The Atlantic: July/August 2012 by Joshua Lasky

THE IDEAS ISSUE: 231/2 BIG IDEAS OUR ANNUAL LIST

WHY WOMEN STILL CAN’T HAVE IT ALL By Anne-Marie Slaughter

Chris Christie & Bruce Springsteen: A Love Story By Jeffrey Goldberg

The Surprising Comeback of the Family Farm By Chrystia Freeland

The World’s Most Self-Aware Man By Mark Bowden

My Romance With JFK By Caitlin Flanagan

Ice Man: A Short Story By Elmore Leonard JULY/ AUG UST 2 0 12 T H E AT LA N TI C.C O M

THERE’S A PRINCIPLE SOME CALL THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT. IT SAYS A RANDOM EVENT IN ONE PART OF THE WORLD CAN HAVE A DRAMATIC EFFECT IN ANOTHER. CHAOS REIGNS. WE BELIEVE IN A DIFFERENT PRINCIPLE. THAT KNOWLEDGE ALLOWS US TO STEER THE COURSE OF EVENTS. TO GROW ECONOMIES. PROMOTE JUSTICE. EVEN SAVE LIVES.

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AS START-UP COMPANIES GO,

THEIRS REALLY TOOK OFF. It all started in a garage, with the backing of a local taxicab owner. Allan and Malcolm Lockheed. Two brothers who fell in love with aviation and didn’t mind getting their hands dirty. Little did they know, as their Model G swooped over the waters of San Francisco Bay, that one day the company that bore their name would help man touch down on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility. Or that their stars would cross with that of a barnstormer named Glenn L. Martin. Their story is our story. One of many you’ll find at: www.lockheedmartin.com/100years

/ . 310

2012 . 1

THE IDEAS ISSUE � � �� 58 . . . The Ideas List 2012 Our annual compendium, featuring 23 / prescriptions and provocations

84 . . . Why Women

Still Can’t Have It All It’s time to stop fooling ourselves: the mothers who have made it to the top of their professions are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. Here’s what has to change for the rest of us. -

104 . . . Jersey Boys The governor and the Boss— a tale of politics, rock and roll, and unrequited love

J U L I O C O R T E Z / A S S O C I AT E D P R E S S

110 . . .The Measured Man Larry Smarr is charting his every bodily function in minute detail—and may have found the future of health care.

122 . . . Ice Man

Scorned in the U.S.A. Governor Chris Christie on his unrequited love for Bruce Springsteen. Page 104.

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92. . . Year of the Dragon By Jonathan Bartlett

120. . . Island By Guy Billout

93. . . Umbrage By Ben Downing 116. . . America By Alicia Ostriker

148. . .

’ ?

When to lie to children, and other advice By Jeffrey Goldberg

Post–Charles Taylor Liberia is open for tourism, which for some means bodysurfing. Page 44.

Dispatches

July/August issue designed by Pentagram. Cover photograph by Phillip Toledano; prop styling by Katherine Rusch; casting by Wulf Casting; model: Briella McCoy/ Expecting Models.

40. . .For the Love of Art Destroying paintings to save them By Stephan Faris

28. . .Olympic Idol Who will carry the flame for Britain? By Ed Caesar

42. . .Wrestlemaniac A close encounter with the sport’s most authentic madman By Graeme Wood

32. . .World’s Worst Traffic Jam

44. . .Finding the Perfect Wave in Liberia

A 12-hour, 40-mile trip to Lagos By Joshua Hammer

The West African coast beckons to surfers, no board required. By William Powers

37. . .The Last Days of Foie Gras Irate chefs, frenzied gourmands, and the rise of animal rights in California By Ed Leibowitz

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48. . .The Right Suit How a record-breaking skydive could revolutionize spacewear By Andrew Zaleski

S E A N B R O DY

27. . .Hell on Wheels Outside Olympic Park, the most cutthroat race of 2012 is under way. By Lionel Shriver

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Even as the years pass by and the revelations pile up, the image of JFK as devoted family man persists. Page 133.

Columns

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50. . .The Triumph of the

127. . .A Harsh Beauty Revising the Escorial, plus the wonders of Wonder Bread By Benjamin Schwarz

’

Farming is in the midst of a startling renaissance—one that holds lessons for America’s economic future. By Chrystia Freeland 54. . .A Long, Strange Trip How a new 14-DVD box set turned me on to the Grateful Dead By James Parker

144. . .Cover to Cover Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell returns; the history of Maurice Sendak’s medium; a better parking lot; and more

133. . .Jackie and the Girls Mrs. Kennedy’s JFK problem— and ours By Caitlin Flanagan

�� Double-Shifting Anne-Marie Slaughter and Hanna Rosin on working mothers. Plus, a debate among Atlantic writers.

�� Best of the Boss New Jersey Governor Chris Christie shares his Bruce Springsteen playlist.

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�� Mystery Man The novelist and screenwriter Elmore Leonard talks with James Parker.

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�� The Kennedy Effect Caitlin Flanagan answers questions about her devotion to the White House’s most alluring bad boy.

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HOW DO YOU CURATE THE MOST ARTISTIC MILE IN THE COUNTRY?

With the magnificence of the ancients, the flair of the French and the pride of Philadelphia.

Sphinx of Ramses II Photo: Lauren Hansen-Flaschen for the Penn Museum

Within one artistic mile, you can have thousands of experiences. An extensive collection of artifacts at the Penn Museum will give you a glimpse into the lives of ancient rulers. The Greek columns of the Philadelphia Museum of Art will welcome you, while the grand collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings of the Barnes Foundation will stop you in your tracks. As you make your way from museum to museum, take a moment to appreciate the natural beauty of the gardens overseen by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Then finish it all off with a delicious meal and a delightful rosĂŠ. Philadelphia is filled with artistic Amazingism from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to the Rodin Museum and beyond.

CURATE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE.

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� � � � � � ’� � � � � Idea Factories

century were also the worst. But noth- made a “ruins park,” back when I lived ing moves forward without an idea, there in the mid-’90s and would wan’ ?” and without some risk, and it is in that der the deserted train station. reads a plaintive sign spirit that for a fifth year we present Like art, Detroit’s abandoned buildon the chain-link fence our annual Ideas Issue. We’re not out ings challenge visitors and inspire wonsurrounding Michigan to celebrate ideas in themselves, as der, in their original grandeur and the Central Station, in though all are equally or intrinsically ways nature works upon it. But most Detroit. The train station, designed good; we are out to help promote the people, understandably, want to bring by the same firm that designed Grand never-ending (we hope) argument, the life back: as ideas for Michigan Central, Central, but on a yet-grander scale, has contest of ideas. they have proposed a sports complex been seeking a new animating idea since As for the contest over Michigan for a local women’s roller-derby league, 1988, when Amtrak stopped sending Central, Julia Reyes Taubman, the cre- a movie studio, a mall, or even, radically, trains through it. Its cavernous Beaux ator of a haunting book of photographs a place where trains would come and go. Arts hall and 18-story office tower sit called Detroit: 138 Square Miles, has her It is hard to see how any of these ideas empty, stripped, windows blown out, own idea: “I think somebody should put will become reality. But who knows? trees sprouting from the roof. an architectural fence around it,” she Smallish ideas are taking root around Detroit, of course, was first fattened told me while we were admiring the Detroit, filling some of the holes left by and then torn apart by the combination building together not long ago. “And the big ones. of two big ideas, the automobile and then we should just watch it fall down Among Edsel Ford’s ideas to improve mass production. Together, they made over the next 100 years.” (Close readers his city was to commission the Mexican Detroit one of the world’s richest cities will notice that Taubman reemerges in artist Diego Rivera to paint murals, defor a time, then equipped its workers these pages as a character in “Ice Man,” picting auto production, in a sunlit court to drive away in affordable vehicles on a short story by her friend Elmore in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Around new highways to distant suburbs. Leonard.) I once heard a similar idea the same time—the early 1930s—Nelson Even the revered innovator who had from the artist Camilo José Vergara, Rockefeller also commissioned murals the inspiration to combine those two who proposed that part of Detroit be from Rivera, for Rockefeller Center. In ideas eventually became their both cases, Rivera, a Marxprisoner. Henry Ford’s son, ist, embedded socialist imagEdsel, who had a sophisticated ery in his work. In New York, sense of design, pleaded with Rockefeller had the paintings his father to pursue new ideas, destroyed. In Detroit, clergy to try sleeker looks and more attacked Rivera’s murals as powerful engines. But Henry blasphemous, and The Detroit insisted on sticking with the News called them un-American. Model T long after competitors Edsel protected Rivera’s art. began eating into its market On my recent visit, Ford’s (much as the American automagnificent Highland Park makers as a group would later plant, the birthplace of the dismiss Japanese innovations). moving assembly line, sat silent. Some auto historians believe Ford uses it for storage. It is Henry’s cruel stubbornness declosed to the public and, though stroyed his sensitive son, who gigantic, feels overlooked if not died at 49. Ford executives later forgotten, a missed opportunity hit on an idea to honor Edsel: in to tell an inspiring story about 1957, they named a daring new creativity and hard work. Yet sedan after him, and thus comdown Woodward Avenue that pounded his tragic tale. same morning, schoolchildren So experience suggests filled Edsel Ford’s court in the that it is hard, at the outset, Detroit Institute of Arts, adto distinguish the good ideas miring the murals, which are from the bad, or even to ancalled Detroit Industry. No ticipate all the consequences doubt many were bored; but of the good. As P. J. O’Rourke Diego Rivera’s provocative murals, Detroit Industry, surely some were getting ideas writes on page 82, some of survive today thanks to the fortitude of a broad-minded of their own. the biggest ideas of the past auto executive. —James Bennet

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� � � � � � � � � � �� Responses and Reverberations

In the May issue, Stephen Marche reported that despite all the connectivity of the social-media age, people have never been lonelier. What distinguishes Americans is not that we are more isolated, but that we spend more time and energy worrying about whether we are. The fact that Americans are neither more lonely nor more detached than ever makes it difficult for Marche to prove that Facebook is responsible for turning us into a nation of lonesome narcissists. But this thesis wouldn’t hold up even if rates of loneliness and isolation had reached unprecedented levels. As [John] Cacioppo and the other experts Marche interviews tell him, people who feel lonely in their lives offline are likely to bring that loneliness to Facebook, whereas those who feel more connected are not … Marche concedes that “loneliness is certainly not something that Facebook or Twitter or any of the lesser forms of social media is doing to us.” He accepts the psychologists’ insight: “We are doing it to ourselves.” For a moment, at least, Marche appears to answer his article’s inflammatory question—“Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”—with a definitive no. But instead Marche concludes by arguing that Facebook is in fact doing something far more harmful … Facebook,

J U LY/ A U G U S T 2 0 1 2

he claims, has produced a “new isolation,” one that demands constant attention to the Internet and precludes any genuine retreat from the world. Facebook, he charges, “denies us a pleasure whose profundity we had underestimated: the chance to forget about ourselves for a while, the chance to disconnect.” I think we still have that option. Disconnection requires little more than shutting down your computer and smartphone. But if the connection is still on and Marche wants to forget about himself for a while, he could simply click away from Facebook and navigate over to Google, which will direct him to the research on loneliness and solitude that has been there for him all along. Used wisely, the Internet could help make his sociological arguments less isolated from reality. Eric Klinenberg Excerpt from a Slate article

I could have gone out with some friends, but instead I stayed in and read an article about whether social media makes us antisocial. KZsays TheAtlantic.com comment

Excerpt from a Forbes.com blog post

Is Facebook making us lonely? In a word, no. It’s clear that something is driving up levels of self-reported loneliness in America and elsewhere. That it’s not Facebook, or the broader phenomenon of social networking, is apparent from what

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Facebook is to real emotional connection what light is to fire, but it illuminates nonetheless. Farcaster TheAtlantic.com comment

P H I L L I P TO L E DA N O

IS FACEBOOK MAKING US LONELY?

I consider to be Marche’s unintentional nut graf: “The decrease in confidants—that is, in quality social connections—has been dramatic over the past 25 years. In one survey, the mean size of networks of personal confidants decreased from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Similarly, in 1985, only 10 percent of Americans said they had no one with whom to discuss important matters, and 15 percent said they had only one such good friend. By 2004, 25 percent had nobody to talk to, and 20 percent had only one confidant.” “By 2004”—in other words, by the year that Facebook launched. A little hard to blame it for anything that happened before then. In fact, suggestive headline aside, Marche doesn’t really accuse Facebook of making its users lonelier. Indeed, it would be hard to, given the considerable body of evidence to the contrary, such as [a] Pew study, which found that Facebook users have more friends and enjoy more social support than non-users. His argument is subtler: that Facebook causes us to withdraw into ourselves and makes some people feel worse about their lives by exposing them to evidence of others’ happiness. Even there, though, he falls down pretty hard in places, as here: “The beauty of Facebook, the source of its power, is that it enables us to be social while sparing us the embarrassing reality of society—the accidental revelations we make at parties, the awkward pauses, the farting and the spilled drinks and the general gaucherie of face-to-face contact. Instead, we have the lovely smoothness of a seemingly social machine.” You can make a lot of valid [claims] about social media, but that it spares us from “embarrassing reality” and “accidental revelations” isn’t one of them. Has he never heard of Anthony Weiner? … There are plenty of reasons people feel lonelier than they used to, and technology undoubtedly has a lot to do with it. Just not Facebook. Jeff Bercovici

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t h e c o n v e r s at i o n The cover story features as the central piece of evidence a study finding that in a 1985 survey, 10 percent of Americans reported having no one with whom to discuss important matters, but in a 2004 repeat, 25 percent of Americans did. Marche should have known that this claim has been walked back considerably by the researchers. In 2009, in response to a critique, they reported that new statistical modeling suggests that the correct estimates could be as low as 6 percent in 1985 and 10 percent in 2004. A recent experiment run by the General Social Survey revealed that the 2004 finding differed from the 1985 one because the survey procedures differed. And this year, one of the study’s authors, referring to the original finding, told The Chronicle of Higher Education, “I certainly don’t think it’s reliable.” This report of a jump in isolation has spread wide and far because it is so dramatic; it is also wrong. Claude S. Fischer Professor of Sociology University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, Calif.

Stephen Marche’s cover story for The Atlantic on misery and Facebook is a great if not particularly uplifting read (share it on Facebook!), although envisioning how the vampire-Jetsons photo shoot went down takes some of the edge off. (“Like this?” “Can

log

you be … emptier?”) The good news, though, is that the answer is and always has been “simple”: “The greater the proportion of face-to-face interactions, the less lonely you are. The greater the proportion of online interactions, the lonelier you are,” [according to Cacioppo]. But also, [Marche says]: “The more you try to be happy, the less happy you are.” And then: “Now we are left thinking about who we are all the time, without ever really thinking about who we are.” So … drinks? Edith Zimmerman Excerpt from a Hairpin blog post

Marche seems persuaded that social networking, text messaging, or various other forms of online connection are replacing real communication between people. At least in my experience … this isn’t at all what’s happening. If anything, online connections tend to spark or promote real-world connections. I have met dozens, possibly even hundreds, of people I wouldn’t know except for Twitter, had spontaneous coffee meetings thanks to Foursquare check-ins, and made countless other connections between the online and offline world. Does everyone do this? Of course not. I’m sure there are people who become more alone or more lonely as they use the Internet, just as there are lonely people who watch a lot of late-night television. That doesn’t mean television causes loneliness. Mathew Ingram Excerpt from a Businessweek blog post

Is Facebook making us lonely? Readers say:

YES 42%

NO 40%

YES, BUT … 18% … Facebook is merely a part of a larger cultural current.

This article touched me deeply. It perfectly described my life: I spend a lot of time on Facebook but have essentially zero in-person friends (I’m 50, female, gregarious), and it’s depressing the heck out of me. After I finished the article, I posted the link on FB and told all of my “friends” I wouldn’t be back online for a while. I’d prefer that they call. No phone conversations yet, but I’m taking a long look at how I can raise my social capital. I don’t think I’m neurotic, just lonely. I need to figure out how I’ve let my personal life become almost solely defined as an online activity. Unnamed “Guest”

TheAtlanticCities.com

From an Atlantic live chat with the author

the atlantic

j u ly/ a u g u s t 2 0 1 2

t h e c o n v e r s at i o n most pop-culture stars, he is merely the current fad. If you must make an American comparison to Mozart, try Aaron Copland or Philip Glass. Luci Chrostowski

community—and that is reputable black leadership and role models—and the celebrity and symbols of power that we ultimately settle for. Charing Ball

You have to wonder if Obama really actually listened to a Jay-Z song? And that’s not to say that there is anything wrong with Jay, but let’s be real here: those two concepts don’t match … Jay-Z, at least in his music, totally contradicts the message Obama has presented over and over again to the community. A former drug dealer, who started as a mere corner boy in Marcy Projects and worked his way up to pushing kilos up and down the East Coast, Jay-Z has built an entire career on glorifying the drug and gun culture in his music … While you have to give credit to Jay for his ability to ensure that his art does imitate his life, it is hypocritical to judge the exploits of those in the community who act like a Jay-Z song, yet condone and befriend the biggest perpetrator of that culture. And while I have no interest in debating the validity of that “Kanye is a jackass” statement, I do wonder about the ability to be so vocal on a nonpolitical “foe” and so mum and diplomatic when it counts the most. Sort of like Black-on-Black violence—we are aggressive and vicious to each other yet silent and humble when others—like say a Boehner or Gingrich or Cantor—attack … In the greater scheme of important issues related to the office of the presidency, this probably falls between what Bo had for dinner last night and the question of who Malia will take to the prom. But for me, it illustrates the contradictions between what we say we want as a

David Samuels replies: Kanye West is an American Mozart—a petulant, egomaniacal master of the disposable forms that define American pop culture. He is a genius who speaks to us in our own musical language, just as the actual Mozart spoke to his audience in its language two centuries ago.

THE VIENNESE KANYE?

In May, David Samuels distilled the personality and musical genius of Kanye West as he followed the Watch the Throne tour, Kanye’s collaboration with Jay-Z. Many readers and commentators took note of President Obama’s reiterated judgment that Kanye is a “jackass.” Many others took umbrage at the headline, “American Mozart.” David Samuels’s account of Kanye West’s talent and egocentricity is entertaining, but the title conceit seems oddly offpitch. Mozart is only half-relevant: one is astounded that this childish boor could have generated sublime works like the Requiem, the “Coronation” Concerto, the Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, and so on. West’s art does not stand in bizarre juxtaposition with his life; rather, his art is of a piece with his life. Andrew S. Mine Chicago, Ill.

