The mystery of courage
A scholar of bravery talks about the virtue that's hard to find and impossible to define and why it kept John McCain from being elected.
By Laura Miller
Macho anthropology
Did scientists start a deadly epidemic to prove that humanity is innately violent -- or are they victims of politics?
By Juno Gregory
Fuhgeddaboudit
The Sopranos have made being Italian-American seem cool again, but maybe it's time to say arrivederci to all that.
By Maria Russo
American travesty
With a talking presidential penis and a shovelful of Hollywood dirt, Joe Eszterhas waxes trashy on the Lewinsky scandal.
By Peter Kurth
When feminists were divas
The figures who founded modern feminism were outrageous, outspoken and sometimes out of their minds -- but they were never boring.
By Laura Miller
The real Sylvia Plath
Her newly published, unexpurgated journals reveal the poet's true demons -- and support a little-known theory about what drove her to suicide.
By Kate Moses
Chain gang
Fans of John Norman's novels about the planet Gor create virtual and real-life worlds in which women are slaves.
By Julia Gracen
The gay Nabokov
The novelist never could face the secret that cost his brother his life.
By Lev Grossman
Born to rape?
All men are potential sex criminals, say two evolutionary psychology proponents in a controversial new book.
By Margaret Wertheim
Too close for comfort
Why is Raymond Carver's masterpiece, "Cathedral," so much like a little-known D.H. Lawrence story?
By Samantha Gillison
A shot of the needful
In which the P.G. Wodehouse newsgroup and its online version of Blandings Castle teaches me to play again.
By Emily Jenkins
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