In the 1990s, when China’s fabled Shaolin Temple was celebrating its 1500th anniversary as a center of Zen Buddhism and kung fu, American college student Matthew Polly was on a pilgrimage of his own.
The skinny kid from Topeka, Kansas who had grown up on Star Wars and David Carradine was leaving Princeton University to look [...]

Americans’ impressions of the Amish tend to run hard and fast to stereotypes: wholesome horse-and-buggy barn-raisers or holier-than-thou cult of the past that cheats with chainsaws when you’re not looking.
The beards and bonnets and old-fashioned ways are endlessly alluring, and confusing. Is this the simple life that would save the planet if we all suited [...]

Of all the presidential contenders in both major parties this election season, there is none that has hit with quite the crackle and jolt of Texas Congressman Ron Paul.
In debate after debate, his reedy East Texas voice has cut through the solemn pieties like Texas lightening, like Old Testament prophesy.
Nobody sees him winning, but Ron [...]

Heather Byer was eight years into a New York career — lugging her brief case, hitting her marks, doing the lunches, calming her boss — and hating it. It wasn’t rich enough, deep enough, real enough to be her life. Not nearly.
Then one day, Heather Byer — thirty-something, career woman, five-one, a hundred and two [...]

Benazir Bhutto was not just a beloved symbol of democracy to millions of Pakistanis. She was also the keystone of Washington’s long-shot plans for some kind of stability in Pakistan. She was the Bush administration’s last best hope for pulling Pakistan back from the brink.
Her very return to Pakistan two months ago was part of [...]

Daniel Mendelsohn’s grandfather told him stories, in his rich Yiddish accent, about all kinds of things — life in the old country, life in America, stories of rabbis and high holidays and Jewish tradition.
The one thing Mendelsohn’s grandfather never told stories about was his brother Shmiel, Shmiel’s wife and their four beautiful daughters, and how [...]

For months and months in the long trek of the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama seemed to go nowhere. His story, his color, his intellect and his charisma were all magical. His poll numbers were not.
Now, on the eve of first votes, Obama is super hot in pursuit of the Democratic nomination.
We talked with the [...]

If you hadn’t noticed, you’re not looking. We live in the era of pervasive cosmetic surgery. Everybody nipped and tucked and botoxed and lipo-sucked to a fare-the-well.
Look around at the “trout pout” lips and “wind tunnel” facelifts, the Kabuki zone of expressionless brows, the gravity-defying fronts and rears and rows of paint-white teeth — and [...]

In the homestretch to Iowa and New Hampshire, former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee has been the stunning wild card in the GOP pack. He’s spent next to nothing, turned his back on a generation of angry conservatism, and is now in striking distance of big wins in the Republican presidential primaries.
Here at [...]

In the world of jazz, saxophone giant John Coltrane was so big, so powerful, so deep, so out there that almost half a century later jazz musicians are still wailing in his shadow.
Coltrane, says New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff, was the John Henry of jazz, the John Wayne, the Paul Bunyon — the [...]

In the long-ago fall of 1969, something completely different in television began happening in the UK. It was called Monty Python’s Flying Circus — a free-form, satirical, anarchic circus of humor that had Britons staring dumbfounded, then laughing ’til they cried.
Monty Python made the leap to America, and then onto the big screen, with “Monty [...]

In May 1941, when his towering masterpiece “Citizen Kane” hit the theaters, actor, director, writer, producer Orson Welles was just 25 years old. “Citizen Kane” would be called the best American film ever made. Generations of Americans would intone “Rosebud” as a totem of life’s deep mysteries.
Orson Welles — dazzling young American genius — appeared [...]

American founding father Thomas Jefferson knew a lot about music, architecture, revolution, slaves, philosophy, governing, and wine.
Jefferson was far and away the young nation’s wine-lover-in-chief. He advised sober George Washington on what to drink, kept fabulous wine cellars when the country was still the province of hard cider and whiskey; braved pirates and hurricanes to [...]

It’s the season of big releases and Oscar angling, at the end of a wild, up and down year for movies — from sweeping epics of war won and lost, to comic close-ups on pregnancy, young love, and growing up.
There were the perennial Hollywood blockbusters — from “Ratatouille” to “Spiderman III” to yet another “Pirates [...]

Democrats in Congress wrapped up their first year in power this week, touting accomplishments on energy and the minimum wage — while the President got his way on the major issue of war funding.
Congressional investigators dove into CIA records on destroyed interrogation tapes.
The EPA put a roadblock in the path of California’s and other states’ [...]

Warren Bennis has made a big name for himself over the years as a business management guru. He’s been an advisor to Fortune 500 companies and to presidents. Along the way, he’s thought a lot about leadership — what makes a great CEO, general, president.
Lately he’s decided that it all comes down to judgment. Courage, [...]

The day-to-day news feed out of Iraq misses one of the country’s saddest, and most important, stories: the exodus of Iraq’s intellectual class.
While tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees are heading back, many professionals will never return. And they leave an enormous void — one that hurts the prospects for stability.
We’ll talk to three prominent [...]

With a jittery economy, many Americans may think twice these days about where they invest their money. And yet, think as they may, smart people too often make dumb financial bets: on what will bring happiness, or yield big gains in the market.
To sort out why, a new breed of researcher — neuroeconomists — are [...]

In 2004, John Edwards was the optimist with the winning smile. Today, the former Senator from North Carolina still flashes that smile, but his combative talk on poverty and big business has remade his image as the Democrats’ fiery economic populist.
The message may be working: Running a close third in Iowa, where Edwards has staked [...]

He’s been called “the Indiana Jones of conservation.” Alan Rabinowitz, a wildlife biologist and big-cat expert, has traveled the world from Belize to Borneo, Thailand to Laos, and risked his life to save jaguars, clouded leopards, and tigers.
Now, in Myanmar, he’s established the world’s largest tiger preserve, in an effort to save the world’s dwindling [...]