The works of the prolific Mozart were and are brilliant and will continue to thrill music lovers for hundreds of years to come. It is unlikely that anyone will remember Kanye West 20 years from now. If he is remembered, it will be as the narcissistic, crude, rude, silly “jackass” that he is. Like 20

j u ly/ a u g u s t 2 0 1 2

log According to readers, Kanye West is to Mozart as … • George W. Bush is to Stephen Hawking • a very good comic strip is to the Mona Lisa • Roseanne Barr is to Einstein • a really good cotton-candy maker is to a chef with a kitchen full of tools and ingredients

the atlantic

Excerpt from a Madame Noire blog post

THE DESPOT’S CHILD

When fighting broke out in Libya last year, Jacqueline Frazier—who had been working with Saadi Qaddafi on setting up a potential free-trade zone— conducted press outreach for Libyan officials, until she grew uneasy and quit. Frazier was with Saadi in Niger when he found out that his father, Muammar Qaddafi, had been killed. In the May Atlantic, Frazier described that day. It’s a creepy article and never quite seems to engage with the horrors and evils in which Frazier collaborated … to help the [Qaddafi] family degrade, torture, and oppress their country a little bit more effectively. Dancing with dictators is weird. On the one hand they appear to be regular human beings. But dark shadows loom in the background. Saadi Qaddafi is no doubt a complicated man with a range of virtues and vices. Like Carmela Soprano or Albert Speer, he didn’t simply embrace the evil he served. He struggled, he made excuses, he lied to himself, he hoped for the best. And of course he worked to charm, beguile, and bribe various people to collaborate with him as they all pretended they didn’t know about the secret police, the corruption, the brutal oppression taking place just out of sight. It would all be so different once the free-trade zone was finished! … Frazier’s account makes her look both brainless and complicit—more Eva Braun than Leni Riefenstahl. Kinder editors would have killed it, but perhaps kindness to Qaddafi enablers isn’t high on the priorities of the Atlantic staff. Walter Russell Mead Excerpt from an American Interest blog post

W I L L I E DAV I S / T h e N e w Y o r k T i m e s / r ed u x

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A SWING AND A MISS In his May review of Chad Harbachâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Art of Fielding, B. R. Myers posited, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Most peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interest in contemporary â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;literaryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; fiction â&#x20AC;Ś is a matter of wanting to read the latest Big Novel while itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still being talked about.â&#x20AC;?

AN ECONOMIST GETS LUNCH Among Tyler Cowenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Six Rules for Dining Outâ&#x20AC;? (May) was â&#x20AC;&#x153;Exploit Restaurant Workersâ&#x20AC;? (No. 5). Cowen said many family-run Asian restaurants pay their employees low salaries, and therefore â&#x20AC;&#x153;offer good food buys.â&#x20AC;? For a self-proclaimed â&#x20AC;&#x153;foodie,â&#x20AC;? Tyler Cowen is in obviously poor taste. The ignorance he imparts regarding the exploitation of restaurant workers deserves to be corrected. Economic exploitation and human trafficking are not hard to find in low-wage industries where there is a high demand for cheap products and services, but instead are widespread and systemic, particularly in the restaurant industry. Thousands of immigrants (including American citizens and legal permanent residents, as well as undocumented workers) work long hours without pay in small restaurant kitchens across the country because they are vulnerable and easily exploited, whether by acquaintances or complete strangers. A 2009 report surveying thousands of low-wage immigrant workers found that among those who were paid less than minimum wage or forced to work in dangerous conditions, almost two-thirds did not report their employers, because they were afraid of getting paid even less or of getting fired, not because the work was â&#x20AC;&#x153;part of their contribution to the family,â&#x20AC;? as Mr. Cowen fantasizes. Ivy O. Suriyopas Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund New York, N.Y.

No, Mr. Myers. I read literary fiction because I love to read. (When I was 12 years old, I worried that I would run out of books to read by the time I was old. A steady stream of readable fiction has given me hope in my late middle age.) I really donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care about the ins and outs of the publishing world, as long as I get a steady stream of inspiring, well-written fiction. I liked The Art of Fielding for its baseball story, its liberal-arts-college setting, and especially the character Owen Dunne. Best book Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever read? No. Good read for March 2012? Yes. Abby Arnold Santa Monica, Calif.

Nassim Nicholas Talebâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aphorism in The Bed of Procrustes: â&#x20AC;&#x153;If you want people to read a book, tell them it is overrated.â&#x20AC;? If Taleb is right, Myers may have unintentionally increased sales for Harbach. Jeanette F. Huber County Cork, Ireland

STORY UPDATE: â&#x20AC;&#x153;American Sweetheartâ&#x20AC;? In the June Atlantic, Irina Aleksander profiled Marlen Esparza, a 22-year-old flyweight vying for a ticket to London this summer for the Olympic debut of womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boxing. On May 15, Esparza defeated the Vietnamese boxer Luu Thi Duyen in the World Championships, in Qinhuangdao, China, earning herself a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.

To contribute to The Conversation, please e-mail letters@theatlantic.com. Include your full name, city, and state.

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When ONE SUPERVISORY NURSE affects THOUSANDS

ITY

CAR

One person can influence the lives of thousands and even have the power to shape the health and well-being of an entire community. In any hospital, supervisory nurses are at the center of everything: they set standards, ensure that goals are met, and inspire their staffs. Supervisory nurses are vital—they are the linchpins of their units, the top managers of their floors. They manage the health of thousands—but make sure each patient is cared for individually. These nurses are leaders and through their multiple roles influence the lives and work of thousands—including doctors, technicians, medical students, patients, and patients’ families. Here, we illustrate the quantifiable power of these inspiring individuals. Using information gathered from interviews with supervisory nurses, nursing staff, government sources, and published data, this infographic approximates the direct impact one supervisory nurse can have in the world.

A T C N E P AT I

250 emergencies handled

TWO THOUSAND CARE PLANS DEVELOPED for most effective treatment and to reduce hospital stay

FOUR THOUSAND patient friends and families consulted on discharge planning and follow-up healthcare for faster recovery or more effective treatment

Presented by

NOTE:

This infographic illustrates the influence of a supervisory nurse in a typical hospital unit of approximately 35 beds, over the course of one year. Specific duties for each nurse can vary greatly, depending on their unit’s specialty and level of care. The numbers are projections based upon a mix of data research and interviews with nurses conducted by The Atlantic’s Promotions Department.

A E C V I T TRA ADMINIS

CHANGING LIVES, BUILDING COMMUNITIES

per year saved for unit and/or patients due to effective care plans patients discharged to home health nursing

THIRTY

medical tests with technicians or sessions with in-hospital therapists scheduled

support staff and assistive personnel coordinated or managed

with attending doctors, interns, and specialists

nurses hired, directed, motivated, or evaluated

TWO TWO HUNDRED

health-related training programs conducted for staff

350

medical students—at academic medical centers—instructed with nursing procedures and protocol

750

insurance waivers filed—at public hospitals—to give reduced-fee or free treatment to those without access to other options

patients given close follow-up therapy at rehabilitation-services centers or assigned associated home therapies, depending on the patient’s level of care

SU PE R V I S E D 10 nurses and technicians, testing

150 referrals to hospitals after free screenings

Twenty-Five volunteer-services staff— at private and community hospitals—indirectly managed

people at free public health screenings

FOUR HUNDRED patients at community/rural hospitals referred to other facilities with higher levels of care

– TO LEARN MORE –

SU PE R V I S E D a 30-person nursing staff that cared for

Witness this come to life through the work of Tina Ralyea, an Assistant Vice President of Patient Care Services in Charlotte, NC. Scan to watch the video documentary.

Visit TheAtlantic.com/impact-of-one

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were faster and cheaper than their public transport, the most expensive in the world. The bicycle has also become the ultimate fashion accessory, projecting , , a haughty eco-sanctimony that a hand. bag simply cannot provide. Supposedly, the number of cyclists in the city has more than doubled since I moved here much as they disdain visitors on Boris in 1999, but by my unscientific estimate, Bikes, whom they delight in leaving be- our cycling population has burgeoned hind in a muddy splatter. They resent by more like a factor of 10. that civic energies were squandered on With the Olympics, the capital’s dea fleet for tourists, while so many of the railleur delirium is bound to intensify. sporadic “bike lanes” along London’s Road closures will set London traffic narrow, parked-up roads stop cold mid- in concrete, inspiring yet more couch block. Whenever a resource is scarce— crumpets to get wise to the efficiencies in this case, space—Darwinism prevails, of two wheels. Wide-screen images of and only the fittest survive. Saluki-slim cyclists whipping around When the Tube shut down in 2005 the new velodrome in East London following the terrorist attacks of 7/7, will strobe in every pub; loads of potmany Londoners discovered that bikes bellied punters will fancy that they,

Hell on Wheels , 2012

ZOHAR LAZAR

By Lionel Shriver

’ from the 2012 Olympics to wend along the Embankment on one of London’s “Boris Bikes,” a public rental fleet nicknamed for Boris Johnson, the boisterous, flop-haired Conservative mayor who introduced them. Be forewarned: the moment you straddle the chunky frame and broad saddle—the bicycle equivalent of a dray horse—you’re no longer a spectator. You’ve joined the Games. Members of London’s cycling “community” despise one another, almost as

THE ATLANTIC

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D I S PAT C H E S

J U LY/ A U G U S T 2 0 1 2

scalpel and threatened curbside castration.) So forget fraternal nods or offers to lend pumps for punctures. Consumed by internecine rivalry, Londoners on two wheels forget all about the real enemy: the kind getting about on four. Bikes thread perilously through traffic jams, filling crevices between cars like grout between tiles. Intent only on passing some impertinent adversary, cyclists veer without warning into neighboring lanes. Dozens of bikes obstruct cars that have the right-of-way while streaking across the hectic roundabout at Hyde Park Corner. They cruise alongside three-ton lorries, right in the truckers’ blind spots, and when the lorries turn left, grinding them into biomass, everyone is supposed to feel sorry for them. The Times has used the city’s 16 cycling fatalities last year to galvanize a safety campaign, but the real wonder is that bodies aren’t piling up in gutters by the thousands. If I’d ever cycled to save the environment, I might be joyous that so many Londoners are following in my lowcarbon tracks. Instead, I’m resentful. My territory has been invaded. Cycling used to be contemplative, solitary, but lately I’m apt to get drafted by members of my “community” into an impromptu race to the death even on weary slogs home at 3 a.m. And now, to my horror, a “Summer of Cycling” campaign timed to coincide with the Olympic season aims to double—again!—the number of bikes on British roads by October 2012. Oh, no! No, no, no! Whereas each cyclist is encouraged to convert one friend, I actively discourage anyone considering biking in the capital: “It’s much too dangerous,” I say. “Breathing all that exhaust, too—terrible for you.” Trashing cycling with a bike bag slung over my shoulder, I get some funny looks. Worst of all, blogs and call-in radio shows teem with irate British motorists clamoring to license cyclists. Our previous mayor, Ken Livingstone, advocated numbered plates for bikes, which could be read by the city’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras. An Evening Standard columnist recently called for cyclists to carry third-party insurance. The

THE ATLANTIC

chairman of London’s leading mini-cab firm demanded this spring that cyclists pay a “road tax.” Thus popular momentum gathers to subject bikes to the whole grotesque legal apparatus that makes driving such a drag, and so to undermine precisely the uncomplicated independence of pedaling that first captivated me as a child. When cyclists were a rare annoyance, authorities left us alone; now that cops are handing out tickets like girlie-show fliers, it’s fiendishly difficult to slip harmlessly through a red light with no traffic in sight. Not long ago, my serene, sneaky, below-theradar form of transport was an option on that ever-scarcer frisson of modern life: getting away with something. Now cycling’s infernal popularity threatens the last redoubt of freedom in this world. Lionel Shriver is an American writer living in London. Her novels include We Need to Talk About Kevin and The New Republic.

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Olympic Idol ? By Ed Caesar

afternoon of July 29, 1948, John Mark entered London’s Wembley Stadium, carrying the Olympic flame. A tall, blond, radiantly handsome fellow, he wore a simple white uniform and, with the heavy silver torch steady in his right hand, ran a circuit of the track before lighting the cauldron that would blaze for the duration of the Games. Men applauded, women swooned. Fanny Blankers-Koen, the Dutch sprinter who went on to win four gold medals at those Games (and who was married, with two children), was overwhelmed. “He was a magnificent specimen of manhood,” she later recalled. “I tried to arrange a rendezvous with him … but I was told he was too shy to meet me. What a pity!” The Adonis was hardly an Olympic hero. Despite having been a good quartermiler at Cambridge University, Mark had failed to qualify for the Olympic team. When he stood before the world to light the cauldron, he was a nameless medical student, an understated symbol

M I K E Y B U R TO N

too, can prance pigeon-toed in clip-in bike shoes, just like Britain’s four-goldmedal-winning poster boy, Sir Chris Hoy. Meanwhile, the streets will coagulate with sluggish, wide-eyed tourists on Boris Bikes. I discovered the bicycle in 1965. Having biked for primary transportation ever since, I just want to get where I’m going, preferably with my head attached. Cycling was once my little secret. While the clueless lavished fortunes on train tickets, car repairs, and taxis, I saved a bundle. I got my exercise, while the proles, after a prolonged, miserable journey home, had to face another trip, to a stuffy, jampacked gym. My secret is out. I’ve biked dozens of American states and all over western Europe, and nowhere else have I encountered a cycling culture so cutthroat, vicious, reckless, hostile, and violently competitive as London’s. New York City’s cyclists are, by comparison, genteel, pinkie-pointing tea-sippers pottering around Manhattan with parasols, demurring, “No, after you, dear.” London cyclists accumulate in packs of 25, revving edgily at stoplights, toes twitching on pedals like sprinters’ feet on the blocks at the starting line. Rule No. 1 on the road here is that submitting to another slender tire ahead of you is an indignity comparable to allowing oneself to be peed on in public. Bafflingly, this outrage seems to be universal: purple-faced octogenarians on clanking three-speeds, schoolkids with handlebars plastered in Thomas the Tank Engine decals, and gray-suited salarymen on fold-up Bromptons—all will risk mid-intersection coronaries to overtake any other bicyclist with the temerity to be in front. To stir this frenzied sense of insult, you needn’t be slow. You need simply be there. Mind you, most wheezing challengers are converts, and converts are zealots. These are not merely people who bicycle; they are Cyclists—an identity so all-encompassing that to pass them is to desecrate their deepest sense of self. (The most incendiary scenario: when a male cyclist is passed by a girl, who might as well have brandished a

D I S PAT C H E S

AS S O C I AT E D P R E S S

of what came to be called Britain’s “Aus- this summer’s Olympics, Britain’s selecterity Olympics.” While Mark’s athletic tion for the cauldron-lighter is similarly résumé didn’t earn him the job, his looks furtive. Inquiries to organizers on this probably did. “The idea behind the deci- subject are met with incredulity, as if sion,” says the English track legend Sir one had asked the prime minister for Roger Bannister, “was that they should the nuclear codes. As always, the chochoose an anonymous person to repre- sen man or woman—almost certainly sent the youth of the world.” an athlete, a well-placed source Ever since, we’ve sought other at- told me—will communicate to tributes in our cauldron-lighters. Four the world a good deal about years after Mark’s moment in the sun, the host nation. That was the the Finns appointed their running idea when the Nazis created the hero Paavo Nurmi to perform the ritu- modern torch relay for the 1936 al, beginning a trend of choosing sports Games, adding some extra pomp to the celebrities—or at least personalities tradition of the Olympic flame, which whose stories resonate with the public, has its origins in the ancient Games and whose selection is often kept under (symbolizing Prometheus’ theft of fire wraps to build drama around the open- from the gods) and was reintroduced ing ceremonies. to the modern Games in Amsterdam, Mark died in 1991, having never in 1928. The Third Reich staged a race spoken to the press about his lap with from Olympia to Berlin, featuring Arythe torch. But his alternate that day— an runners traversing several countries should injury have befallen him—was that would later be subsumed by the John Fairgrieve, now 86. Fairgrieve re- German imperial project. The event, members how the two practiced in the filmed by Leni Riefenstahl, concluded stadium “two or three times” in great with the cauldron-lighting by the littlesecrecy (although Mark was chauf- known middle-distance runner Fritz feured to those rehearsals in a white Schilgen, chosen by an “aesthetics comRolls-Royce, hardly inconspicuous). mission” for his graceful running style. Today, as Londoners prepare to open While nefarious undertones have

In 1948, Brits picked John Mark to light the cauldron, on account of his good looks.

disappeared, the pageant’s nationalistic symbolism has remained. In Atlanta in 1996, organizers picked Muhammad Ali—the epitome, they may have hoped, of fortitude, athletic greatness, and racial harmony. In Sydney, four years later, the aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman lit the flame, 10 days before winning gold in the 400 meters. Her selection seemed at once an emblem of Australia’s turbulent past, of its athletically competitive present, and, maybe, of its more equitable future. Perhaps most poignantly, the 1964 Tokyo organizers selected a symbol of resilience: Yoshinori Sakai, an athlete born in Hiroshima the day the city was leveled by an atomic bomb. What does Britain wish to say about itself at the 2012 Games? Early in the year, the bookies’ even-priced favorite (yes, you can wager on the cauldron-lighter’s identity) was Steve Redgrave, the fivetime Olympic gold-medal rower—a worthy, if rather dull, choice. Redgrave, it could be noted, represents toil. Perhaps the most interesting thing he has ever said was uttered after his fourth gold: “Anybody sees me going anywhere near a boat, you’ve got my permission to shoot me.” He later rescinded, and won his fifth gold in Sydney. Nobody shot him. A motley lot of additional candidates all come with problems: too outspoken, too unheralded, too old, too young. A special kind of persona is needed to transfix the world, and we Brits have no Ali. Plus, a celebrity might not sit well with the times. The country is in a funk: buffeted by economic austerity, a divided government, and a roiling press scandal. We could do worse than look back to a similarly depressed moment in our history. Although you could argue that the man who broke the four-minute mile in 1954 is a representative of Britain’s imperial past, Roger Bannister enthralled a monochrome, post-war nation. He appears to be a good value, at 3-to-1 odds. Indeed, he may have dropped a hint when I spoke with him on the telephone. After I told him about the wall of silence I had encountered on this subject, he laughed. “You’ve got as close to it as you will, I think.” Ed Caesar is a regular contributor to The Sunday Times Magazine, in London, and a contributing editor to British GQ.

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Nigeria’s chronic gridlock—which may be the worst in the world—is largely due to rampant government corruption.

