Requiem for a Wrecking Ball

Requiem for a Wrecking Ball

Aubrey McClendon’s 2013 Chevy Tahoe ignited after he slammed into an Oklahoma City overpass at high speed. Flames charred the brazen oil and gas executive’s body so badly that medical experts relied on dental records to verify that he’d died. One day before...
Torching the Truth

Torching the Truth

America’s military adventures — and, just as often, its misadventures — have inspired thousands upon thousands of books. But the military isn’t just in the business of inspiring books: Sometimes it bans them, too. The Pentagon recently announced that it was refusing...
Toxic Teflon

Toxic Teflon

Teflon, you might have heard, may cause cancer. The culprit was a toxic, now retired compound called PFOA. Also known as C8, the chemical became the subject of a major lawsuit accusing DuPont — the manufacturer of the popular nonstick coating — of sickening thousands...
There Are No Words Left for the GOP Charade

There Are No Words Left for the GOP Charade

Help! We political wordsmiths are in urgent need of assistance from lexicologists. The Republican presidential primary has gone so far out, so beyond accepted boundaries of civic and civil behavior, that we’ve run out of words to describe the extreme weirdness....
The Elephant in the Race

The Elephant in the Race

The audience in the theater takes its seats and slowly settles down. The curtain rises on a conventional living room in a conventional American home, neither squalid nor opulent. Middle class, it whispers. A woman of a certain age sits in a chair in the middle of the...