Luis Mushro’s business is pieces of famous people. He sells increasingly smaller and smaller slivers of their hair on eBay, often for several hundred dollars per strand. Read the rest of this entry »

The 500-foot white cross atop the tomb of Spain’s Gen. Francisco Franco dominates the skyline along a highway between Madrid and Segovia. Built by slave labor, it is one of the few remaining monuments to European fascism. This week, the Spanish parliament is expected to pass a law that would remove nearly all symbols, street names, statues, and plaques (posted on many Catholic churches) associated with the dictatorship. Read the rest of this entry »

A significant legacy of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Susan Faludi, was the return to a distinctly American mythology involving a lone hero and a maiden in need of rescue–the result of years of frontier attacks. Feminism, she contends, was among the first casualties of the war on terrorism: She noticed fewer female bylines, a spate of stories about women falling for firefighters, and an exaltation of a cowboy-hat-wearing commander in chief. Her new book, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, discusses the dangers of embracing a national myth. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Rhodes has had nuclear weapons on the brain for decades. His 1986 book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, won a Pulitzer Prize and other awards. In his third book on the subject, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, he chronicles the final years of the Cold War when it was clear the terrible weapons that had been amassed could never be used. Read the rest of this entry »

How chaotic is the country’s presidential primary system? Consider a few recent headlines: The Democratic National Committee stripped Florida of its delegates because the state moved its primary to late January. A Florida legislator then called Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada, and New Hampshire “terrorist rogue states” for coercing candidates not to campaign in his state. Last week, two Florida lawmakers sued the DNC. Meanwhile, the Granite State–the self-appointed marshal of the primary parade–has yet to announce when its vote will actually take place. And the date of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus is set for January 14, but many experts believe it may yet move forward. Read the rest of this entry »