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motorists. “Don’t get out the car,” the anarchy also raises questions about how driver warned. the government can deal with the threat Lagos, a megalopolis of 21 million of international terrorism when it can’t people, has been plagued for years by a even get its roads under control. gamut of urban problems: exponential Our journey was relatively unevent40population growth, crumbling infra- ful—by Nigerian standards, anyway—un12 structure, poverty, crime, corruption. til we approached the outskirts of Lagos, By Joshua Hammer But nothing had prepared me for the where the highway abruptly disintegratApapa-Oshodi Expressway, the gate- ed into a moonscape of deep potholes on the Apapa- way to Nigeria’s two busiest seaports, and eroded asphalt. Here, three lanes Oshodi Expressway, outside Lagos, Apapa and Tin Can Island, and home to squeezed down to one. A flatbed truck and traffic had barely moved in five what may be the worst chronic gridlock carrying a 40-foot-long steel container hours. Through the rear window of our in the world. bounced up and down in front of us, its Land Cruiser taxi, I could make out an My driver chose this coastal route unsecured load sliding toward the rear. apocalyptic scene: six lanes of buses, while taking me from the Benin border “Watch out!” cried my traveling compan18-wheelers, fuel tankers, and sedans, to Lagos, a distance of about 40 miles. ion, Sam Olukoya, a Nigerian journalist wedged bumper-to-bumper in both di- What I had assumed would be a routine for the BBC, and our driver hit the brakes rections. Curses and horn blasts pierced commute turned into an epic, 12-hour as the massive container edged closer to the diesel exhaust–choked air. Brakes journey, and a lesson in the dysfunction tumbling off the truck. “These things fall screeched as vehicles inched forward. and criminality of Africa’s most popu- down every day, and people are crushed I lay down in the backseat, trying to lous nation. The ordeal suggests the and killed,” Olukoya told me. get some sleep. Moments later, I felt challenges that lie ahead for Nigeria’s Eventually we neared the dreaded a thump, and the car rocked violently recently elected president, Goodluck Mile Two, close to Tin Can Island, a back and forth. Jonathan, who has pledged to root out chaotic merger point beset by flooding, “These crazy men—they steal the corruption and to make his country construction, illegal truck-parking, colheadlights!” my driver exclaimed. run more efficiently. As Nigeria strug- lisions, packs of hoodlums, tanker fires, Crowbar-wielding thieves were prowl- gles to contain Boko Haram, a jihadist and occasional blasts (a tanker carrying the traffic jam, preying on captive group based in the north, this highway ing 33,000 liters of fuel tipped over and 32

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P I U S U TO M I E K P E I /A F P / G E T T Y

World’s Worst Tra�c Jam

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LEARNING AND EARNING IN THE INFORMATION AGE

elcome to the new frontier of work. Digital literacy is the lingua franca. Everyone, in every division and department, is up to speed on the latest software and devices. Remote workers and digital nomads come together in virtual teams to tackle projects. Then they disband and regroup, reconfiguring and taking on new roles. Change is often fast and furious. Computers and robots handle the repetitive, routine tasks. Employees are there to tackle the complex, unpredictable stuff. Workers must be entrepreneurial problem solvers, ready to blaze new trails in the face of complexity and uncertainty. This may sound like the culture at a Silicon Valley start-up, but the landscape of work is moving in this direction for every type of job, in every corner of the country. Over the coming decade, employers of all types will be looking for workers who are innovative thinkers and tech-savvy communicators. Of course there will be a steady need for people with the training and experience to keep computerized industries humming—network specialists, programmers, software designers, and database gurus. And thanks to the rise of the Internet, demand is also growing for webbased careers that a decade ago weren’t on anyone’s radar, including SEO specialists and usability experts.

Beyond the growing demand for technology workers, nearly every type of job is transforming as technology advances. Most employees use technology on a daily basis and are expected to constantly adapt to new technological developments. This is true even for jobs that have been historically hands-on and low-tech. Just think about American factories, where traditional work is being replaced by advanced manufacturing, requiring workers to interface with sophisticated computerized equipment. Technology is transforming the workplace, and it has the same power to transform education. However, despite some exciting localized efforts to tap into the pedagogical power of technology, there is still a deep divide between what most of today’s students are learning and the intellectual skills and strategies they will need to succeed in the 21st-century workplace. As increased connectivity allows workers to interact and share information from multiple locations, they must be adept at creating a virtual presence. This capacity for virtual collaboration is just one of 10 essential skills that workers will need by 2020, according to a report conducted by the Institute for the Future (IFTF) for the Apollo Research Institute. Not surprisingly, five of these 10 skills revolve around technology.

ILLUSTRATION: ANDRIO ABERO

How can technology empower workers to find their way in the changing jobs landscape?

Not only is technology driving the need for a different approach to education—one that cultivates skills such as virtual collaboration—but it also offers exciting opportunities for new modes of learning. Technology facilitates personalization, allowing students to learn at their own pace, rather than in lockstep with classmates or colleagues. It also creates increased opportunities for learning outside the classroom, making it possible for more people in more places to be engaged, lifelong learners. Despite all this, education in the United States has largely lagged behind the workplace when it comes to embracing technology. According to Satish Menon, Chief Technology Officer for the Apollo Group, “Technology and the information age have only touched education, mostly in a superficial way so far.” The educational landscape is starting to expand and evolve in many promising directions, as was on view at The Atlantic’s Technologies in Education Forum on May 22. “Now it appears that the time is ripe for technology to aid in the transformation of

Join the conversation—happening now. TheAtlantic.com/workforce-of-tomorrow

education toward a more efficient, cost-effective, and fluid model,” Menon said. “Ultimately this will lead to better lifelong learning experiences that are a necessity for our workforce to stay relevant.” So how can we bridge the technology gap between the classroom (real or virtual) and the workplace? To start with, we need to translate the engagement that students experience with familiar, widespread technology into a deeper engagement with learning. This is true for every season and phase of education. Educators and policymakers also need to invest in developing and replicating models and methods that work. Digital literacy shouldn’t be an afterthought, or an extracurricular activity, or a matter of luck. We can’t allow education to stay stuck in outdated modes that don’t sync up with workforce needs. Now is the time to identify and support effective technologies for lifelong education, empowering workers to keep up—and to stay relevant—as they navigate a rapidly evolving job landscape. After all, tomorrow’s workers will shape our nation’s future.

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M I K E Y B U R TO N

D I S PAT C H E S

exploded last February, killing three people and incinerating 36 cars). Traffic ground to a six-hour halt. Lagos gridlock hasn’t always been this bad. But the city’s population has nearly doubled since the late 1990s, and a fuel subsidy has made gasoline cheap. The government repealed part of the subsidy this year, but Nigerians still pay only $2.75 a gallon, which has made owning a car— typically a broken- down, secondhand American gas guzzler—feasible for millions of people. And rapid growth in truck and oil-tanker traffic has overwhelmed Lagos’s ports, which handle 75 percent of the country’s imports. As a result, truck drivers use the expressway as a parking lot, waiting for days to return empty shipping containers or to pick up fuel and cargo, bribing police and port officials to look the other way. But the biggest problem appears to be the unsavory ties between Nigeria’s political and business elites. Under the military dictatorships of General Ibrahim Babangida and then General Sani Abacha, both from the north, a small group of northerners came to dominate the trucking business. These men have reportedly played a key role in shooting down every effort to improve or privatize the country’s moribund, Britishbuilt rail system, ensuring that almost all goods must move by road. According to Tom Vanderbilt, the author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), “Traffic behavior is more or less directly related to levels of government corruption.” Vanderbilt cites a clear correlation between trafficfatality rates per miles driven and a country’s ranking on Transparency International’s corruption index. (In terms of road safety, the Scandinavian countries fare the best; Nigeria is near the bottom of the list.) In March, Nigerian authorities made an attempt to unclog the highway, arresting illegally parked truckers and confiscating 120 vehicles. The Nigeria Truck Owners Association retaliated by calling a one-day strike that crippled the ports. The next day, traffic was as

calcified as ever. About half a dozen found 11 takers tonight, at $185 a pop. agencies—the Inter-Ministerial ImpleSoon after I’ve finished an inconmentation Committee on Port Approach ceivably tender prime-beef rib eye Roads in Lagos, the Lagos State Traffic and braised beef cheek with cured foie Management Agency, the Federal Road gras—the foie gras cromesquis amuseSafety Commission, the Ve- bouche is a distant memory—Citrin hicle Inspection Officers— lumbers wearily into the packed dining share responsibility for room for his nightly patron schmooze. keeping traffic moving on His too-long trousers balloon above the highway, but all of them his ankles; his apron is smudged. Why are considered toothless. has foie gras been singled out, one After our six hours of diner asks, while the depredations of paralysis on the Apapa- cattle feedlots are hardly addressed? Oshodi Expressway, we fi- “Foie gras is low-hanging fruit,” Citrin nally began to move. It was says, in the resigned tone of someone 10 p.m.; we had been on the explaining the obvious. “You think the road since noon. I could just make out foie gras industry has money to fight, the lights of Victoria Island, our desti- like the beef industry?” He points out nation, and felt a glimmer of hope. Our that a class barrier also keeps voters driver inched right, toward the exit from rallying in defense of foie. “You ramp. Then came another thump. The go out in the street and ask 25 people car rocked back and forth, and our tail- ‘What do you think about fattened duck lights were gone too. liver?’ and they’ll say ‘Ooh, I don’t like that.’ You don’t have to take a poll.” Joshua Hammer is a former Africa and Citrin has joined a coalition of Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek. more than 100 chefs lobbying for the reversal or suspension of the foie gras ban. (The coalition, which insists that �� it does not oppose animal rights, says it favors the humane treatment of all livestock, waterfowl included.) In a few days, many of the chefs will travel to Sacramento to lobby on foie’s behalf, , and in the weeks ahead, high-end res, taurants will hold foie-filled dinners to raise funds for their quixotic fight. The By Ed Leibowitz campaign has captivated and divided the food world. Wolfgang Puck is one of at the rare celebrity chefs supporting the Mélisse, a Michelin two-star French ban; its foes include Thomas Keller and restaurant in Santa Monica, and the Anthony Bourdain (who, despite having chef, Josiah Citrin, has spent most of no restaurant in California, is one of the the past five hours engaged in what will law’s more belligerent opponents). soon be punishable offenses: poaching California’s foie gras statute passed grossly enlarged duck liver to accom- in 2004, but implementation was depany a filet of Dover sole, folding grossly layed in order to give Sonoma-Artisan enlarged duck liver into agnolotti, whip- Foie Gras, the state’s only producer, ping grossly enlarged duck liver into a time to find a method of rapidly fatmousse that will rest on a substratum tening its ducks that is less cruel than of blood-orange gelée. On July 1, Cali- forcing tubes down their throats. Perfornia’s foie gras ban will go into effect, haps not surprisingly, given that no making it illegal to raise, sell, or serve such alternative had materialized since any product made through gavage, a the ancient Egyptians inaugurated the method of force-feeding waterfowl in practice, the past eight years yielded no order to swell their livers to gras pro- breakthroughs, and Sonoma-Artisan is portions. And so, in the weeks leading shutting down. Those years did, howup to this animal-rights equivalent of the ever, see legislative victory after vicVolstead Act, Citrin has been serving a tory on behalf of animal rights. In 2008, seven-course “Foie for All” menu. He’s Californians voted—in greater numbers

The Last Days of Foie Gras

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than for any other initiative in state history—to pass the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, which dictates that pregnant pigs, egg-laying hens, and calves raised for veal have enough room to lie down, stand up, turn in a circle, and stretch their limbs freely. That same year, the legislature passed a law that would have (had it not been unanimously overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court) prevented ill or incapacitated pigs, cows, goats, and sheep from being bulldozed or forklifted to their execution. And in October 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed a law banning the sale, trade, or possession of shark fins, a Chinese delicacy. Strangely, these animal-rights triumphs coincided with a rising cult of animal protein and artisanal butchery among the state’s gourmands. Last year, a sold-out crowd filled St. Vibiana’s, a deconsecrated cathedral in downtown Los Angeles, to witness the hackingapart of two whole hogs (and to eat their meat). The aptly named Animal is arguably L.A.’s most influential new restaurant of the past five years, on the strength of its veal brains, pig tails, and copious foie. This sudden vogue for carnage has led to a curious situation, in which diners at high-end California restaurants nod approvingly at menus that brag about the bio- sustainable provenance of the asparagus spears and the happy, grass-fed history of the 38

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lamb shanks, even as they sample liver from a duck that in its final weeks was probably force-fed enough calories to fuel its flight around the world—had it not by then been too fat to move. Perplexed by these contradictions, I recently went to San Francisco to see John Burton, the chairman of the state’s Democratic Party and the original patron of the anti-gavage law. A dependably profane mainstay of California public life, Burton introduced the bill while serving his last term as president pro tem of the state Senate; hearing of the chefs’ insurrection this spring, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that he’d “like to sit all 100 of them down and have duck and goose fat—better yet, dry oatmeal—shoved down their throats over and over and over again.” A postcard of a duck lay on his disorderly desk, across which he lobbed grenades at each of the chefs’ arguments. The chefs’ coalition has warned about the ban’s potential impact on California’s high-end restaurants in a bad economy, and the state’s diminished standing in the world of haute cuisine. “California will no longer be a food destination?,” Burton said. “In other words, a guy’s sitting around and says ‘Let’s go to California. They’ve got these beautiful views. They’ve got Yosemite, the bridges, Universal City, the redwoods. Oh, shit! They don’t have foie gras! Let’s go to South Dakota.’ ”

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Nor did he buy the argument that a restaurant could go broke without foie gras, unless that restaurant’s specialty was incredibly narrow. “If you had the House of Foie Gras, you’d be fucked,” he said. “Like if at the House of Pancakes, you can’t make pancakes.” Finally, I tried out the claim, put forth by some experts, that ducks might not suffer overmuch during gavage—that as migratory birds, they are biologically disposed to gorging themselves, and that their lack of a gag reflex means tube feeding may be less miserable for them than it would be for us. “The bottom line is, you shouldn’t be torturing Goosey Gander and Donald Duck,” Burton said. “It’s a bad goddamn thing to be doing.” Provided the law stands—and it is expected to, given that no one in Sacramento seems keen to revisit gavage in the midst of a budget crisis—California’s chefs will have to decide whether to obey it or, as some have already threatened, defy it (and risk a $1,000-a-plate fine). Such culinary disobedience has some precedent: Chicago, which in 2006 implemented the nation’s first foie gras ban, recently overturned its law, in part because it was so widely flouted, and in part because then Mayor Richard M. Daley claimed it had made his city “the laughingstock of the nation.” (Though not the world. Under Hitler, Germany was the first country to criminalize force-feeding of fowl; several countries—including Israel, Italy, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Poland—have since outlawed gavage. None of these bans extends to consumption, however; Germans, who updated their ban in the 1990s, eat 170 tons of foie gras a year.) Back at Mélisse, the servers swoop in on my table with dessert. As I spoon up the last of the ambrosial foie gras ice cream and apples with foie gras Chantilly cream, I’m ready for a self-imposed ban of my own; I’ve had enough velvety richness for a few decades. I’m pleased to discover that I can still walk, however. Citrin tells me this was by design. “You ate maybe six and a half ounces of foie,” he says. “We don’t want to make you feel like you got stuffed—like you’re one of those gavage ducks.” Ed Leibowitz is a writer at large for Los Angeles magazine.

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mass of soccer uniforms—red slashed with white—dominates the foreground. Above, the players’ faces are blurs of brushwork. The auto-da-fé has attracted three television crews and a handBy Stephan Faris ful of photographers, and for several seconds the only sound is the clicking , director of the of cameras. Smoke ripples across the Contemporary Art Museum of Casoria, painting’s surface like mist on a lake. stands outside the doorway of his exManfredi inaugurated the museum hibition space. In one hand, he holds in 2005, at the request of the then maya torch made from a wad of white or of Casoria, a Mob-infested suburb cloth tied to a piece of wood. Next to in the Neapolitan hinterland, one of him, on a square stand of bent rebar, those all-too-typical zones of Italian he has hung a painting. The clouds are degradation where garbage casually low. The air holds a hint of rain. With piles up on the sidewalk, and lost toura bottle of lighter fluid, Manfredi wets ists wonder if they haven’t stepped into first the torch and then the painting. the Third World. The promised fundHe passes the stream across the front ing never arrived. Six months after the of the canvas, over its back, and three museum threw open its doors, the Catimes along the bottom of the frame. He soria city council closed its own doors; uses a cigarette lighter to set the torch the national government had dissolved on fire. And then he gently transfers the it, following suspected infiltration by flame to the painting. the Mafia. Manfredi decided to press At first, the canvas doesn’t burn. on, using as a display space what was Painted in 2007 by a German artist originally meant to be a temporary lonamed Astrid Stöfhas, it depicts four cation: the rough concrete basement of women from the Bayern Munich female a local school. soccer team embracing in celebration The city didn’t ask for rent, or payof a goal. The style is expressionist. A ment for the utilities, but the museum

For the Love of Art

received no other government support. Manfredi, an artist himself and a native of Casoria, called on friends and connections to gather a collection, which today includes more than a thousand works of art from as far away as China, Chile, New Zealand, and Burkina Faso. “I didn’t want to create an museum, with always the same 200 artists from the big galleries,” Manfredi says. “I wanted to create a museum that was dynamic, open to new trends, and to give … artists that don’t have a big market at their back a chance to express themselves and be inside a museum.” He kept the place open by begging favors and even selling his own artwork. But with the recession, his limited supply of local donors dried up, and he concluded that he could no longer afford to care for the works he had acquired. Italy’s economic troubles have cut hard into both private and public funding for museums. In April, the Maxxi, Italy’s flagship contemporary-art museum, which opened to great fanfare in 2010, was taken over by the government, after auditors said they found a $1 million shortfall in the previous year’s budget. Across the country, theaters,

The cash-strapped director of Casoria’s Contemporary Art Museum protests Italy’s budget cuts by burning his collection. 40

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C I R O D E LU CA/ R E UTE R S

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archaeological parks, and other cultural institutions are feeling austerity’s pinch. In despair, Manfredi decided to try to call attention to the peril facing Italian culture by turning his own collection into a flock of “sacrificial lambs.” He took pictures of the museum’s collection and sent photocopies—a brick 1,000 pages high—to Italy’s culture minister and to the president of the Campania region, around Naples. The package was a ransom note. If he didn’t receive assistance, he warned, he would set the pieces on fire, one by one. “It’s simple,” he told me. “If nobody cares about the art that’s inside the museum, then I’ll burn it.” In February, he started the burning with one of his own creations: a series of five life-size, full-body posters of Mafia fugitives, which had been displayed in the Italian pavilion of the 2011 Venice Biennale. Stöfhas’s painting is the fifth work Manfredi has put to the torch, and the fourth in less than a week. Inside the museum hang the remains of a painting of a flower by the French artist Séverine Bourguignon: blackened crossbars, with fringes of canvas peeling back from the edge of the frame like flesh around a wound. Another work, a wood sculpture by an Italian artist named Rosaria Matarese, now consists of two chunks of carbonized wood, one impaled by a large blackened nail. Of the others, only ashes are left. Before destroying a piece, Manfredi gets permission from the artist. Stöfhas is watching her painting burn via Skype from Germany; her face is visible on the screen of a laptop held aloft by one of the museum’s volunteers. The first part of the canvas to succumb to the flames is the figure on the left. A fissure opens where her shoulder had been. Then the fire rends a smaller hole in the painting’s upper-right corner. The stink of burning acrylic surges toward the photographers. Two boys of middle-school age approach from the side to get a better look. Other than the press, they are the only members of the public to show up. In the age of YouTube and Twitter, Manfredi’s protest has resonated across Europe. Artists in the U.K., Germany, Hungary, and northern Italy are burning their works and sending him videos in solidarity. “Maybe this was the spark,” 42

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Manfredi says. “Remember, revolutions need fire, like what happened in Tunisia. That fruit vendor set himself on fire, and then everything exploded.” Journalists are waiting to speak with Manfredi, so he heads inside, the cameramen and photographers following him. The two boys are gone. For a few minutes, what’s left of Stöfhas’s Soccer remains alone. It continues to smoke from the bottom, until a gust of wind knocks it flat on its face. Stephan Faris is a writer living in Rome.

