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Mitt Romney's tax returns show he pays an effective rate of just under 15 percent. His father, George, paid two to three times that rate. What one family's changing tax burden reveals about the design of the American tax code.

Science fiction's job is to give us a map of where we're headed. From Jules Verne to William Gibson, sci-fi authors describe their visions of the future, and how people might live in it. We ask Intel's futurist for his list of favorite sci-fi books.

Democrats are using next week's GOP presidential primary in Michigan as an opportunity to energize President Obama's core base of support there. The campaign and a superPAC have ads on the air in the state. And the campaign is organizing activities for the president's supporters.

In 2008, Renee Montagne talked to Martinique Chavez, 18, at a presidential debate party in Albuquerque, N.M. At the time, Chavez was undecided but leaning towards John McCain. Four years later, we catch up with her as she prepares to graduate from college and faces a tough economy. They're joined by Martinique's 18-year-old brother Zeke, a Ron Paul supporter.

Thomas Mallon's new novelization of the infamous political scandal re-imagines the events through the eyes of the perpetrators. Critic Heller McAlpin says Mallon manages to capture both the metastasizing dishonesty and the ludicrousness of this great American tragedy of political ambition run amok.

Marie Colvin, an American who was the Sunday Times of London's chief war correspondent for a quarter of a century, was killed Wednesday. Colvin was in the embattled Syrian city of Homs and died alongside a French photojournalist and one of Syria's best known citizen journalists. All three died in a district of Homs which has been under bombardment by Syrian government forces since early this month.

How much do we read into ourselves when we write a diary? Author Patrick DeWitt recommends the dark, deep journal of a man suffering from a nervous breakdown.

When Brian O. Selznick wrote The Invention of Hugo Cabaret — a graphic novel about an orphan in 1930s Paris — he imagined the secret spaces of a Paris train station. For inspiration, he visited Grand Central Terminal in New York City. But the scenes in the book — hidden tunnels, secret rooms, the giant clock tower — were all drawn from Selznick's imagination and later turned into the movie Hugo by Martin Scorcese, which is nominated for 12 Academy Awards. Selznick recently got to explore Grand Central's secrets for the first time and it turns out that life imitated art in shockingly faithful ways.

Back when refrigeration wasn't up to modern standards, Fat Tuesday was a time to clear the house of rich, indulgent foods. A Swedish church in Portland, Ore., keeps the Swedish version of the baking tradition alive, if not the religious observance.

Every Sunday, Mo Rocca's grandmother made homemade ravioli for the family dinner. He says he deeply regrets not learning her recipes before she passed away. In My Grandmother's Ravioli, Rocca asks other people's grandparents to teach him how to cook.