A country up for grabs
Myanmar’s military toppled the civilian government. Now the country’s diverse population is banding together in protest
The house that Ben built
Behind Washington fights between the White House and Congress over taxes and spending, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has pursued a high-risk strategy experts say is fundamentally changing the U.S. economy
Trying to forget Sandy
Businesses rebound, homeowners struggle, and churches prove themselves as the recovery from last year’s superstorm wobbles forward
Conviction and controversy
Man knows not his time: U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop
Cut and dried
The March sequester created no crisis, but may yet shape budget politics for the rest of the Obama era
Voices
Mindy Belz
Model behavior
In the news business it’s no revelation that we focus on the bad news more than the good. If it bleeds, it leads. Forget that I ate the best mango of my life in war-torn Sudan, or that I had one o...
Joel Belz
Sowing confusion
It’s hard to say who was left looking more foolish after March 1. Was it the politicians who for the whole month of February, with stupefying crescendo, encouraged the populace to fall for the blu...
Lament for a bride
On a Sunday morning I practice with the praise team and then sit in the front waiting for my husband, the pastor, and our three children. I listen. I listen to hear the ethos of the morning group....
The Editors
Mailbag
‘Here they stand’ Feb. 9 I commend Jamie Dean for her in-depth article on the contraceptive mandate and how it is affecting many Christian companies. However, I find it sad that we do not h...
Janie B. Cheaney
Bound and released
In 1942, a man named John Playter was among the 10,000 American soldiers who surrendered to the Japanese in the Philippines. He survived the infamous “death march,” watching his fellow prisoners b...
Andrée Seu Peterson
A great delusion
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is not a feminist screed on inattentive husbands but a 1985 collection of essays by neurologist Oliver Sacks describing his patients’ strange mental conditio...
Marvin Olasky
Remember their chains
I’d like to start off this column about apologetics with an apology. I apologize to all the people I’ve sat next to on airplanes, occasionally exchanging a few words about going to Atlanta but nar...
Notebook
Science
Ill treatment
When David Bergner’s prepubescent son began wearing dresses, identifying as a girl, and struggling with anxiety, he decided to get help. For Bergner, “help” came from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie...
Lifestyle
Rapper rebirth
In 2001, a 19-year-old Chinese-American rapper defeated opponent after opponent on BET’s televised freestyle rap battles, spitting rapid-fire rhymes insulting his opponent while building up his ow...
Houses of God
St. Matthias Anglican Church
Congregation members leave St. Matthias Anglican Church after a worship service at the Inuit hamlet of Igloolik in Nunavut, northern Canada. ...
Sports
Hot Curry
In the run-up to the 2004 NBA draft, Dwight Howard, who would be selected first overall by the Orlando Magic, spoke of his intent to alter the NBA’s culture and reputation by way of personal evang...
Technology
Bad connections
A fast-growing cellphone company has for several years demonstrated an uncanny ability to wring profit from government programs for the poor. Coincidentally, its chief executive is a top Democrati...
Religion
Roger's dodge
Alleged cover-ups of abuse by Catholic priests have continued to cast a shadow on Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement and the choice of his successor. In the United States furor over the abuse scandal ...
Culture
Notable Books
Notable Books
Pip Tattnal, the memorable protagonist in this Depression-era, Southern gothic coming-of-age story, flees from an impoverished orphanage a year after his younger brother’s murder there. Plagued wi...
Movies & TV
Oz the Great and Powerful
It’s turn-of-the-20th-century Kansas, and Oz The Great and Powerful (James Franco), the Harry Houdini of middle America, is up to his usual tricks—sweet-talking ladies, bamboozling crowds. Like Th...
Movies & TV
Jack the Giant Slayer
Hollywood’s latest attempt to reinvent the fairy tale, Warner Brothers’ Jack the Giant Slayer, steers clear of subversive interpretation but does not whitewash the violence implied by the rhyme “f...
Movies & TV
Box Office Top 10
Cautions: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com S ...
Q&A
Journey of grace
Rosaria Butterfield was a tenured professor at Syracuse University, until God used her desire to write a book on the religious right, and the friendship of a biblically orthodox pastor, to draw her to...
Documentary
The Gatekeepers
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has generated more than its share of war-weary, soul-drained participants, including several former directors of Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, the subjects o...
Music
In their faces
In February, the British newspaper the Guardian published an article headlined “China Tightens Concert Rules After Elton John’s ‘Disrespectful’ Beijing Show.” According to the story, China’s cultu...
Books
Persevering through persecution
The ad on Page 1 of The Atlantic for Jan.-Feb. 2013 promotes The Cosmopolitan resort and casino in Las Vegas. It features a slinky lady and a tag line that characterizes our contemporary calculati...
Movies & TV
Riveting raiders
The History Channel’s decision to cast its net into uncharted waters this season is proving well worth the risk. On March 3 it debuted two relatively expensive productions that represented signifi...
Notable CDs
Notable CDs
Gidon Kremer plays the violin, his Kremerata Baltica violins, violas, cellos, double basses, and percussion. Glenn Gould played the piano. And therein lies the appeal of these 11 pieces, hearing t...
Dispatches
News
Change in China
China’s once-a-decade power transfer began March 3, marking the start of new president Xi Jinping’s reign as the country’s most powerful leader. Xi, 59, takes over the world’s second-largest econo...
News
Working while waiting
Naghmeh Abedini, the tireless wife of imprisoned Iranian-American Saeed Abedini, is leaving no stone unturned. When first lady Michelle Obama surprised an Academy Award audience on Feb. 24 to anno...
News
Itinerary: Israel
As President Barack Obama prepared for a mid-March trip to Israel—his first visit to the key U.S. ally as president—Israeli officials prepared to underscore a warning they’ve been sounding for mon...
Human Race
Human Race
Cured Doctors announced March 3 that a baby has been cured of HIV for the first time. The Mississippi infant began receiving antiviral treatment within 30 hours of birth, an unusual techniq...
Looking Ahead
Looking Ahead
Arms treaty talks After failing to come to an agreement last year, the United Nations Conference on an Arms Trade Treaty will try again beginning March 18. The group discussed placing...
Quick Takes
Quick Takes
Armed and hungry At any other pizza parlor, flashing your weapon might earn you some trouble. But at All Around Pizza in Virginia Beach, Va., showing off your gun will get you a 15 percent ...
Quotables
Quotables
‘He’s just a great guy.’ Former NBA star Dennis Rodman on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The former athlete—who visited the reclusive Communist regime with the Harlem Globetrotters in l...
News
The polio threat
Medical workers seeking to eradicate the world’s last vestiges of polio face a deadly threat of their own: Islamist militants seeking to eradicate them. In the past three months, assailants...
News
'Times change'
WASHINGTON—In oral arguments at the end of February, the conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court questioned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires mostly Southern states to...