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Wrestlemaniac ’ By Graeme Wood

Abdullah the Butcher as the most extreme independent- circuit wrestler, a 400pound hairless blob of muscle and fat whose presence at a match guarantees gouts of blood from at least one wrestler and possibly both. His weapon of choice is the fork, but he improvises when cornered. In Japan, where Abdullah is a beloved figure who visits retirement homes to cheer up the elderly, two skeptics once spotted him in a hotel lobby and remarked loudly that his shows were fake. Without hesitation, Abdullah shattered a glass against his scalp, then picked out the shards, produced a needle and thread, and stitched himself up. Dubbed “wrestling’s Methuselah” by The New York Times, Abdullah has fought for the past 50 years as “the Madman from the Sudan,” a billing his opponents say is at least half true. Born Larry Shreve in Windsor, Ontario, 71 years ago, he has never visited the Sudan. But some of his wrestling colleagues—they would say victims— claim his madness is genuine, and needs to be stopped. When the WWE Hall of Fame inducted Abdullah last year, Hulk Hogan and “Superstar” Billy Graham, two venerable masters of the mat,

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objected on the grounds that Abdullah had supposedly cut opponents without their permission, drawing blood for the audience’s entertainment. “Abdullah really is obsessed with cutting people,” says Devon Nicholson, 29, a 265-pound fellow Canadian who wrestled Abdullah and is now suing him for alleged injury in the ring. (The suit is still in its early stages; Abdullah denies the charges.) “He is like a monster movie come to life.” Nicholson, known to wrestling fans as Hannibal, wrestled Abdullah the Butcher in 2007 and claims that his opponent cut them both with the same razor. He blames the subsequent commingling of fluids for giving him hepatitis C, a disease that has ruined his pro-wrestling career. (He remains an alternate for Canada’s Greco-Roman Olympic wrestling team.) Graham backs Nicholson’s campaign against Abdullah. “I would love to talk to you about that pile of dung,” he wrote when I e-mailed him. “Abdullah the Butcher is possessed like a demon.” Graham says he has seen Abdullah blade other wrestlers—usually younger ones, like Nicholson, too naive to stop a match and object—until their faces were fountains of blood. Does Nicholson have a case? Video of one match clearly shows Abdullah flicking at his own head and Nicholson’s until blood flows. Graham and others say that during his fights, Abdullah has used precisely this motion to draw blood with a razor concealed under a thumb bandage. But wrestling is an inherently violent sport. And Gabe Feldman, a sports-law expert at Tulane University, says the law makes it hard for plaintiffs to collect damages for injuries that athletes could reasonably be expected to incur: stepping into a ring with a forkwielding maniac named Abdullah the Butcher could constitute a kind of liability waiver in itself. As for hepatitis C, late last year, a number of wrestling Web sites reported that Abdullah had “tested positive,” though Abdullah denies that he has it. (Many wrestlers, including Billy Graham, have the virus. It is a silent

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G R A E M E WO O D

The pro wrestler Abdullah the Butcher holds his weapon of choice: a fork. legacy of “double-blood” matches, wherein both wrestlers shed blood— or, in wrestling’s carny-inflected lingo, “juice,” “color,” or “claret.”) Over the years, Abdullah has punctuated encounters with unsuspecting journalists with some claret-shedding. After checking to see whether my shots were current, I asked him for an interview. He agreed, and told me to present myself at Abdullah the Butcher’s House of Ribs and Chinese Food, his restaurant in southwest Atlanta. Its walls feature portraits of Abdullah, rival wrestlers, and assorted luminaries (including Rosa Parks and Jimmy Carter, who once called Abdullah “my favorite wrestler”). From there, I was to follow Abdullah’s driver, Phyllis, as she delivered her boss’s daily dose of medicine and fried food in the restaurant’s hand-painted BBQ-delivery van. After careening through a tasteful, wooded neighborhood at nearly 60 miles an hour, we arrived at Abdullah’s one-story ranch house, and Phyllis ushered me into a pink-walled room where Abdullah was watching a Jerry Lewis movie at high volume. An incorrigible entrepreneur, Abdullah demanded that I pay him $20 for the car chase and a taste of his food. (Out

of politeness, I took a fried shrimp off his plate and drank a ginger ale.) He sat slumped and shirtless in a blue easy chair, his flab pouring over the edges like a gastropod’s. He can barely walk nowadays; half a century of body slams and recreational phlebotomy have left him weakened and in need of a hip replacement. (For their 2007 matches, Nicholson had to hoist Abdullah into the ring. Although Abdullah is not currently able to wrestle, he vows to return.) His left armpit is discolored from a burn sustained when a fellow wrestler spat gasoline on him, and self-slicing has left his scalp rutted with grooves so deep, he can (and does) stick quarters in them. When I asked him about Nicholson’s hepatitis allegations, he grew impatient. “My blood is clean,” he said testily. I was suddenly grateful that he was stuck in his chair, and that I was just out of reach of his big, bare arms. “How many times has [Nicholson] wrestled other people?,” Abdullah asked. “There are lots of wrestlers who don’t know they have [hepatitis],” he added; the disease could be from any of them. Nevertheless, he insisted that the ritualized self-bloodletting for which he is famous is “real.” You can fake a body-slam or a face-stomping,

he pointed out, but you can’t fake bleeding. In his view, this is one of the reasons fans love him. He told stories merrily, clearly relishing the chance to confirm various extreme rumors. “What I do,” he said matter-of-factly, “is stab people, and eat snakes and chickens onstage.” Finally, he directed me to a briefcase across the room and told me to bring him one of the forks inside. The utensil’s handle was wrapped in dirty athletic tape, and when I got close enough to hand it to him I immediately regretted the decision. “Come closer,” he said, and I inched near enough to his chair to smell his scorched armpit. “If I stab this in your head, what happens?” he asked, tapping the fork against his brow. “I’d have four little holes in my head,” I answered uneasily. “Four deep holes!” he corrected me. “Come here. You’re afraid.” As if hypnotized, I obeyed. He grabbed my neck, pressed the tines hard enough to dimple the skin of my forehead, and ordered me to make a face. I grimaced, just the way Abdullah’s opponents do when they’re headlocked and about to be skewered. Then he raked the fork across my head, past my hairline and over my scalp, hard enough to hurt a little but not to break the skin. “See?,” Abdullah said. Getting stabbed with a fork was an illusion, he implied. When the audience sees someone poking a horrified man’s face with a fork, they’re ready to believe that the fork is really sinking in, even if it’s just disappearing into his hair. Abdullah said that he had cut his opponents only three times in his career—and then only because they were young wrestlers who didn’t know how to cut themselves and had asked him to do the honors: “I never cut nobody unless they say ‘I don’t know how to do it.’ ” He then sold me the fork for $10. That was enough. I left Abdullah’s house and drove back to the rib joint, more curious than hungry. The restaurant had few customers, perhaps because it was decked out with photographs of the owner drenching people with blood. A giant portrait of a young Abdullah, wearing a leisure suit and smoking a cigar, overlooked the register. The sanitation certificate next to it indicated a grade of 97, or A.

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Just south of Sierra Leone, the beaches of Robertsport boast consistently good waves —and today, a growing tourism industry.

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hotels and beachfront resorts are cropping up. A small flyer posted where I stayed caught my eye merely for advertising yoga classes. I don’t recall many yoga studios operating under the Taylor regime. I grabbed my fins and hit Barnes Liberia was quasi-colonized by the Beach, a good alternative to the adjaUnited States in the 1820s. These days, cent, and more touristy, Thinkers Vilvisitors bike to the antebellum-style lage Beach. Two large thunderclouds houses in the town of Clay-Ashland. on the horizon blemished the sky while Others search for pygmy hippos in lush terrific whitecaps rolled to shore. Once rain-forest sanctuaries. But I went for in the water, though, I realized these the bodysurfing (a sport that, as the waves were far too big and erratic for name suggests, involves riding a wave me to face this early in the trip. I hiked without a board; the only gear you may up the beach and into a surf-side eatery, need is a pair of small fins). Surfing— thinking I’d consider my options over a or “sliding,” as Liberians call it—may plate of palm butter—a wickedly spicybe more established in African coun- sweet stew, served over pounded castries like Senegal, Morocco, and South sava. I asked the waiter about the meat Africa. But I had heard that Liberians in the dish. “That’s bush meat,” he told me. are treated to good waves virtually evI frowned. While I’m all for freeery day of the year. I figured finding the range livestock, I appreciate something perfect ones would be easy. Though much of Monrovia remains less free-ranging than what I imagined in post-war shambles—with potholed we had here. “What kind of bush meat?,” streets and spotty electricity—new I asked.

, . By William Powers

“

? ” a grinning Liberian woman asked me after our plane landed in Monrovia. “Body fine,” I answered in my rusty Liberian English, still awed by the ease with which I arrived: a major airline had carried me straight from Atlanta. Two decades ago, while covering the country’s 14-year civil war, I would fly into this Atlantic-washed capital from Abidjan, in the Ivory Coast, riding a Soviet-era artifact, half of its cabin loaded with burlap-covered supplies for the strongman Charles Taylor. But today, with the old dictator in prison and Liberia at peace, the country is suddenly open for tourism—for hardy souls, at least. Long known as America-in-Africa,

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G LE N NA G OR DON

Finding the Perfect Wave in Liberia

“The United States Senate has provided the genesis for some of the greatest things this country has ever done. And if I dedicate the time to it and seriousness to it, I have a chance to be a part of something like that.” – Senator Marco Rubio at the 2011 Washington Ideas Forum

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D I S PAT C H E S

He shrugged. “Forest meat.” Falling into the repartee of my earlier Monrovia days, I feigned displeasure. “That bush meat climb trees?,” I asked, pantomiming the act. “It fly? That meat dig holes?” “It’s bush meat,” he said with a laugh. I ordered the chicken instead. The next day, an old buddy from “Taylor time” picked me up in his dented Toyota. Harris Johnson, a computer technician in a Yankees cap, grinned as he gunned his car downtown, Monrovia’s fire-scarred skyline looking like something out of Mad Max. We passed over the bridge to Bushrod Island, a hard scrabble industrial section of town, and I spotted the ruins of a prewar movie theater and remembered the exquisite little groundnut-soup shop that had been tucked behind it. Harris pulled over. Throughout the war, the place had always been half empty, but we found it buzzing with a lunchtime crowd. We were shown to the only seats left and heard from the kitchen the rhythmic sounds of cooks pounding the cassava-yam dough called “dumboy.” A pair of goats bleated from a room to our left as we savored each spoonful of peanut-flavored soup. Five miles down the road, Harris and I arrived at Cici’s Beach, where we shed our flip-flops and crossed an expanse of powdery sand to the shoreline. From there we could see a problem: a collection of large offshore boulders breaking the waves. There would be no surfing here, we realized. “Boss Man,” Harris said—and I wondered if he was being polite, ironic, or both—“you need to go to Robertsport.” Of course. I knew that Robertsport, three hours up the coast, would have the waves I wanted. A deep underwater trench off the coast there created no fewer than five celebrated break points. But leave the known safety of Monrovia for the uncertain bush? My frontal lobe knew that Small Boys no longer roam the backcountry with AK-47s, but the reptilian portion of my brain was squirting caution hormones. Robertsport is near Sierra Leone, with its erstwhile amputation-happy Revolutionary United Front. No, thanks. I’ll eventually find that perfect wave … in Monrovia.

Pushing thoughts of Robertsport aside, I enjoyed a surfless day with Harris at Cici’s. Three hours went by. Or maybe it was six? We slipped into Liberian time, floating and backstroking in the turquoise sea. As the sun set, we ate grilled cassava fish, freshly netted by a nearby Fanti fisherman. I passed the next days impatiently. I wanted to bodysurf, but found at the lively urban beach off 16th Street only huge crashing waves of the sort I had spotted at Barnes—tubeless, choppy, and with nobody riding them. A group of 20 teenagers was playing soccer barefoot in the sand, and after a while, a group of children in their underwear— I’d noticed them playing in the shallow water—approached me. The largest child ventured a “How da body?” I told them the body was ready to slide, never mind the conditions. I stood up and headed for the miserable surf. The soccer game stopped, the players staring in my direction. Other people on the beach cried out, warning me that the underwater spirits— neegees—would drag me under. But I paid them no heed. The first gigantic wave slammed me into a sandbar. I limped back to the beach and lay on my back in the sand. Several concerned Liberian faces looked down at me, framing an oval of piercing blue sky. In that blue, I could see the beautiful waves of Robertsport. I realized I needed to screw up some courage and get out of town. The next morning, I hired a bush taxi to take me up the coast. Beyond the city, a panorama of rubber plantations, cassava fields, and forests opened up— not a gun-toting Small Boy anywhere, of course. Before long, the pristine Lake Piso Nature Reserve spread out before me, the oblong lake twinkling beneath emerald hills, the ocean beyond it. At last: Robertsport. The Atlantic was heaving itself from the south in a perfect peel, and surfers were working an unbelievable pipeline for 200 yards and more. I followed them into the swells—body fine, the sun blazing orange-red like a gigantic bowl of palm butter—and caught Liberia’s finest waves. William Powers is the author, most recently, of Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream.

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The Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, during a test jump from 25,000 feet

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The Right Suit 120,000

’

By Andrew Zaleski

, Felix drink manufacturer Red Bull), and KitBaumgartner, an Austrian tinger himself. In March, after more than skydiver, plans to exit a fiber- a year of delays, the team—which goes by glass sphere 120,000 feet the name Red Bull Stratos—successfully above the Earth’s surface and completed a test jump from 71,581 feet. jump. If all goes as expected, he’ll fall for In 1960, Kittinger’s intention was five and a half minutes, reaching a speed to test how humans might survive in of Mach 1 before deploying a parachute the vanishingly thin air of the stratothat will ease him onto the sands around sphere. The suit he wore was one used Roswell, New Mexico, 23 miles below. by high-altitude pilots, a painfully unThe only thing protecting Baumgartner comfortable full-body costume known from the cold deadness of near space? as a “partial pressure” suit, with rubThe air encased in his pressurized space ber tubes called capstans along the suit. Above 63,000 feet or so, humans arms, legs, and back. As Kittinger rose need pressurized protection; without it, 19.5 miles above the Earth, the capstans liquids in the body turn to gas, and in a gradually inflated, squeezing his body process called ebullism, the entire body just tightly enough to prevent ebullism. distends. Within 15 seconds, consciousBaumgartner will have a more comness is lost. fortable ride up. Like Kittinger, he’ll be The last time anyone survived a fall lifted by a balloon (a 30-million-cubicfrom anything close to this height was foot one), but he’ll be sitting in an enAugust 1960, when Joseph Kittinger, closed capsule filled with pressurized then a U.S. Air Force test pilot, hitched air, his suit inflating only minutes before a ride in a balloon-propelled open gon- the jump. And that suit? “Comparing my dola to an altitude of 102,800 feet, then equipment to what Felix has is like comleaped out. For three years, Baumgartner paring a Model T to a 2020 Ferrari,” Kithas been training to break Kittinger’s tinger told me. Baumgartner’s suit, which record. Assisting him is a group of aero- was designed by space-suit specialists at space engineers, retired U.S. Navy and Air David Clark Company, has four layers: Force personnel, doctors, physiologists, a an innermost comfort liner; a bladder, or corporate sponsor (the Austrian energy- gas container, fitted to his body; netting

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to keep the bladder in place; and an insulating exterior. Whereas Kittinger’s partial-pressure suit merely simulated the pressure of lower altitudes long enough for him to descend to a safer altitude, Baumgartner’s full-pressure suit maintains an internal pressure equivalent to that found at 35,000 feet. The new suit has much in common with the full-pressure suits the shuttle astronauts wore, but it’s different in one critical and potentially life-saving regard: maneuverability. space suits, which were intended to keep astronauts alive if the shuttle cabin lost pressure while entering or exiting orbit, were designed for sitting. They are extremely hard to move around in when fully pressurized. Jonathan Clark—the Stratos project’s medical director, a former flight surgeon, and the widower of Laurel Clark, one of the astronauts who perished in the Columbia accident in 2003—told me that attempting to maneuver through a bailout hatch in such a suit would be nearly unthinkable. And this is where Baumgartner’s suit represents such a leap forward. If he’s to have a decent shot at surviving the fall, his suit must be maneuverable. He needs to go from a pencil dive, when he first hops off his capsule’s platform, into a head-down “delta” position, with his arms at his side. If he flubs that hop—if he pushes off with too much force, say— he could tumble into an uncontrolled spin, the force of which could kill him. And so his getup, unlike space suits, which come in 12 standard sizes, is custom-tailored. In a bespoke suit like this one, maneuvering through the bailout hatch of a compromised spacecraft might be more manageable. Which means that if Baumgartner plummets 120,000 feet, reaches a speed of 700 miles an hour, and survives, the Red Bull Stratos team will have done much more than enter a number in a record book. It will have conceptualized, produced, and tested a pressure suit that just might make it possible for future space travelers— astronauts and civilians alike—to bail out of crippled ships at altitudes and speeds not previously survivable. We used to dream of going to the moon. Could we one day jump from it? Andrew Zaleski is a writer and editor in Baltimore.

R E D B U L L ST R ATO S /A S S O C I AT E D P R E S S

D I S PAT C H E S

The author’s father, Don Freeland, and a combine on his 3,200-acre homestead, which he farms with just two other workers

The Triumph of the Family Farm Farming is in the midst of a startling renaissance—one that holds lessons for America’s economic future.

grandfather last spring. He had died in his sleep in his own bed at 95, so, as funerals go, it wasn’t a grim occasion. But it was a historic one for our small rural community. My great-grandparents were early settlers, arriving in 1913 and farming the land throughout their lives. My grandfather continued that tradition, and now rests next to them on a hillside overlooking the family homestead. 50

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If you’re a part of the roughly 99 per- a territory seven times the size of Cencent of the North American population tral Park. Last year, he produced 3,900 that doesn’t work on a farm, you might tonnes (or metric tons) of wheat, 2,500 guess at what comes next—many a la- tonnes of canola, and 1,400 tonnes of ment has been written about the pass- barley. (That’s enough to produce ing of the good old days in rural areas, 13 million loaves of bread, 1.2 million the family farm’s decline, and the in- liters of vegetable oil, and 40,000 barevitable loss of the homestead. But in rels of beer.) His revenue last year was many respects, that narrative itself is more than $2 million, and he admits obsolete. That’s certainly true in my to having made “a good profit,” but family’s case: The Freeland farm is still won’t reveal more than that. The farm being cultivated by my father. And it is has just three workers, my dad and his bigger and more prosperous than ever. two hired men, who farm with him My dad farms 3,200 acres of his nine months of the year. For the two own, and rents another 2,400—all told, or three weeks of seeding and harvest,

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DAV I D J O H N STO N

By Chrystia Freeland

YOU DO RIGHT BY SAVING. WE DO RIGHT BY NOT CHARGING YOU FOR IT. THAT’S WHY OUR ONLINE SAVINGS ACCOUNT HAS NO MONTHLY MAINTENANCE FEES. Plus, we have 24/7 live customer service.

