Barbara Bush Changed With Her Country
The former first lady was notably eager to learn about people she didn’t understand—and recognize she might have been wrong about them.
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Wikimedia Commons Summer in the Pacific Northwest
The Bend, Oregon, Elks open their baseball season.
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Wikimedia Language Mystery Redux: Who Was the Last American to Speak This Way?
A particular style of American English once dominated respectable discourse. Now it has entirely disappeared. When? Why? How?
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Courtesy of the Schomburg Center Why So Few of New York's Bravest Are Black
The fight to diversify the FDNY is part of a nationwide struggle for African Americans seeking to gain equal access to higher-paying civil-service jobs.
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Jim Bourg / Reuters What's Causing Baltimore's Crime Spike?
As activists blame cops, police blame prosecutors, and the commissioner blames drugs, citizens are left to deal with the consequences.
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Nati Harnik / AP Out of Spite: The Governor of Nebraska’s Threat to Execute Prisoners
After his state abolishes the death penalty, Governor Pete Ricketts vows to apply it to the ten inmates still on death row.
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Wikimedia Barnard's Admission of Transgender Students
The women’s college becomes the last of the Seven Sisters to welcome applicants “who consistently live and identify as women.”
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Mike Stone / Reuters What Waco Police Still Won't Reveal About the Biker-Gang Shootout
Two weeks after the fight between rival outlaw motorcycle clubs, cops won’t answer even the most basic questions about what transpired.
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E! Entertainment America in Transition: Your Thoughts
Readers grapple with the mainstreaming of transgender identity punctuated this week by Vanity Fair’s profile of Caitlyn Jenner.
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Esri map American Futures: The Pacific Northwest Edition
It’s still a bigger, more varied, and more vigorous country than most people would guess.
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Brian Snyder / Reuters 'Unfortunately, We Had to Take His Life'
Authorities say that Usaama Rahim, who was shot and killed on a Boston street on Tuesday, was planning to behead a police officer.
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Doug Kapustin / Reuters Now That O'Malley Is in the Race
How the latest Democratic candidate makes the case for policies necessary to cope with our Second Gilded Age
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Eric Gay / AP Paradise Lost: What the Texas Floods Swept Away
The Blanco River overflowed its banks in Wimberley, tearing the heart out of the community.
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Alana Semuels / The Atlantic How to Fix a Broken Police Department
Reforms were slow to take hold in Cincinnati, but when they did, they drove down crime while also reducing arrests.
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Deborah Fallows American Futures Updates, From Mississippi to Arizona to California
NPR conveys the sound of an innovative school in Mississippi, plus other news from the road
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Deborah Fallows A High School That Changes Lives, One at a Time
Teachers and students in a bankrupt California city, determined to make progress
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Nate Jenkins / AP How Nebraska Abolished the Death Penalty
The legislature overrides the governor’s veto to make Nebraska the first conservative state since 1973 to reject capital punishment.
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Associated Press Bring Back the Military Draft? Your Thoughts
As another Memorial Day passes with service members still at war, readers debate the merits of reinstating the draft or requiring another form of national service.
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James Fallows Post-Memorial Day Note: Another Kind of Service, in San Bernardino
“I don’t just sit around. I don’t sleep much. That’s what I do. I do stuff.” The story of a man determined to do something for his town.
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John Minchillo / AP Can the Feds Clean Up Cleveland's Police Force?
The city and the Justice Department unveiled a consent decree on Tuesday afternoon aimed at reforming the troubled law-enforcement agency.
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Mike Blake / Reuters Border Patrol Agents Tase an Unarmed Woman Inside the U.S.
Video of the encounter suggests another instance of needless escalation and excessive force.
