We look at that archetypal character, the American Nerd.

Filling up your tank these days can set you back $50, $100, even $150.
That’s big money. And in many families, it means something else has got to give. It could be meals out. The summer road trip. The super-sized SUV. The suburban house.
Americans are already cutting back. They’re driving [...]

This week, Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of The Washington Post, announced he’s stepping down after 17 years at the helm.
Forty-four years total at the newspaper, where he arrived as a summer intern in 1964.
Many of the stories he’s had a hand in are defining: Watergate. Secret CIA prisons. Walter Reed. The Post has [...]

Topping the news this week: Handguns. Democratic unity. And a North Korea breakthrough.

The numbers out this week show a housing market going to hell in a handbasket — if we’re not already there. Prices plunging at historic rates, home sales dropping all over.
As Congress haggles over a landmark bill to provide relief for beleaguered homeowners, everyone wants to know if we’ve hit bottom yet, or if there’s [...]

Step into summertime with novelist Roxana Robinson, and yes, you’ll have the twittering of finches in lilacs, long grass in the meadow, and the sunny house on the water. But the living is anything but easy.
Roxana Robinson has built a big following writing about the American attitude of entitlement — to happiness, to love, [...]

In the world of the Internet, Jeff Bezos is a giant. A pioneer. In the old days, they might have said a god.
He started Amazon.com when e-commerce was next to nothing and the web was still a whisper. Today, Bezos is a billionaire, Amazon is ubiquitous, and the web, well, it’s the way [...]

Young conservatives Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam are the toast of Republican thought circles right now. But their call to Republican revival is also a broadside.
Bush-era crony capitalism and government neglect, they charge, have pushed the USA toward a Latin American model of rich and poor and nothing in between.
If the Grand Old Party wants [...]

Americans believe in markets, and, over time, markets have worked very well for Americans. But what about now, when oil markets and oil prices and speculation in those markets are sky high and still climbing?
We know oil supply is not infinite, and demand is huge. We knew cheap oil couldn’t last forever. [...]

Felix Dennis, founder of Maxim magazine, is rich. He says you’ve got to be ruthless and he’s all for it.

It’s going on seven years since the United States invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. But the news out of Afghanistan in the last couple of days and weeks hardly sounds like a wrap-up phase.
A giant jailbreak in the traditional southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. NATO forces rushed from Kabul to a [...]

We love our gardens. The fresh tomatoes, the melons, the zinnias, the peas, the flowering bushes placed just so, the trowel and shovel, the garden path.
But sore backs, dirty knees and, finally, sweet corn are just the beginning of our affair with the garden, says philosopher-guide Robert Pogue Harrison.
Harrison has gone deep on forests, [...]

Two floods and a lot of news this week. The flood above all in the Midwest, as levee-topping waters now surge down the Mississippi with exhausted sandbaggers and destruction in their wake.
And the flood nationally at the gas pump, as gasoline prices climb higher and higher, swamping family budgets.
Then the news. Obama drops out [...]

It may be beautiful, but everybody knows marriage isn’t easy.
Who pays the bills? Who works or stays home? Who unloads the dishwasher?
So what about gay marriage? Gay partnerships?
Yesterday, California was ringing with gay wedding bells, on its first full day of legal gay marriage. But gay marriage is not new anymore. [...]

Talk about awkward.
The United States and Iraq are negotiating a new legal framework for U.S. military operations in Iraq. A new “status of forces agreement.”
And Iraq’s prime minister stands up and says the negotiations aren’t working. That they’re at an impasse. That Iraq’s demands are unacceptable to the U.S. and U.S. demands [...]

A conversation with playwright Neil LaBute.

All attitude — TV, and the world after the late Tim Russert.

Dr. Thomas Graboys talks about his own Parkinson’s disease.

On the presidential campaign trail it is “veepstakes” season: John McCain and Barack Obama, being watched everyday now for any hint of who they’ll pick to complete their ticket.
McCain would be 72 on inauguration day — the oldest president ever sworn in. How old should his running mate be? And who?
Obama, first African-American [...]

Decision, destruction, and swirling debate. The Supreme Court gives a big win to Guantanamo detainees. Pakistan claims a U.S. air strike killed its troops. In Europe, President Bush talks tough on Iran.
Back home, hell and high water. Floods and a tornado devastate the Midwest. Four Boy Scouts are dead.
Oil prices get scarier. Tainted tomatoes sicken [...]