No Nonsense. Just People Sense.

my dad usually hires a few friends to Erickson told me that big institutional Henderson situates the change over help out, too. investors—pension funds, insurance the long sweep of history: “Prior to My father farms in northern Alber- companies—have recently been mak- World War II, it took 100 hours of labor ta, but his story is typical of large-scale ing investments in farmland ranging to produce 100 bushels of corn. Today, family farmers across North America. from “the several hundred millions to it takes less than two hours.” AccordUrbanites may picture farmers as hip the billions.” Erickson said this broad ing to Erik O’Donoghue and Robert heritage-pig breeders returning to the interest is new, and is driven by the fact Hoppe, two economists at the Departland, or a struggling rural underclass that “the fundamentals are changing ment of Agriculture, in 2009 U.S. farm waging a doomed battle to hang on to dramatically.” output was 170 percent above its level their patrimony as agribusiness moves Jim Rogers, who co-founded the in 1948, having grown at a rate of 1.63 in. But these stereotypes are misleading. legendary hedge fund percent a year. Those In 2010, of all the farms in the United Quantum with George figures understate the States with at least $1 million in rev- Soros, told me he be- In 2010, of all productivity revolution, enues, 88 percent were family farms, lieves farming is “one the farms with because these increasand they accounted for 79 percent of of the most exciting at least $1 million ing harvests have been production. Large-scale farmers to- professions” in the delivered with fewer day are sophisticated businesspeople world—and that the in revenues, inputs, particularly less who use GPS equipment to guide their recent boom is likely 88 percent were labor and less land. combines, biotechnology to boost their to continue for a long family farms. Tom Vilsack, the yields, and futures contracts to hedge time. “Throughout agriculture secretary, their risk. They are also pretty rich. told me that since 1980, history, we’ve had long “It definitely is not just your father,” periods when the financial sectors agriculture has been “the second-mostJason Henderson, the vice president were in charge,” he said, “but we’ve productive aspect of our economy … I’m and branch executive of the Omaha also had long periods when the people 61 years old, and in my lifetime, corn branch of the Federal Reserve Bank who have produced real goods were production has increased 400 percent, of Kansas City, told me. Henderson in charge—the farmers, the miners … soybeans 1,000 percent, and wheat is essentially the Fed’s top analyst of All of you people who got M.B.A.s made 100 percent.” the agricultural economy. “In the U.S. mistakes, because the City of London Continuous technological improveand Canada in 2010 and 2011,” he said, and Wall Street are not going to be great ments have resulted in a system of “farm incomes have been booming. U.S. places to be in the next two or three de- crop farming that someone who left net farming incomes rose more than cades. It’s going to be the people who the countryside 20 years ago would 20 percent in each of those years. Farm- produce real goods.” be hard-pressed to recognize, and ers are flush with cash.” The rural renaissance isn’t just a cu- certainly couldn’t operate (I stopped Evidence of the boom is visible riosity: it’s an important new chapter in helping my dad in the early 1990s, throughout the Farm Belt. “Tractor and the story of America’s ability to thrive when I became a foreign corresponcombine sales have doubled, compared in the global economy, and in eras of dent, and I am no longer allowed to with 2003,” Henderson told me. “Pivot- disruptive technological change. As drive any of his three combines). The irrigation-system sales are up. I’ve been America struggles to adapt to a new computer systems powering a “precidriving across Nebraska, Wisconsin, wave of creative destruction that is sion farmer’s” seed drill and combine and Iowa, and I have not seen so many shaking up the manufacturing and ser- have been programmed with the exshiny new grain bins, ever.” vice sectors as profoundly as industri- act parameters of all his fields and Troy Houlder, my father’s local alization transformed the agrarian age, are synced up with one another. That farm-machinery dealer, told me that in the resurgence of the family farm offers means the seed drill knows what last the 22 years he’s been in the business, some lessons on how we might survive year’s harvest was from each inch of “supply has never been this tight.” The this wave of change, too. land, thanks to data recorded by the vehicles in highest demand, he said, combine, and can seed and apply ferof the farm tilizer accordingly. are midrange-horsepower tractors, boom are the very same forces which run from $70,000 to $110,000. If The cabs of today’s combines, the that are remaking the rest of the most sophisticated of farm machines, a farmer walked into his store in early May wanting to buy that kind of trac- American economy—technological rev- look like airplane cockpits, or the contor, “he’s not getting one until probably olution and global integration. When trol rooms on factory floors. Monitors November or December, even if he had you think of technological revolution, tell the farmer how many bushels to you probably think of geeks in cool the acre his land is yielding even as he a fistful of hundreds.” Big Money has noticed these trends, coastal spaces like the Google campus, harvests his crop, give him a read on and is beginning to pile in. “We are see- or perhaps of math wizards on Wall the moisture level, and tell him how ing a tremendous uptick in allocations Street. But one source of rural pros- much he is leaving behind on the field. and interest in farmland,” says Chris perity is the adoption of radical new Troy Houlder’s flagship New Holland Erickson of HighQuest Partners, an technologies—and a consequent surge combine, the CR9090, which sells for agricultural consultancy and investor. in productivity. $520,000, has a new feature called

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Intelli Cruise, which automatically speeds up or slows down the machine depending on how heavy the crop is. (The CR9090 also features a so-called buddy seat, often occupied by a grandchild, and a small refrigerator, so its owner-operator’s lunch stays cold.) Fancy GPS systems and space-age tractors are what most excite the farmers I know and astound their city friends. But the most profound change is something an urban civilian driving through the Farm Belt wouldn’t even notice. Ever since people first domesticated cereal crops in the Fertile Crescent 11,000 years ago, farming has followed a seemingly immutable pattern—plow your field, seed your field, harvest your field, repeat. But today, farmers can skip the plowing step. This historic shift is known as the no-till revolution. No-till was a quirky, fringe idea in the 1970s. Today, it is practiced on one-third of U.S. cropland. It has been made more effective by the genetic engineering of seeds and the adoption of crop varieties with herbicide tolerance or a resistance to pests. Farmers are rightly proud of their swift embrace of innovation. But the biggest reason rural bank accounts are swelling today isn’t technology (nor is it government subsidies, though those have helped, and may no longer be justified). It is, rather, the growing global middle class. “The single most important factor in all of this is the changing diet in the emerging markets,” Erickson told me. “If people there go from earning $2 a day to $3 a day, they aren’t going to buy a Mercedes, but they are going to buy a piece of chicken or a piece of pork.” That translates into surging prices for feed grains like corn, soybeans, wheat, and canola, and surging farm incomes around the world. In the early 1990s, China, for instance, was self-sufficient in soybean production; in 2010, it was the top importer of U.S. agricultural products. This shift has made for unusual bedfellows. At a time when the mainstream U.S. political discourse has identified China as a relentless and predatory exporter—and a destroyer of American jobs—farmers are outliers. Farmers “want China to expand,” Henderson told me, “because that means a bigger or broader market” for their crops. Some

of America’s biggest supporters of open borders are down home on the farm. , employed most of the population and now employs almost no one, is often held up as a grim harbinger of what awaits U.S. manufacturing (and beyond that, white-collar professions that can be partially outsourced or performed by computers). The United States today has more bus drivers than it has farmers. Technological advances have drastically shrunk the number of people required to no-till the land. Yet today’s agricultural renaissance also shows that there is some light at the end of the tunnel—or, if you will, a good harvest at the end of the furrow. Most encouragingly, the agricultural boom shows that globalization really is a twoway street, and not just for the geniuses at Apple and Goldman Sachs. The rising global middle class wants hamburgers— which is where farmers come in—but it also wants hundreds of other middleclass comforts, and as it grows richer, it will be able to afford more of them. Helping to fill these wants is where many of the rest of us should look for opportunity. And you don’t have to work for a corporate behemoth or have a venture capitalist on your speed dial to take advantage of the changing world economy. One of the most surprising aspects of the farm story is that its heroes are self-employed entrepreneurs, albeit ones who own a lot of land. Of course, that still leaves open the question of what to do about all those jobs being lost. One of the great, and largely forgotten, triumphs of American society and government has been how smoothly U.S. farmers and their communities negotiated the creative destruction of the early 20th century and emerged triumphant when it was over. Lawrence Katz, a Harvard professor who is probably America’s most esteemed labor economist, has, together with his partner and fellow Harvard professor, Claudia Goldin, studied how they did it. The answer, Katz told me, was heavy investment in education: “Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, California—these were the leaders in the high-school movement.” Katz said this big investment in education was a deliberate response to the

rapid technological advances and productivity gains in both agriculture and manufacturing. Farmers could see that machines meant fewer hands would be needed on the land, while new jobs were being created in the cities. So they built schools to educate their children for those new roles. The strategy worked: high school made the children who stayed home better farmers and gave the rest the tools to leave. In fact, the Farm Belt’s high-school movement was so successful that farm children who moved to the big cities soon became the bosses of the native-born urbanites. “They tended to be more educated than the city slickers and move to better jobs in the city than the locals,” Katz said. The challenge those Midwestern farm communities faced same 100 years ago was remarkably similar to the challenge much of America faces today—an economic transformation that is making the country richer and more productive, but that also means most of our children won’t be able to do the same jobs we do. A high-school education was enough for the children of farmers in the early 20th century. Children today will need college, with an emphasis on quantitative and analytical skills, if they are to thrive. But while today’s problem would seem familiar to those early-20thcentury farmers, today’s response would not. “We did a better job in that period of preparing the next generation for their new context than we are doing today,” Katz said. “These areas made the right level of investment in education. We have not even approached the equivalent today.” The farming towns of the past saw themselves as true communities, with a collective responsibility to ready their children for the future. That sensibility has broken down. “Areas that had a larger share of older citizens actually were more supportive of education, which is the opposite of today,” Katz told me. Today’s wealthy farmers, and their prosperous city cousins, are the beneficiaries of a long-ago communal decision to invest in the future. We could learn from their great-grandparents. Chrystia Freeland is the editor of Thomson Reuters Digital. Her book Plutocrats will be published in October.

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“The Dead,” Ken Kesey said, “have built a reputation of being able to stroke a thing just the way the wind strokes the clouds.”

A Long, Strange Trip How a new 14-DVD box set turned me on to the Dead ’ , avoiding the Dead—easy like Sunday morning. One hears about them, of course, their legendary mega-jams and tribal rave-ups and so on. And one was aware, at the time, of the ragged pageantry of the traveling Dead show: the dreadlocked mendicants, the bongos in the parking lot, and the wafting hippie conjurations of the dreaded Dead dance. Now and again a friend

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might even blurtingly confess to teenage Deadhead-ism, as if to some regrettable religious affiliation. But the music itself has always had a sort of negative cultural presence: minimal airplay, no sing-alongs, little risk of accidental exposure. If you want it—if—you have to go after it, into the Deadworld, its dim halls piled with bootleg live tapes and haunted by trails and spirals of dazedly remembered guitar-diddle. I steered clear for decades. I had an

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aural impression of the Dead sound, of course—a thin, rootsy flutter, rather anemic in the vocals and strangely at odds (it seemed to me) with the band’s reputation for freak-out and mind-blow. It corresponded, as far as I could tell, to a mood of mellow and expressive grooviness—a mood that I am never in. So no Grateful Dead for me, no thank you. Until, that is, I was made aware—in my capacity as international reviewer and analyst of the

HERB GREENE

By James Parker

IMAGE CREDIT CLOCKWISE: RICCARDO SAVI, DAN BAYER, MICHAEL BRANDS

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Geist—of the recent release of All the disc The Closing of Winterland. Bars Years Combine (Shout! Factory), a 14- and bars of the song go by, tonk-a-tonkdisc DVD box set featuring Dead mov- a-tonk, a-tonk-tonk, and Lesh’s instruies and archival Dead material, adding ment is mute. Then a trebly squink, then up to nearly 38 hours (38!) of live Dead. a Bootsy Collins eructation, then one fat And I thought: Very well. Let’s see what Om-note, then silence again: the silence this is all about. An immersion, an edu- of his bass thinking. Most curious. I also cation, a crash course. Was it possible? enjoyed (on a bonus disc) a television Come on, little critic. Neutralize that interview with Ken Kesey in which finicky forebrain, encounter this thing the great author, pleasantly sozzled at somehow. I gave myself a week. 2 a.m., dilates with a touch of the old So it’s Monday, and I’m watching The Neal Cassady mania upon the peculiar Grateful Dead Movie. Chronologically powers of his favorite band. Kesey has as well as informationally, this looks history—History, even—with the Dead: like the place to start: The Dead and back in the day, they were the house associated phenomena band for his Acid Tests, in 1974, filmed over five his evangelizing LSD nights at Bill Graham’s events, and a willing Winterland Ballroom The band cranks vector for his visions of in San Francisco. Jerry out noninvasive a lysergically refreshed Garcia, Dead main man, rock and roll like America. “They’re the inclines the hairy moon only really working alLynyrd Skynyrd of his face benignly over chemists,” he tells the the crowd, and the band performing two ’70s groovers who cranks out its twinkling, in an antigravity are interviewing him. dismantled boogie, its “The Dead have built chamber. noninvasive rock and a reputation of being roll—“Truckin’,” “Goin’ able to stroke a thing Down the Road Feeling Bad”—like just the way the wind strokes the clouds Lynyrd Skynyrd performing in an anti- until finally it attracts the lightning out gravity chamber. The way they play off of the ground.” Then he congratulates each other is gentle and rather special, himself, as every writer must: “Well put, no doubt about that. And offstage, there Kesey.” are some nice macho atmospherics: It’s on Wednesday that I feel, for the lean roadies swing barking through first time and with a perverse sense of the scaffolding, and a visiting Hell’s relief, the great sadness of Jerry Garcia. Angel—when asked, in the interest of The disc is called Dead Ahead, and it general vibes, to consider taking off his features an October 1980 show at Radio club colors—gets heavy. “If Bill Graham City Music Hall. Garcia is gray-faced, thinks I’m that violent,” he says, com- with gray in his beard, and the lilting, placent with menace, “I oughta just tilting almost-reggae of “Fire on the knock him out and leave, y’know? Give Mountain” (lyrics by the Dead laureate him his satisfaction.” The next scene, Robert Hunter) becomes—rather maghowever, yin to the yang, is an interview nificently—not just a study in but an enwith a smiling, breast-feeding woman. actment of complete artistic burnout/ The fans are everywhere, shirtless and befrazzlement. You’re playin’ cold twirling. “New people keep coming in,” music on the barroom floor / Drowned says one happily. “Older people phase in your laughter and dead to the core … off, you know, advance onto different Garcia’s voice is plaintive and pure, his trips … It’s like a continuous trip.” The guitar-playing still almost obsessively Grateful Dead Movie’s arduous journey pretty, but this must be the undertow, to completion—it didn’t show up in the downside, the shadow of the Dead. theaters until 1977—was by some ac- Improvisation has its hazards, in life counts such a bummer for Garcia that as in art. And having cultivated over 15 he started doing heroin. years a unique state of exposure to the On Tuesday, I become transfixed by music, and to everything that goes with Phil Lesh’s bass-playing—or rather, the the music (“The existential reality,” he enormous gaps in it—during a 1978 per- said once, “is note to note”), Garcia is formance of “Not Fade Away” on the paying the price: Almost ablaze still you 56

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don’t feel the heat / It takes all you got just to stay on the beat … Intolerably sad, yes, but it makes me feel better about the Dead and their people. I knew there had to be a low in there somewhere. Drug-tingles and swoopy dancing will only get you so far. To make the bigtime connection, the one that lasts, you must confess to brokenness. On Thursday, I get turned off. The disc is called View From the Vault III. It’s 1990, we’re at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in California, and the song is “Touch of Grey,” a mid-paced, potbellied rocker (and late hit for the Dead) that turns on an easy-breezy refrain of “It’s alright …” Bob Weir is wearing distressingly tiny shorts. Garcia, large and unhealthy-looking, nods and smiles through a drizzle of expiring neurons: Draw the curtains, I don’t care, ’cause / It’s alright … Bounce, bounce go the Hacky Sacks in the parking lot: some of them haven’t touched the ground for six months. Now the infamous “Drums” has begun, and Mickey Hart—from deep in his mad-professor laboratory of percussion—is gleefully forcing horrible electrified sounds out of a large metal loop. Zinnngg … zungggg … bitdit-dit … Appalled, I recoil into crude binary thinking: I must have the first four Ramones albums now, all at once, as a matter of neurological necessity. It’s now Friday, and, feeling somewhat burned by the late-era indulgences of Thursday, I’ve looped back shakily to 1974, to a disc of bonus material from The Grateful Dead Movie. The band is at Winterland, harmonizing with rugged sweetness, with telepathic lightness, through “I Know You Rider.” And for a second I seem to get it, the strange, demanding liberty of this sound, its perpetual and chemically sustained availability to the thing, whatever the thing might be. I am stirred. Have I glimpsed the rim of Dead satori, or has my head merely gone soft? Three men are singing this song, traditionally a woman’s blues ballad heaving with sex and regret, and it’s become one of the Dead’s mutability cantos: I wish I was a headlight on a northbound train / I wish I was a headlight on a northbound train / I’d shine my light through the cool Colorado rain … How moving these lines are. Pristine, disembodied, American. And open-ended, like the Dead.

WASHINGTON IDEAS FORUM NOVEMBER 13-15, 2012 | WASHINGTON, D.C.

Erase Your Internet Self

Boot Camp for Teachers

Sell the Pill Over the Counter

Speakers of the House Shouldn’t Be in Line for the Presidency

The Ideas Lis List st 2012 Make Cars Super Light

Boot the Extra Point

Make Friends Mak riends With Islamists

Hold Lotteries for College Admissions

Learn tto Love Oil

Our annual compendium of prescriptions, provocations, and modest proposals for making the world a better place Talk to Your Friends

Don’t Predict the Future

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Burn Your Checkbook

Bankers Should Be Boring

Energy Health Care Politics Economics Education Technology Sports Culture Law

Don’t Tweet Your Coup

Charge for Your Ideas

Ban Gasoline

Hire Shy People

Listen to Gandhi

Make Law School Like Med School

Less Work, More Jobs

Abolish the Secret Ballot

Don’t Treat the Sick

Charge Coaches for Losing

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Cool It With the Big Ideas

Illustrations by Kiss Me I’m Polish

Smarter business for a Smarter Planet:

The cloud that’s transforming an industry, one fish at a time. At the University of Bari, a new computing model is creating new business models. Using an IBM SmartCloud,™ their team built a solution that allows local fishermen to auction their catch while still at sea. By creating more demand for the fishermen’s product, the cloud has increased income by 25% while reducing time to market by 70%. Now the team is scaling the solution to create new business models for the winemaking and transportation industries. What can cloud do for your business? A smarter planet is built on smarter software, systems and services. Let’s build a smarter planet. ibm.com/cloudsolutions

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Let’s Build a Smarter Planet, Smarter Planet and the planet icon are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. © International Business Machines Corporation 2012.

