDS pandemic that has ravaged Africa in the last three decades....

There’s just one catch. Some experts believe that Toobin, as a matter of lawyers ethics (which the judge declined to consider), shouldn’t have written the book. They fear that he’s violated the bedrock rule of the profession - that lawyers are not supposed to reveal their clients’ secrets or to criticize the clients publicly, even after the representation has ended. This proscription is designed to give clients every reason to trust their lawyers....

Lee Atwater How’re ya doing.? No, scratch that. Everybody knows, even us ethereal pols. You telegraph it every time you wander out in public these days. Message: I’m lost. Four years ago we were worse off in the polls, but we had our mission set. Remember the Texas state GOP convention (June 9,1988)? You scorched Dukakis for the first time, took our focus group stuff public: Duke was the only governor who allowed first-degree murderers–didn’t mention any names; that came later-out on weekend furloughs....

“We need democracy, but something that will suit Russia. We should take into consideration the Western experience, but we do not have to copy it. I feel that people are free now. Of course it is tougher to live, but it depends: some people care about sausage, others prefer freedom.” IRINA SMIRNOVA, 25 GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTANT “I’d like a tough regime. The democrats spoiled the people. People do what they want and nothing counts....

Proponents of lifting restrictions argue that doing so is necessary to sustain universities and surrounding communities dependent on financial support from Chinese nationals. But this argument obscures the profound moral and economic consequences of higher education’s undue financial reliance on China, including its preference of foreign nationals in admissions decisions and its perpetuation of ballooning tuition costs. A true “foreign policy for the middle class” must address these serious concerns....

Architecture of course began as the material expression of man’s relation to the divine, but sought other sources of inspiration as soon as princes became richer than churches. That was in the West, where sacred architecture has been pretty much going downhill since the 14th century. But in Islamic countries, the prince and the faith are inseparable. The resurgence of Islamic power in the late 20th century has accordingly given rise to a world-class mosque 10 minutes by limousine from the United Nations....

As lawyers in the Oklahoma City case select a jury, many victims’ families are still wrestling with the tragedy. We are the real people who prosecutors are fighting for. Unlike some, I do not believe the conspiracy theories surrounding this case. Yes, other accomplices may be at large. But I think Tim McVeigh will be found guilty, and that he will pay with the death penalty. I still live with what happened that terrible morning....

The terms transgendered and professional motor sports just don’t go together, especially when you say I’m 5 foot 6 inches and weigh 118 pounds. I have girl’s body—small, fragile and tiny. I grew up in a little community in Mississippi. There were 10 or 15 boys in the neighborhood, we played sports in the front yard, and my daddy always had men over to work on race cars in the garage....

To animal-lovers and environmentalists, this is news comparable to the return of the prodigal son. There had been no confirmed sightings of wolves in Yellowstone since 1926, when the U.S. government finished its brutally effective extermination program by killing off the last squirming pup. In fact, the black canine with white markings in the gory breakfast scene–photographed by a commercial crew shooting a wildlife film in the park–could be a wolf-dog hybrid, released by an unhappy owner....

From Far Rockaway to Breezy Point, 71 firefighters and office workers had died in the Sept. 11 attack. Now, at 9:15 a.m., Tara Davan, daughter of First Deputy Commissioner Bill Feehan, the most senior FDNY victim, was leaving to pick up her kids. She heard shouting from the men working on her roof. “Oh, my God, watch out!” one said, seeing an explosion in the sky. “It’s a plane!” “Heads up!...

That last move was a mistake. Far from remaining a minor, fringe party, the mullahs of the MMA hit a chord with the Pakistani electorate by pushing an anti-American line and by being united for the first time, catapulting themselves from their pair of seats to 50. The election results were a bombshell that “shocked and upset” Musharraf, according to a senior Pakistani official. “He doesn’t know what hit him,” adds a Western diplomat in Islamabad....

By the time I reached South-Central last Thursday, it was a hopscotch of smoldering buildings. As I drove down Normandie for 50 blocks, every major intersection glistened with broken glass. Stores were hung with signs saying BLACK-OWNED, DON’T BURN. Burglar alarms rang, the whines of fire engines could be heard and the smoke got thicker with each block. Firefighters with police escorts fought blazes in some buildings while others burned on for want of anyone to deal with them....

Never before the evening of Nov. 2 had I squandered even a few minutes of my time to watch the CFP rankings show on ESPN, and even that night I tuned in mostly out of curiosity. As the names of the top 25 teams gradually were revealed, though, I allowed myself to begin buying that the committee in charge of the rankings might at last judge the various contenders’ accomplishments and not their brand appeal....