Search results for

Most Americans have a vague notion about the national debt, but how many of us really understand the repercussions of a $9 trillion debt? In their new book, Where Does the Money Go?, authors Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson examine the way a looming federal budget crisis threatens to affect personal savings, retirement and mortgages.

Karachi is Pakistan's largest and richest city — and it has an appalling reputation. Karachi is witness to frequent sectarian attacks, gun battles and suicide attacks — a touch of Baghdad. Politically, Karachi is one of the few remaining bastions of support for Pakistan's increasingly unpopular president.

Writer Jeffrey Eugenides, who edited the new anthology, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead, takes an unorthodox look at love. He explains how the stories in this collection revolve around voyeuristic longing or disenchanted entanglement.

For all of us who have ever wandered into a room only to freeze, wondering blankly, "Why did I come in here, again?," Martha Weinman Lear has an answer. Lear, the author of Where Did I Leave My Glasses?, discusses the twin issues of memory loss and aging — what degree of forgetfulness is normal, and what can be done about it?

Mayawati Kumari is the chief minister of one of India's largest and poorest states. She's also the richest woman in India and one of the best known. Now there's talk about her possibly becoming the country's next prime minister.

Benazir Bhutto made the last few edits on Reconciliation, her final book, on the morning that she was assassinated. In that book — part political manifesto, part memoir — Bhutto wrote that she was prepared for the worst upon her return to Pakistan from exile.

Eric G. Wilson, author of Against Happiness, has embraced his inner gloom and wishes more people would do the same. He talks to Melissa Block about why the world needs melancholy and the link between sadness and artistic creation.

Author Philip Dodd traveled the world to find out how common words like guppy, saxophone and even the Mercedes got their names. The stories he uncovered in The Reverend Guppy's Aquarium are fascinating, funny and sometimes tragic.

Paleontologist Neil Shubin discusses his new book, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year-History of the Human Body. Shubin traces the hand and other human features back to creatures that roamed the earth hundreds of millions of years ago.

Fred Kaplan, author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, says the Bush administration's world view is based on several misconceptions. For one, he says, the administration thought of freedom as a gift from God, without understanding the practical requirements of developing democracies.