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For a preview of the titanic clash we’re about to witness between privacy and free speech on the Internet, consider the case of Virginia Da Cunha. The Argentinean pop star posed for racy pictures, which found their way to the Internet. Then, thinking better of her decision, she sued Google and Yahoo, demanding they take the pictures down. An Argentinean judge, invoking a version of “the right to be forgotten,” sided with Da Cunha, fined Google and Yahoo, and ordered them to delink all sites with racy pictures that included her name. Claiming that removing only selected pictures was too difficult, Yahoo decided to block all sites even referring to Da Cunha from its Argentinean search engine. Today, when you plug the name Virginia Da Cunha into Yahoo Argentina, you get a blank page and a legal notice that the images have been removed by court order. Soon, citizens around the world may have the ability to selectively delete themselves from the Internet. At the beginning of this year, Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice, fundamental rights, THE IDEAS LIST 2012

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conceptions of privacy and citizenship, proposed and American conceptions codifying a sweeping version of free speech. of the right to be forgotten However the international in European data-protection legal battles are resolved, the law. The proposal is being impulse to escape your past strenuously resisted by on the Internet is an underFacebook and by Google, standable one. Who among us which could be liable for up doesn’t regret a tipsy Facebook to 1 percent of its $37.9 billion photo from Cancún? Perhaps annual income if it fails the most effective solution to remove photos or other to the drunken-Facebookdata that people post about photo problem isn’t legal but themselves and later think technological. Companies better of, even if the data have with names like TigerText been broadly shared. are already offering the posBut the right to be sibility of “disappearing” your forgotten also gives people the data—for example, allowing right to demand the removal you to specify, when you send of embarrassing information a text message, whether you that others post about them, want it to last for a day or a regardless of its source, unless month. The Europeans may be Google or Facebook can prove going overboard in creating a to a European regulator that new legal right to escape your the information is part of a legitimate journalistic, literary, past on the Internet, but if the threat of regulation prompts or artistic exercise. This Facebook and Google to exwould transform Facebook plore less heavy-handed ways and Google from neutral of empowering users around platforms into global censors the globe to clean up their and would clash directly with online reputations, perhaps the principle, embedded in Europe and America can find U.S. free-speech law, that some kind of common ground people can’t be restricted after all. from publishing embarrassing but truthful information. —Jeffrey Rosen, law professor at As a result, the right to be George Washington University forgotten may precipitate the and legal-affairs editor of Internet Age’s most dramatic The New Republic conflict between European

J U S T I N H O R R O C KS / i STO C K P H OTO , M O C K E R _ B AT/ i S TO C K P H OTO , E D VA R D N A L B A N TJ A N / i S TO C K P H OTO , J E F F LO O / i S TO C K P H OTO , M A R I O 1 3 / i S TO C K P H OTO , B L U E B I R D 1 3 / i S TO C K P H OTO , A N D R E Y P O P OV / i STO C K P H OTO , M A R I O 1 3 / i STO C K P H OTO , M A R I O 1 3 / i STO C KP H OTO , KO N STA N T I N G R E B N E V / i S TO C K P H OTO , J U S T I N H O R R O C KS / i S TO C K P H OTO ( W O M E N ) ; E R I C H O O D / i S TO C K P H OTO ( M A N S C R ATC H I N G H E A D ) ; R O B E R T R . M c R I L L / W I K I M E D I A ( R U N N E R S ) ; A N D R E Y A R M YAG OV / i STO C K P H OTO ( M I S B E H AV I N G ST U D E N T ) ; R O B E R T H U N T/ i STO C K P H OTO ( D E S K ) ; TO D D H E A D I N GTO N / i S TO C K P H OTO ( D R I L L S E R G E A N T ) ; V I O R I K A P R I K H O D K O / i S TO C K P H OTO ( T E A C H E R ) ; S H A R O N D O M I N I C K / i S TO C K P H OTO ( S L E E P I N G ST U D E N T ) ; I N G A N I E LS E N / i STO C K P H OTO ( D I AG R A M S )

The Right to Be Forgotten

ECONOMICS

Bankers Should Be Boring

THE IDEAS LIST 2012

EDUCATION

PAU L K L I N E / i STO C K P H OTO ( S M O K I N G B I L L I O N A I R E ) ; H U LTO N A R C H I V E / i S TO C K P H OTO ( H A N D S H A K E ) ; L I S A F. YO U N G / i S TO C K P H OTO ( R E V E L I N G B U S I N E S S P E O P L E )

Boot Camp for Teachers Before the Air Force technician George Deneault flew combat missions, he had to practice—a lot. “You can’t fool around on combat aircraft.” But when Deneault retired and became a special-ed math teacher, he walked into a Virginia classroom cold. When asked which was easier—being a military commander or being a teacher—he didn’t hesitate. “Commander.” Now that researchers have quantified the impact that teachers make, we should do more to train them rigorously. And we could learn from the military, where a mantra of readiness is referred to as the “Eight P’s”: “Proper prior planning and preparation prevent piss-poor performance.” The only way the brain learns to handle unpredictable environments is to practice. Before student teachers enter classes, Boston’s Match Teacher Residency program puts them through 100 hours of drills with students and adults acting like slouching, fiddling, back-talking kids. The brain learns to respond to routine misbehavior, so it can focus on the harder work of teaching. The Institute for Simulation and Training runs a virtual classroom at 12 education colleges nationwide— using artificial intelligence, five child avatars, and a behind-thescenes actor. Some trainees find the simulation so arduous that they decide not to go into teaching after all. But these innovations are rare. The average teacher-to-be does about 12 to 15 weeks of student teaching. Once on the job, most teachers get only nominal supervision, and 46 percent quit within five years. It is time, finally, to start training teachers the way we train doctors and pilots, with intense, realistic practice, using humans, simulations, and master instructors—time to stop saying teaching is hard work and start acting like it. —Amanda Ripley, author of the forthcoming book Where the Smart Kids Are THE ATLANTIC

Wall Street likes us to think that bankers are an unusually talented bunch and thus it is part of the natural order of things that they should be paid a lot more than other people. History suggests otherwise. The past 100 years have seen two periods when banks were able to churn out high profits on a sustained basis and bankers were paid exceptionally well—during the 1920s and in the two decades leading up to 2008. It is not a coincidence that both episodes ended in tears. As in the 1930s, the recent financial crisis has provoked a political reaction, motivated as much by a sense of moral outrage at the behavior of bankers as by economic considerations. Authorities are now clamping down on what banks can do and how much more capital they are required to hold. These rules will undoubtedly make it tougher for the industry to generate high profits and pay excessive bonuses to employees. Bankers insist that the rules will also harm the economy. Little evidence suggests that this is true. During the 1950s and ’60s, financial institutions were tightly regulated. Bankers did not make money by trading for their own account but instead earned fees for providing advice to their customers and serving as a go-between for companies raising capital. Their goal was to get to know their clients well, understand their problems, and act in their best interests— somewhat like family doctors. They were not compensated absurd amounts. Wall Street was viewed as a place not for high flyers but for sober, cautious people who were perhaps a little boring. Meanwhile, the economy boomed and we had very few financial crises. Let us hope we are heading back to those days. —Liaquat Ahamed, investment manager and author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

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Make Cars Super Light

HEALTH CARE

Sell the Pill Over the Counter Oral contraceptives are some of the safest and most effective drugs on the market. Yet they remain irrationally difficult for many women to obtain, and not just those working at Catholic institutions. Most doctors prescribe the pill for one year, requiring women to receive full pelvic exams in order to re-up; on top of that, many health insurers dole out pills only one month at a time. These barriers can thwart consistent use, increasing the odds of unintended pregnancy—and abortion. There’s a simple solution here: sell the pill over the counter. Oral contraceptives have long met most of the FDA’s over-thecounter criteria, and recent research has shown that annual Pap smears not only are superfluous, but often lead to false positives and expensive follow-up testing. Reserving the pill as a reward for a regular checkup with a gynecologist is no longer just condescending—it’s also medically unsound. —Nicole Allan, Atlantic senior associate editor THE IDEAS LIST 2012

POLITICS

Speakers of the House Shouldn’t Be President The jobs demand opposite skills: to run their party, speakers must be hyper-partisan; to run the country, presidents must be broadly appealing. Plus, they’re often from opposing parties. It’s crazy that the speaker is second in line for the White House; the party that wins the presidency should hold it for four years. —Akhil Reed Amar, professor of constitutional law, Yale Law School

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If you think modern cars burn too much gas, well, you’re right—but don’t blame automotive engineers. For years, they’ve made cars more efficient in ways obvious and subtle: tweaking transmissions, futzing with camshafts, and refining engine architectures. In a recent paper, the MIT economist Christopher Knittel reported that from 1980 to 2006, the fuel economy of the U.S. fleet should have gone up by 60 percent. Instead, fuel economy increased by only 15 percent. The reason is simple: cars got more efficient, but they also got bigger. Much of the technological progress of the past three decades has been squandered. Electric cars aren’t necessarily the answer, either. The Nissan Leaf, laden with a 660-pound battery, weighs 3,385 pounds. (The Toyota Prius weighs 3,042 pounds.) Lighter cars are a nobrainer solution—and new materials suddenly make it possible to shave weight without sacrificing safety. (One reason consumers like big cars is that they perceive them, often erroneously, to be safer.) Most cars are made of steel and aluminum, but several companies have released concept cars built with a carbon fiber–reinforced polymer, which is extremely light and stiff. Taking a different tack is a company called Edison2. Its Very Light Car seats four adults and weighs just over 800 pounds, thanks to a composite body, while its chassis is made of less expensive, easy-torecycle chromoly steel. The car is optimized for lightness—the aluminum shifter knob, for example, is two-tenths of an ounce, barely heavier than a cough drop. An electric version of the car has garnered an official EPA rating of 245 mpg equivalent. —Jason Fagone, author of the forthcoming book Genius Is Not a Plan, about the cars of the future

D O N N I C H O L S / i STO C K P H OTO , E R I C H O O D / i S TO C K P H OTO ( D E T E R G E N T ) ; RYA N L A N E / i S TO C K P H OTO ( B I R T H - C O N T R O L P I L L S ) ; K R I S T I A N S E K U L I C / i S TO C K P H OTO ( S H O P P E R ) ; I F C A R / W I K I M E D I A ( V E RY L I G H T CA R ) ; A N D R E AS R E H / W I K I M E D I A ( F E AT H E R ) ; I F CA R / W I K I M E D I A ( N I S S A N L E A F ) , S U S A N WA L S H /A P ( J O H N B O E H N E R ) ; PA B LO M A R T I N E Z M O N S I VA I S /A P ( N A N CY P E LO S I ) ; G A G E S K I D M O R E / W I K I M E D I A ( N E W T G I N G R I C H ) ; L U I S A LVA R E Z / i S TO C K P H OTO , I O F OTO / i STO C K P H OTO , W R A N G E L / i STO C K P H OTO ( B OX I N G G LOV E S )

TECHNOLOGY

SPORTS

Boot the Extra Point

ECONOMICS

Today, roughly 40 percent of noncash payment in the United States is made by check, largely because the check remains the only way that most people can transfer money from one bank account to another without having to pay for the privilege. But checks are an insecure and horribly inefficient way of paying people, especially if you’re sending them by mail. And the rest of the world has already moved on: in most countries, transferring money directly from one party’s account to another, without having to write a check, is easy. In America, the question remains: What financial technology will replace the check? Don’t look to the banks for innovation— they have little incentive to replace the credit and debit cards that use their check-clearing infrastructure and generate billions of dollars in interchange fees. Services do exist that work around the banks, but they generally require both the payer and the payee to set up an account with them first, and most normal people have no desire to do that. If we’re going to have a revolution in payments, the market isn’t going to get there on its own. The Federal Reserve created and paid for our check-clearing system, and it should do the same with its replacement—a secure, free, instant method for anybody with cash to move. A simple mandate should do the trick. Otherwise, the U.S. will always remain behind the curve, crippled by billions of dollars in hidden and unnecessary fees.

THE IDEAS LIST 2012

ST E P H E N K R O W / i STO C K P H OTO ( i P H O N E ) ; Z S O LT FA R K A S / i S TO C K P H OTO ( C R U M P L E D PA P E R ) ; J I L L B AT TA G L I A / i S TO C K P H OTO ( C H E C KS ) ; STO C K S N A P P E R / i S TO C K P H OTO ( T R AS H CA N ) ; DA M O N J . M O R I T Z / i S TO C K P H OTO ( F O OT B A L L P L AY E R S )

The End of the Checkbook

No sequence in all of sports is more useless than football’s point after touchdown. Last season, 29 NFL kickers converted every single PAT they attempted. No full-time kicker missed more than one over the course of the entire season. It’s an automatic point that teams do virtually nothing to earn, and it’s boring us to death. Half the time, some idiot lineman will jump offside during the PAT, just so the play can bore us even further. The PAT is a vestigial part of the game, left over from the days when kickers weren’t anywhere near as efficient. It also makes no sense. Why do you get to score more, after you already scored? When a baseball player hits a home run, he doesn’t get to earn another half run by attempting to balance a bat on his nose for more than five seconds. That would be stupid. From now on, if you score a touchdown, you get seven points. Problem solved. —Drew Magary, writer for Deadspin and author of the novel The Postmortal

—Felix Salmon, finance blogger at Reuters

THE ATLANTIC

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The Islamists Are Our Friends

The Cost of Modern Revolution

For decades, skeptics prevailed in the debate over whether Islam and democracy were compatible. But today, the two have become codependent. Since October, Islamist parties in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco have won the right to form governments in free elections. They could score well at polls in Libya and Yemen—and maybe even Syria at some point. These six countries account for half the Arab world’s more than 300 million people, and their Islamist leaders are on a tear to prove their democratic bona fides. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood met U.S. officials in Cairo, then visited Washington. Tunisia’s new government hosted Hillary Clinton, while Morocco’s prime minister, hoping to lure foreign investment to his country, has urged cooperation with the United States. The new outreach has even included some unexpected Islamist vows to, say, honor international treaties (read: Camp David accords with Israel) and accommodate Western customs (read: alcohol and bikinis), in an effort to lure tourists back. The trick for the U.S., of course, lies in deciphering who means what they say. Some 50 Islamist parties—excluding purely violent groups—now constitute a crowded political spectrum in the Middle East; formerly unimaginable alliances are suddenly unavoidable. This new cadre of nonviolent Islamists may be the most important partners Washington cultivates over the next decade. —Robin Wright, author of Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World

From Cairo to Lower Manhattan to Moscow, we have learned that the revolution most definitely will be tweeted, blogged, and pinned. Social media now make it easier to organize protest movements, even—or perhaps especially—in authoritarian regimes. And that is no longer merely a hopeful assertion made by digital evangelists. Some dictators, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said recently, “are more afraid of tweets than they are of opposing armies.” He’s right. But we’re also learning something sobering about the Twitter revolutions. The speed with which these movements develop comes at a price—one that gets paid after the activists win. Revolutions generally take time to build—they need leaders, and structure, and a core of devoted members. The virtue of drawnout opposition is that the best old-school protest movements can become governments-inwaiting. Nearly a decade underground meant Solidarno was poised in the late 1980s not just to seize power in Poland, but to wield it. The same was true of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress and even of Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks. Twitter-lutionaries are good at toppling regimes, but in the Mideast and North Africa, they’re losing out to the Islamists, who’ve built protest movements the old-fashioned way. And in Moscow, the Mink revolutionaries, who are united by LiveJournal but not much else, were easy for Putin to outmaneuver. The next step for would-be revolutionaries: combine traditional community-organizing techniques with social media. Those will be the movements that dictators really need to fear. —Chrystia Freeland, editor of Thomson Reuters Digital

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M AT T H I A S H A AS / i S TO C K P H OTO ( B A R B E D W I R E ) ; J AS O N R E E D / P O O L /A P ( H I L L A RY C L I N TO N I N T U N I S ) ; D A L E R O B I N S / i S TO C K P H OTO ( TA N KS ) ; J O E L CA R I L L E T/ i STO C K P H OTO ( S I G N H O L D E R ) ; O K E A / i S TO C K P H OTO , C H R I S TO P H E R E W I N G / i S TO C K P H OTO ( D O V E S )

CULTURE

THE IDEAS LIST 2012

POLITICS

EDUCATION

About a year ago, I got an e-mail from an old friend whose daughter was applying to Swarthmore College, where I teach. Swarthmore is highly selective. My friend wanted to know what I thought his daughter’s chances were. She went to a great high school. She got almost straight A’s. Her test scores were in the 98th percentile. And she had lots of extracurricular activities, including several that involved community service. “Wow, she’s terrific,” I told my friend. “You must be proud. She’s just the kind of kid we want.” “So does that mean you think she’ll get in?” he asked. “Not at all,” I replied. “She should get in, but so should lots of other kids who don’t. It’s a crapshoot.” “This doesn’t seem right,” he said. “What the hell are we supposed to do?” My friend’s daughter deserved to get into Swarthmore. But she didn’t; she was wait-listed. And this is the fate of thousands of deserving teenagers applying to dozens of selective institutions. They are people who have done the right thing—“worked hard, and played by the rules”—only to fail. Not every high-achieving high-school senior can get into Harvard, Princeton, or Swarthmore. There just isn’t enough room. So what is a school to do? How can it maintain

admissions standards and be fair to applicants? The solution to this problem is a lottery: every applicant who is good enough gets his or her name put in a hat, and then “winners” are chosen at random. If selective schools use a lottery, the pressure balloon that is engulfing highschool kids will be punctured. Instead of having to be better than anyone else, they will just have to be good enough—and lucky. Anyone who is good enough gets her name thrown into the hat, and has the same chance of admission as anyone else with a name in the hat. A lottery like this won’t correct the injustice that is inherent in a pyramidal system in which not everyone can rise to the top. But it will reveal the injustice by highlighting the role of contingency and luck. And acknowledging the role of chance may encourage the institutions themselves to care a bit less about where they place in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, and a bit more about where they rate when it comes to nurturing good citizens. —Barry Schwartz, psychology professor at Swarthmore College, co-author of Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing, and author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

THE IDEAS LIST 2012

C B S / W I K I M E D I A ( T H E S U P R E M E S ) ; S T E N R Ü D R I C H / W I K I M E D I A ( H O L LY WO O D ) ; L E E - S E A N H U A N G / W I K I M E D I A ( G O O G L E P L E X ) ; T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I STO R I CA L AS S O C I AT I O N / W I K I M E D I A ( B E N J A M I N F R A N K L I N ) ; R I C H L E G G / i S TO C K P H OTO ( LOT T E RY H O S T ) ; 4 X 6 / i S TO C K P H OTO ( P R E S E N T E R )

Lotteries for College Admissions

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Charge for Your Ideas Of the Founders’ genius ideas, few trump intellectual-property rights. At a time when Barbary pirates still concerned them, the Framers penned an intellectual-property clause—the world’s first constitutional protection for copyrights and patents. In so doing, they spawned Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Motown, and so on. Today, we foolishly flirt with undoing that. In a future where all art is free (the future as pined for by Internet pirates and Creative Commons zealots), books, songs, and films would still get made. But with nobody paying for them, they’d be terrible. Only people who do lousy work do it for free. —Elizabeth Wurtzel, lawyer and author of Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America

THE ATLANTIC

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ENERGY

Ban Gasoline In a world with a single, fungible energy market, talk of U.S. energy independence (whatever that means) is a fantasy, and grousing about imported oil is little better. But there is a non-fantastic way to reduce energy vulnerability: a multinational ban on gasoline. Specifically, America should propose an international treaty whose signatories would agree to eliminate gasoline from their transportation systems by a date certain—say, in 2050. Why focus on gas in particular? Because gasoline is where the world’s petrogarchs have us by the short hairs. The electrical grid and many industrial users can juggle fuel sources; when oil prices rise, they can typically switch to methane or coal. But the transportation sector is 94 percent dependent on oil. The “oil weapon,” for that reason, is really mainly a gasoline weapon. Replacing gas would take a few decades, but it is doable. If outright elimination seems a stretch, remember: stepwise reductions would also help. Indeed, for the United States simply to make the offer of a gasoline treaty would, at a stroke, focus the energy-security debate where it belongs.

