There are quite literally thousands of musical notes in a symphony–each of which must be played not only with near mechanical precision but infused with a passion that breathes life into the composer’s vision. Replicating that passion and technical prowess to an audience every night is a tall order. But to many professional musicians, it’s a prospect that reduces them to cold sweats, nearly incapacitating anxiety, even physical pain– what the rest of the world calls stage fright. “It got so bad that I would be sick for days before a performance,” says Jeffrey Forden, 47, a French horn soloist and chamber musician in New York. “That was before I started taking pills.” Read the rest of this entry »

The election of 1840 was the first in which presidents appealed to crowds of voters, in which the parties adopted platforms, and which featured the miscellany that has come to define modern politics–banners, merchandise, and theme songs. One of those songs exhorted voters to “Turn out! Turn out!” and indeed they did: Some 80 percent of the eligible electorate cast ballots. But it’s the campaign tune that makes the election of 1840 a staple of high school history books. Read the rest of this entry »

The phrase “new deal” came into the English lexicon long before its mention at the 1932 Democratic convention that propelled Franklin D. Roosevelt to the White House. Mark Twain and Henry James both used it, but it was FDR who etched it into the history books. It wasn’t intended to be so. A speechwriter penned the line, but neither he nor FDR thought it was particularly memorable. Nor did it refer to any specific set of remedies for the serious crisis in which the republic found itself. Read the rest of this entry »

If drug dealers make so much money, how come they still live with their moms? Sudhir Venkatesh is a Columbia University sociologist who spent years in the housing projects of Chicago documenting criminal gangs and the drug trade. He addresses that question and others in his new book Gang Leader for a Day and in an interview with U.S.News. Excerpts:

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EXETER, N.H.–The one clear thing to emerge from the Republican primary in New Hampshire is an even greater uncertainty about who will end up leading the party into the November elections. Sen. John McCain, who got 37 percent of the record turnout vote, pulled off an improbable win from voters who still harbor considerable goodwill from his previous efforts there. Mitt Romney, in second place, met the lower expectations he had set right before the primary. Mike Huckabee inished third, and Rudy Giuliani whose strategy was to focus on Florida and Super Tuesday, a distant fourth. Read the rest of this entry »