THE IDEAS LIST 2012

ENERGY

Actually, Fossil Fuels Are Here to Stay It has been obvious to all of us for some time that pretty soon the Earth is going to run out of fossil fuel. This has been the conventional wisdom not just among Prius drivers, Whole Foods shoppers, and solarpanel manufacturers, but within the fossil-fuel industry as well. In 2008, Ron Oxburgh, a former chairman of Shell, said, “It is pretty clear that there is not much chance of finding any significant quantity of new cheap oil.” But thanks to new discoveries and new technologies, the end of fossil fuels is not looking quite so imminent. From the oil sands of northern Alberta, to America’s massive pockets of shale gas (American gas reserves would last at least 75 years at current consumption rates), to the vast offshore

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oil reserves that Brazil hopes will make it the world’s fourthlargest producer by 2020, fossil-fuel sources we didn’t know about or couldn’t use are suddenly available. Crucially, many of these supplies are found in thriving democracies—a dramatic shift from the past, when oil and autocracy seemed to go together. The resurgence of fossil fuels will create new winners in the global economy—oil is one reason Brazil is on the rise, and shale gas could be a source of America’s economic rebound after the 2008 slump. Oil could complicate domestic politics in countries with too much of it—there is a reason economists talk about “the curse of oil,” and dictatorships have thrived in countries with abundant natural resources.

This newly available fossil fuel will intensify the fierce battle about the environment, as we have already seen in the fight over the Keystone pipeline. These deposits aren’t the easy-to-drill ones we got used to in the 20th century. They are hard to reach, and extraction will have a rougher impact on the environment. They will also be the source of high-paying jobs and will allow us to live in our comfortable, commuter-based, fossil-fueled economy decades longer than we expected. The challenge of weaning ourselves off fossil fuel even as it becomes more abundant will make the old fights about energy conservation seem like child’s play. —Chrystia Freeland

VO LO DY M Y R KY RY LY U K / i S TO C K P H OTO ( G A S P U M P S ) ; M A R I A TO U TO U D A K I / i STO C K P H OTO ( T R A S H H E A P ) ; M AT T H I A S H A A S / i S TO C K P H OTO ( B A R B E D W I R E ) ; A L E X E Y D U D O L A D OV / i S TO C K P H OTO ( E L E CT R I C C A R ) ; J E F F C H E V R I E R / i S TO C K P H OTO ( F LO C K O F B I R D S ) ; C H A R M A I N E PAU LS O N / i STO C K P H OTO ( R E F I N E RY ) ; W I K I M E D I A ( S U Vs )

—Jonathan Rauch, Atlantic contributing editor and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution

“ TAXATION MUST BE DISTRIBUTED FAIRLY OR THE GOVERNING ITSELF IS NOT FAIR.” LAWRENCE O’DONNELL, msnbc host

ECONOMICS

“Hire good people and leave them alone.” So declared William McKnight, who was 3M’s unassuming CEO during the 1930s and ’40s, and who encouraged employees to spend 15 percent of their time noodling on their own pet projects. (The policy survives to this day at 3M, and gave birth to the Post-it note, among other innovations.) McKnight’s philosophy anticipated one of the most intriguing breakthroughs in recent leadership theory. According to a team of researchers led by the Wharton management professor Adam Grant, introverted leaders typically deliver better outcomes than extroverts, because they’re more likely to let proactive employees run with their ideas. Extroverted leaders, who like to be at the center of attention, may feel threatened by employees who take too much initiative (but do outperform introverts when managing less proactive workers who rely on their leader for inspiration). Grant’s research echoes other findings on the power of introverts. They’re persistent—give them a difficult puzzle to solve, and they’ll analyze it before diving in, then work at it diligently. (“It’s not that I’m so smart,” said Einstein. “It’s that I stay with problems longer.”) And they’re careful risk-takers: less likely to get into car accidents, participate in extreme sports—or place outsize financial bets. (Warren Buffett is a self-described introvert who attributes his success to his temperament.) Introverts are also comfortable with solitude—a crucial spur to creativity. When the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist studied the lives of the most-creative people across a variety of fields, they almost always found visionaries who were introverted enough to spend large chunks of time alone. Management literature is full of advice for introverted leaders on how to be more extroverted, says Grant: Smile more! Practice your public speaking! But extroverts might take a page from their introverted peers, too—by hiring good people and leaving them alone. —Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking THE IDEAS LIST 2012

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D I A N E B O N DA R E F F /A P ( B I L L C L I N TO N A N D M I K E M c M A H O N ) ; R U S L A N DA S H I N S K Y/ i S TO C K P H OTO ( W O M E N S H A K I N G H A N D S ) ; J O H N N Y G R E I G / i STO C K P H OTO ( M E N S H A K I N G H A N D S ) ; I R I N A Z O L I N A / i STO C K P H OTO ( I N T R O V E R T )

Hire Introverts

CULTURE

S E R G E Y G A L U S H K O / i S TO C K P H OTO ( D A R T S ) ; B R E N D A N H U N T E R / i S TO C K P H OTO , L U C I E L A N G / i STO C K P H OTO , A A R O N V I N C E / i STO C K P H OTO ( S O L D I E R S ) ; P I X H O O K / i S TO C K P H OTO ( C A S H ) ; S E A N LO C K E / i S TO C K P H OTO ( G O L D ) ; T R E V O R S M I T H / i STO C K P H OTO ( B E N T L E Y ) ; L J U P C O / i STO C K P H OTO , V M / i S TO C K P H OTO ( L I N E O F P E O P L E ) ; AVAVA / i S TO C K P H OTO ( M A N W I T H PA P E R S )

Violence Doesn’t Work (Most of the Time) People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have no choice but to contemplate the use of force to bring about a better world, mindful of the trade-off between a small amount of violence now and acceptance of an unjust status quo indefinitely. Terrorists invoke this trade-off to justify what would otherwise be wanton murder. Even their most vociferous condemners concede that terrorism, though highly immoral, is often efficacious. Of course, Mohandas Gandhi, and later Martin Luther King Jr., argued the opposite—that violence, in addition to being morally heinous, is tactically counterproductive. Violent movements attract thugs and firebrands who enjoy the mayhem. Violent tactics provide a pretext for retaliation by the enemy and alienate third parties who might otherwise support the movement. So how effective is violence? Political scientists have recently tried tallying the successes and failures of violent and nonviolent movements. The evidence is piling up that Gandhi was right—at least on average. In separate

analyses, Audrey Cronin and Max Abrahms have shown that terrorist movements almost always fizzle out without achieving any of their strategic aims. Just think of the failed independence movements in Puerto Rico, Ulster, Quebec, Basque Country, Kurdistan, and Tamil Eelam. The success rate of terrorist movements is, at best, in the single digits. In their recent book, Why Civil Resistance Works, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan found that about three-quarters of nonviolent movements get some or all of what they want, compared with only about a third of the violent ones. The Arab Spring bears this out: consider the more or less nonviolent movements that ousted the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen (together with the violent one needed in Libya). Even more encouraging, the success rate of nonviolent protest movements has steadily climbed since the 1940s, while that of violent movements has fallen since the 1980s. —Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

THE IDEAS LIST 2012

EDUCATION

Fix Law Schools Legal education is in crisis. A primary reason is that the jobs and high pay that used to greet new attorneys at large firms are gone, wiped away by innovations such as software that takes seconds to do the document discovery that once occupied junior attorneys for scores of (billable) hours while they learned their profession. Too many recent graduates are therefore laden with tuition debt that their salary—if they enjoy one at all—cannot support. (Elite private law-school education carries a tab of $150,000 or so, not including living expenses.) Some newly minted J.D.s have sought poetic justice—by suing their alma maters for inflating postgraduate employment data. Critics from within and without are rightly calling on law schools to provide transparent employment and salary data, to cut the cost of a legal education by trimming course requirements, and to elevate clinical and practical study over the theoretical. And yet these ideas fall short of the rethinking of legal education that the times demand. To begin with, law schools need to do their best to turn

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away prospective students who are in it for the money. Would-be lawyers have to be taught to see the law not as a path to wealth, but as what it has been historically—a respectable middle-class profession. Too many of our current applicants do not see the law this way—and we need to bring them to clarity, even at the risk of driving them into M.B.A. or engineering programs. So much for beginnings. As for conclusions, law schools need to devise programs for new-lawyer training to replace those that the law firms have stopped underwriting. Here, the legal world should look to that hallmark of medical education— the hospital internship. Like medical interns, law interns would not expect to draw high salaries. Law practices could support such programs, which might replace the third year of law school, dramatically reducing tuition costs while giving graduates a chance to live the profession before determining a career path—perhaps unencumbered by a $100,000 debt. —Vincent Rougeau, dean of Boston College Law School

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ECONOMICS

Less Work, More Jobs Quick: How many jobs has the U.S. economy created each month in the past year? 125,000? 150,000? These are the numbers we see reported, but actually, over the past year of data, the private sector alone created more than 2 million new jobs a month— the problem is, each month it also destroyed nearly as many. The number we see reported is the difference between jobs created and jobs destroyed. This isn’t just trivia: the point is that the economy is much more dynamic than we may think. If we could keep creating 2 million jobs a month, while stanching job losses, we could get

people back to work much faster. “Work-sharing”—or “shortwork”—could make this prospect a reality. Today, American companies facing weak demand typically lay off workers, even though that decision can be costly down the road (rehiring and training are expensive). A work-sharing program would allow companies to instead make temporary, across-theboard reductions in hours worked by (and wages paid to) the same number of employees; the government, instead of paying unemployment benefits to laid-off workers, would make up much of the difference in pay. Work-sharing is not a

new idea—Germany used this system throughout the Great Recession to help keep its unemployment rate low, and some U.S. states have work-sharing systems in place, although they tend to be poorly publicized and poorly funded— but it’s an idea worth trying on a larger scale. It has garnered support from economists on the right and the left, and it won’t break the bank. So why aren’t we doing it? —Don Peck, Atlantic features editor and author of Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It

THE IDEAS LIST 2012

POLITICS

For the United States’ first century, Americans elected their leaders in full view of their neighbors, gathering on courthouse steps to announce their votes orally or hand a distinctive preprinted ballot or unfolded marked paper to a clerk. Such a public process made elections ripe for bribes and threats, although the scene around American polling places never matched Australia’s, where a population of criminals and goldbugs made electoral intimidation something of a democratic pastime. To end such shenanigans, each of Australia’s colonies began shifting to a secret ballot during the 1850s, and in 1872 England followed suit.

A decade and a half later, the reform crossed the Atlantic. Louisville, Kentucky, enacted a so-called Australian ballot in 1888, and 32 states did the same by 1892—over the objections of machine politicians. By the turn of the century, most of the country had changed the public spectacle of Election Day into a solemn occasion for curtained isolation. This shift coincided with a dramatic drop in turnout rates, from nearly 80 percent of the eligible population in 1896—which had been typical for the era—to 65 percent eight years later. They have never recovered, falling to around 50 percent in 1996. As modern civic activists

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have tried to increase turnout, their focus has been on reducing the hassle of participation. The most-successful reforms of the past decade, however—early in-person voting, “no excuse” absentee ballots, elections entirely by mail—appear not to have lured new people to the polls so much as merely made it more convenient for regular voters to cast their ballots. What actually works is mimicking some part of the 19th century’s surveillance culture. The most effective tool for turning nonvoters into voters—10 times better than the typical piece of preelection mail, according to a 2006 Michigan experiment—is a threat to send neighbors evidence of one’s

apathy. Other experiments have found gentler approaches that serve a similar function: merely reminding citizens that whether they cast a ballot is a matter of public record, or promising to print the names of those who do in a postelection newspaper ad, can boost turnout too. By introducing shame into the calculus of citizenship, the researchers behind these tests increased the psychological cost of not voting. In so doing, they restored the sense—sadly lost for a century— that voting ought to be not a personal act but a social one. —Sasha Issenberg, author of the forthcoming book The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns

ST E P H E N G L AU S E R / W I K I M E D I A ( I S L A N D ) ; I VA N A J U R C I C / i S TO C K P H OTO ( C O F F E E M U G S ) ; D R B I M A G E S / i S TO C K P H OTO , L J U P C O / i S TO C K P H OTO ( VOT E R S )

Abolish the Secret Ballot

HEALTH CARE

—Jonathan Rauch

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TECHNOLOGY

Smartphone-Free Socializing Nothing is sorrier than seeing friends out on the town, each staring at an iPhone. Let’s provide havens from this pestilence, reconnect with people, and recapture some social grace. Certify willing restaurants, bars, lounges, and coffee shops as signal-blocking, Wi-Fi-free bastions of face-toface conversation. (Okay, so maybe that’s not a fully formed idea. Consider it half of one.)

B L A J G A B R I E L / i S TO C K P H OTO ( T E X T E R S ) ; 3 6 C L I C K S / i S TO C K P H OTO ( M A N O N S T R E TC H E R ) ; E W G 3 D / i S TO C K P H OTO ( B A R R I C A D E )

Here is a health-care reform that is notable for never being proposed by the people who ought to be for it, namely conservatives: repeal the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, the 1986 law that requires hospitals to treat urgent-care patients regardless of their ability to pay. Conservatives say the government cannot and should not require people to buy health insurance. The trouble is that the government can and does require hospitals to treat people who don’t have health insurance and who can’t pay. The result is a free-rider problem that runs to tens of billions of dollars a year and, worse, destabilizes the whole system. According to conservatives, the government should not make people buy insurance; it certainly should not provide coverage for them. That would seem to eliminate the two main ways to deal with free riders. One obvious possibility remains. If you can’t pay for medical treatment, you can’t expect to receive it. Period. Oddly, proponents of small government and personal responsibility do not propound that idea. It was hinted at, however, in a Republican presidential debate last September. The moderator asked Representative (and physician) Ron Paul, a hard-liner on the subject of individual responsibility, whether an uninsured person in need of urgent care should be left untreated, possibly to die. Answer (of course): “No.” As Paul spoke, Tea Party types in the audience could be heard shouting “Yes!” They, at least, were being intellectually honest. If conservative politicians were as forthright, we might be able to have the debate we need.

THE IDEAS LIST 2012

Don’t Treat the Sick If They’re Poor

Solutionism at Work: London 2012 Olympic Games The Olympic Games are the pinnacle of sportsmanship, but they are about more than the events that take place and the athletes that contend there. By captivating the attention of billions across the globe, they offer a unique opportunity to set a powerful global example that will drive our society forward. This summer, the London 2012 Olympic Games are raising the bar for what it means to host a green, environmentally responsible world event. Employing innovative solutions and driving collaboration, the upcoming London 2012 Olympic Games are seizing this critical opportunity to model sustainable practices to a world audience, inspiring action through example. These solutions are among the many innovations helping to pave a road to London that is forward thinking and sustainability-drivenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and that will culminate in the greenest Olympic Games to date.

WRAPPING FUNCTION INTO FORM

The visual centerpiece of the London 2012 Olympic Games is the Olympic Stadium, which features a sustainable fabric wrap that is both high-design and low-emission.

THE ‘COOL’ EST VILLAGE YET

“Cool” roofs and floors provided by Dow insulation products will help to keep energy costs in check, reducing the overall carbon footprint of the Olympic and Paralympic Village and Olympic Stadium.

RAISING THE BAR ON SUSTAINABLE DESIGN

With its unique inverted roof, the London 2012 Copper Box handball venue incorporates Dow’s high-strength insulation materials to help meet demands for structural and energy efficiency.

INTRODUCING ‘LONDON BLUE’

Outfitted in “London Blue,” the London 2012 Riverbank Arena is employing Dow’s resin technology to create a field hockey pitch that is soft, durable, and low-maintenance.

CULTURE

To know what will happen before it happens has been our species’ preeminent obsession ever since our hopes either failed to correspond with events (a volcanic eruption, say, or an outbreak of plague) or corresponded perfectly (in a bounteous harvest or an enemy’s death). This desire to divine, predict, and, if possible, influence has resulted in schemes and systems of varying accuracy—from the reading of tarot cards to the computer modeling of weather patterns—but few have ever truly satisfied (or fully and finally been discarded). Progress has been made in this effort, though, and recently a lot of progress. Statistical methods such as sabermetrics have proved astonishingly successful in reducing the uncertainty involved in baseball, while number crunchers have equally demystified aspects of our presidential elections (the

master statistician Nate Silver made his name predicting the 2008 popular vote within 1 percentage point). Measuring the tips of our chromosomes has, reportedly, allowed us to ascertain our likely life spans. Even obscure matters of artistic taste have, thanks to acts of algorithmic wizardry occurring somewhere in hidden server farms devoted to recommending books and music, been shown to be less obscure than formerly thought. We ought to be happy— we’ve gotten our age-old wish, it seems. But has making life more explicable actually made it any more pleasurable? As predictability increases, do drama and excitement somehow diminish? Knowing that your risk for heart disease is low may enhance peace of mind, but knowing that your team will never take the pennant promotes a certain fatalistic gloom. In politics,

understanding that your candidate is either virtually unstoppable or all but doomed saves a lot of emotion on the front end while ruling out euphoria on the back end. Uncertainty doesn’t make life worth living, quite, but it does make striving and gambling worth attempting. This is a vital matter to us humans because our conduct is governed by neurotransmitters attuned to gratification. As the future is clarified and the hidden is made visible, detachment will increase. But we will still have denial on our side—just go to Las Vegas and watch the blackjack players. In a world that’s smarter than it used to be and, in some ways, smarter than it ought to be, stupidity has a way of making us seem all the more human.

THE IDEAS LIST 2012

Knowledge of the Future Is Messing With the Present

—Walter Kirn, author of Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever and Up in the Air

End the Dunk Tank. To discourage obvious tanking by NBA teams trying to get higher picks in the draft lottery—we’ll name no names, but one team whose name rhymes with Olden Crate Scoriers came to mind this season—penalize coaches $10,000 for every loss their squad incurs in the final 10 games of the season. —Christopher Orr, Atlantic senior editor 78

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S P XC H R O M E / i STO C K P H OTO

SPORTS

Still thinking small. Fifty years ago, when we first told the world to Think Small, it was about how a little car could have a huge impact. Since then, we’ve expanded that small thinking beyond the car to everything we do: from efficient-but-powerful* engines to the first LEED® Platinum-certified automotive plant. Because today, having a big impact means making a small one. It’s called thinking blue and it means thinking beyond green. That’s the Power of German Engineering.

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Our legacy as the Fes tival’s ex services u clusive fin nderwrite ancialr spans fo ur years.

ll n left and the impact we’ Legacy—what we’ve bee le asset. leave—is our most valuab

s Festival is buildNow in its eighth year, the Aspen Idea premier gathering of ing a powerful legacy as the world's thought leaders.

D AV ID G R A E VE

U.S. Trust is part of the fabric of the Festi val. We will bring the theme of leg acy to life through im pactful displays and engaging conten t.

A Legacy of Creating Legacies We believe that the value of a legacy goes beyond wealth. The knowledge, ideas, and values we share today help shape the conversations of tomorrow —and they have the power to create a better world. That’s why generations of families have come to U.S. Trust to build their own legacies. At this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival, U.S. Trust is bringing the importance of legacy center-stage through thought-leadership content, art installations, and our Legacy Pavilion. We want every Festival attendee to answer the question for themselves: “WHAT IS your legacy WORTH?”

The U.S. Trust “Legacy Lens” In partnership with The Atlantic, we’ll be reporting daily from the Festival, documenting which speakers and presentations throughout the Aspen Ideas Festival answer the question “WHAT IS a legacy WORTH?” The posts will be featured in a special section on TheAtlantic.com where throughout the year Bank of America Corporation will be exploring what is being done today to help build a successful future.

ustrust.com/aspen

theatlantic.com/tomorrow

Aspen Ideas Festival June 27 – July 3, 2012

U.S. Trust operates through Bank of America, N.A., and other subsidiaries of Bank of America Corporation. Bank of America, N.A., Member FDIC. WHAT IS WORTH is a trademark of Bank of America Corporation © 2012 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved.

Let’s Cool It With the Big Ideas I don’t have a big idea, and I don’t want one. I don’t like big ideas. And I’m not alone. Distaste for grandiose notions is embedded in our language: “What’s the big idea?” “You and your bright ideas.” “Whose idea was this?” “Me and my big ideas.” “Don’t get smart with me.” When we say our children are “starting to get ideas,” we’re not bragging. It gives us pause to hear our spouse say “I have an idea!” If our boss says it, we panic unless we’re sufficiently quick-witted to spill coffee on the iPad the boss has just used to Google

some portentous concept. This is not anti-intellectualism. This is experience. The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas—fascism, communism, the atomic bomb. Liberty was also a powerful abstraction in the 20th century. But liberty isn’t a big idea. It’s a lot of little ideas about what individuals want to say and do. I like little ideas. What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it’s so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I’ve received a spam text. Thomas Edison’s moment

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of enlightenment could be sketched in a cartoon thought balloon. (Although once government started having deep thoughts about it, we got compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and now I need to don a hazmat suit if the dog knocks over the floor lamp.) There was Henry Ford’s Model T, of modest dimensions, and the bread box–size gizmo that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were fiddling with in the garage. But in 1875, 1879, 1908, or 1976, we wouldn’t have called any of these Big Ideas. We couldn’t foresee their consequences.

We still don’t know what ideas will have which results. But I fear the bigger, the worse. And we’re back in an era of big ideas. Our financiers have very big ideas. The rest of us are left looking for investment advisers clueless enough to be honest. “Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come,” said Victor Hugo. In either case, run. —P. J. O’Rourke, Atlantic contributing editor and author of Don’t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards THE IDEAS LIST 2012

M A N L E Y 0 9 9 / i S TO C K P H OTO ( T E L E P H O N E ) ; R O B E R TO A . S A N C H E Z / i S TO C K P H OTO ( L I G H T B U L B ) ; W O L F G A N G S A U B E R / W I K I M E D I A ( F O R D M O D E L T ) ; RYA N L A N E / i S TO C K P H OTO ( O L D A P P L E C O M P U T E R ) ; C H E N G X I N / i S TO C K P H OTO ( N E W A P P L E C O M P U T E R ) ; A P ( A L E X A N D E R G R A H A M B E L L ) ; A P ( H E N RY F O R D ) ; PA U L S A K U M A /A P ( S T E V E J O B S ) ; A P ( T H O M A S E D I S O N ) ; L A U R E N T D AV O U S T/ i STO C K P H OTO ( S M A R T P H O N E ) ; S E B A ST I A A N T E N B R O E K E / i S TO C K P H OTO ( R E M OT E - C O N T R O L CA R ) ; D R B I M A G E S / i S TO C K P H OTO ( C O M P U T E R U S E R ) ; F LO O R TJ E / i S TO C K P H OTO ( D E S K L A M P )

CULTURE

Radial Root Cycloneâ&#x201E;˘ technology generates centrifugal forces of up to 313,000G.

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’ fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or selfemployed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change.

P H I L L I P TO L E DA N O

Why Women Still Can’t Have It All -

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into my job as the first woman director of policy planning at the State Department, a foreign-policy dream job that traces its origins back to George Kennan, I found myself in New York, at the United Nations’ annual assemblage of every foreign minister and head of state in the world. On a Wednesday evening, President and Mrs. Obama hosted a glamorous reception at the American Museum of Natural History. I sipped champagne, greeted foreign dignitaries, and mingled. But I could not stop thinking about my 14-year-old son, who had started eighth grade three weeks earlier and was already resuming what had become his pattern of skipping homework, disrupting classes, failing math, and tuning out any adult who tried to reach him. Over the summer, we had barely spoken to each other—or, more accurately, he had barely spoken to me. And the previous spring I had received several urgent phone calls—invariably on the day of an important meeting—that required me to take the first train from Washington, D.C., where I worked, back to Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived. My husband, who has always done everything possible to support my career, took care of him and his 12-year-old brother during the week; outside of those midweek emergencies, I came home only on weekends. As the evening wore on, I ran into a colleague who held a senior position in the White House. She has two sons exactly my sons’ ages, but she had chosen to move them from California to D.C. when she got her job, which meant her husband commuted back to California regularly. I told her how difficult I was finding it to be away from my son when he clearly needed me. Then I said, “When this is over, I’m going to write an op-ed titled ‘Women Can’t Have It All.’ ” She was horrified. “You can’t write that,” she said. “You, of all people.” What she meant was that such a statement, coming from a high-profile career woman—a role model— would be a terrible signal to younger generations of women. By the end of the evening, she had talked me out of it, but for the remainder of my stint in Washington, I was increasingly aware that the feminist beliefs on which I had built my entire career were shifting under my feet. I had always assumed that if I could get a foreign-policy job in the State Department or the White House while my party was in power, I would stay the course as long as I had the opportunity to do work I loved. But in January 2011, when my two-year public-service leave from Princeton University was up, I hurried home as fast as I could. A rude epiphany hit me soon after I got there. When people asked why I had left government, I explained that I’d come home not only because of Princeton’s rules (after two years of leave, you lose your tenure), but also because of my desire to be with my family and my conclusion that juggling high-level government work with the needs of two teenage boys was not possible. I have not exactly left the ranks of full-time career women: I teach a full course load; write regular print and online columns on foreign policy; give 40 to 50 speeches a year; appear regularly on TV and radio; and am working on a new academic book. But I routinely got reactions from other women my age or older that ranged from disappointed (“It’s such a pity that you had to

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leave Washington”) to condescending (“I wouldn’t generalize from your experience. I’ve never had to compromise, and my kids turned out great”). The first set of reactions, with the underlying assumption that my choice was somehow sad or unfortunate, was irksome enough. But it was the second set of reactions—those implying that my parenting and/or my commitment to my profession were somehow substandard—that triggered a blind fury. Suddenly, finally, the penny dropped. All my life, I’d been on the other side of this exchange. I’d been the woman smiling the faintly superior smile while another woman told me she had decided to take some time out or pursue a less competitive career track so that she could spend more time with her family. I’d been the woman congratulating herself on her unswerving commitment to the feminist cause, chatting smugly with her dwindling number of college or law-school friends who had reached and maintained their place on the highest rungs of their profession. I’d been the one telling young women at my lectures that you can have it all and do it all, regardless of what field you are in. Which means I’d been part, albeit unwittingly, of making millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot). Last spring, I flew to Oxford to give a public lecture. At the request of a young Rhodes Scholar I know, I’d agreed to talk to the Rhodes community about “work-family balance.” I ended up speaking to a group of about 40 men and women in their mid-20s. What poured out of me was a set of very frank reflections on how unexpectedly hard it was to do the kind of job I wanted to do as a high government official and be the kind of parent I wanted to be, at a demanding time for my children (even though my husband, an academic, was willing to take on the lion’s share of parenting for the two years I was in Washington). I concluded by saying that my time in office had convinced me that further government service would be very unlikely while my sons were still at home. The audience was rapt, and asked many thoughtful questions. One of the first was from a young woman who began by thanking me for “not giving just one more fatuous ‘You can have it all’ talk.” Just about all of the women in that room planned to combine careers and family in some way. But almost all assumed and accepted that they would have to make compromises that the men in their lives were far less likely to have to make. The striking gap between the responses I heard from those young women (and others like them) and the responses I heard from my peers and associates prompted me to write this article. Women of my generation have clung to the feminist credo we were raised with, even as our ranks have been steadily thinned by unresolvable tensions between family and career, because we are determined not to drop the flag for the next generation. But when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating “you can have it all” is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk. I still strongly believe that women can “have it all” (and that men can too). I believe that we can “have it all at the same time.” But not today, not with the way America’s economy

and society are currently structured. My experiences over the past three years have forced me to confront a number of uncomfortable facts that need to be widely acknowledged— and quickly changed.

time with her daughters, wrote: “Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.” Yet the decision to step down from a position of power— to value family over professional advancement, even for a time—is directly at odds with the prevailing social pressures on career professionals in the United States. One phrase says it all about current attitudes toward work and family, particularly among elites. In Washington, “leaving to spend time with your family” is a euphemism for being fired. This understanding is so ingrained that when Flournoy announced her resignation last December, The New York Times covered her decision as follows:

in government, I’d spent my career in academia: as a law professor and then as the dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Both were demanding jobs, but I had the ability to set my own schedule most of the time. I could be with my kids when I needed to be, and still get the work done. I had to travel frequently, but I found I could make up for that with an extended period at home or a family vacation. Ms. Flournoy’s announcement surprised friends and a numI knew that I was lucky in my career choice, but I had ber of Pentagon officials, but all said they took her reason for no idea how lucky until I spent two years in Washington resignation at face value and not as a standard Washington within a rigid bureaucracy, even with bosses as understandexcuse for an official who has in reality been forced out. “I can ing as Hillary Clinton and her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills. absolutely and unequivocally state that her decision to step down has nothing to do with anything other than her commitMy workweek started at 4:20 on Monday morning, when I ment to her family,” said Doug Wilson, a top Pentagon spokesgot up to get the 5:30 train from Trenton to Washington. It man. “She has loved this job and people here love her.” ended late on Friday, with the train home. In between, the days were crammed with meetings, and when the meetings Think about what this “standard Washington excuse” imstopped, the writing work began—a never-ending stream of memos, reports, and comments on other people’s drafts. plies: it is so unthinkable that an official would actually step For two years, I never left the office early enough to go to down to spend time with his or her family that this must be any stores other than those open 24 hours, which meant a cover for something else. How could anyone voluntarily that everything from dry cleaning to hair appointments leave the circles of power for the responsibilities of parentto Christmas shopping had to be done on weekends, amid hood? Depending on one’s vantage point, it is either ironic children’s sporting events, music lessons, family meals, and or maddening that this view abides in the nation’s capital, conference calls. I was entitled to four hours of vacation despite the ritual commitments to “family values” that are per pay period, which came to one day of vacation a month. part of every political campaign. Regardless, this sentiment And I had it better than many of my peers in D.C.; Secretary makes true work-life balance exceptionally difficult. But it Clinton deliberately came in around 8 a.m. and left around cannot change unless top women speak out. Only recently have I begun to appreciate the extent to 7 p.m., to allow her close staff to have morning and evening time with their families (although of course she worked which many young professional women feel under assault by women my age and older. After I gave a earlier and later, from home). recent speech in New York, several women In short, the minute I found myself in a job that is typical for the vast majority of work- Finally, the penny in their late 60s or early 70s came up to tell me how glad and proud they were to see me ing women (and men), working long hours dropped. All my speaking as a foreign-policy expert. A couple on someone else’s schedule, I could no lon- life I’d been on of them went on, however, to contrast my cager be both the parent and the professional I reer with the path being traveled by “younger wanted to be—at least not with a child expe- the other side of women today.” One expressed dismay that riencing a rocky adolescence. I realized what this exchange— many younger women “are just not willing should have perhaps been obvious: having it smiling the to get out there and do it.” Said another, unall, at least for me, depended almost entirely faintly superior aware of the circumstances of my recent job on what type of job I had. The flip side is the change: “They think they have to choose beharder truth: having it all was not possible in smile, telling tween having a career and having a family.” many types of jobs, including high govern- women they can A similar assumption underlies Facebook ment office—at least not for very long. have and do it all. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg’s I am hardly alone in this realization. widely publicized 2011 commencement Michèle Flournoy stepped down after three talk, in which she years as undersecretary of defense for policy, the third- speech at Barnard, and her earlier highest job in the department, to spend more time at home lamented the dismally small number of women at the top with her three children, two of whom are teenagers. Karen and advised young women not to “leave before you leave.” Hughes left her position as the counselor to President George When a woman starts thinking about having children, SandW. Bush after a year and a half in Washington to go home to berg said, “she doesn’t raise her hand anymore … She starts Texas for the sake of her family. Mary Matalin, who spent leaning back.” Although couched in terms of encouragetwo years as an assistant to Bush and the counselor to Vice ment, Sandberg’s exhortation contains more than a note of President Dick Cheney before stepping down to spend more reproach. We who have made it to the top, or are striving to

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get there, are essentially saying to the women in the generation behind us: “What’s the matter with you?” They have an answer that we don’t want to hear. After the speech I gave in New York, I went to dinner with a group of 30-somethings. I sat across from two vibrant women, one of whom worked at the UN and the other at a big New York law firm. As nearly always happens in these situations, they soon began asking me about work-life balance. When I told them I was writing this article, the lawyer said, “I look for role models and can’t find any.” She said the women in her 88

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firm who had become partners and taken on management positions had made tremendous sacrifices, “many of which they don’t even seem to realize … They take two years off when their kids are young but then work like crazy to get back on track professionally, which means that they see their kids when they are toddlers but not teenagers, or really barely at all.” Her friend nodded, mentioning the top professional women she knew, all of whom essentially relied on round-the-clock nannies. Both were very clear that they did not want that life, but could not figure out how to

ALESSAN DRA PETLI N

The author, at home with her teenage sons

married. I owe my own freedoms and opportunities to the pioneering generation of women ahead of me—the women now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s who faced overt sexism of a kind I see only when watching Mad Men, and who knew that the only way to make it as a woman was to act exactly like a man. To admit to, much less act on, maternal longings would have been fatal to their careers. But precisely thanks to their progress, a different kind of conversation is now possible. It is time for women in leadership positions to recognize that although we are still blazing trails and breaking ceilings, many of us are also reinforcing a falsehood: that “having it all” is, more than anything, a function of personal determination. As Kerry Rubin and Lia Macko, the authors of Midlife Crisis at 30, their cri de coeur for Gen-X and Gen-Y women, put it: What we discovered in our research is that while the empowerment part of the equation has been loudly celebrated, there has been very little honest discussion among women of our age about the real barriers and flaws that still exist in the system despite the opportunities we inherited.

combine professional success and satisfaction with a real commitment to family. I realize that I am blessed to have been born in the late 1950s instead of the early 1930s, as my mother was, or the beginning of the 20th century, as my grandmothers were. My mother built a successful and rewarding career as a professional artist largely in the years after my brothers and I left home—and after being told in her 20s that she could not go to medical school, as her father had done and her brother would go on to do, because, of course, she was going to get

I am well aware that the majority of American women face problems far greater than any discussed in this article. I am writing for my demographic—highly educated, well-off women who are privileged enough to have choices in the first place. We may not have choices about whether to do paid work, as dual incomes have become indispensable. But we have choices about the type and tempo of the work we do. We are the women who could be leading, and who should be equally represented in the leadership ranks. Millions of other working women face much more difficult life circumstances. Some are single mothers; many struggle to find any job; others support husbands who cannot find jobs. Many cope with a work life in which good day care is either unavailable or very expensive; school schedules do not match work schedules; and schools themselves are failing to educate their children. Many of these women are worrying not about having it all, but rather about holding on to what they do have. And although women as a group have made substantial gains in wages, educational attainment, and prestige over the past three decades, the economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson have shown that women are less happy today than their predecessors were in 1972, both in absolute terms and relative to men. The best hope for improving the lot of all women, and for closing what Wolfers and Stevenson call a “new gender gap”—measured by well-being rather than wages—is to close the leadership gap: to elect a woman president and 50 women senators; to ensure that women are equally represented in the ranks of corporate executives and judicial leaders. Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women. That will be a society that works for everyone.

�� -�� Let’s briefly examine the stories we tell ourselves, the clichés that I and many other women typically fall back on when younger women ask us how we have managed to “have it all.” They are not necessarily lies, but at best partial truths. We THE ATLANTIC

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must clear them out of the way to make room for a more honest and productive discussion about real solutions to the problems faced by professional women.

Just about every woman who could plausibly be tapped is already in government. The rest of the foreign-policy world is not much better; Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, recently surveyed the best data he could find It’s possible if you are just committed enough. across the government, the military, the academy, and think Our usual starting point, whether we say it explicitly or not, tanks, and found that women hold fewer than 30 percent of is that having it all depends primarily on the depth and in- the senior foreign-policy positions in each of these institutensity of a woman’s commitment to her career. That is pre- tions. cisely the sentiment behind the dismay so many older career These numbers are all the more striking when we look women feel about the younger generation. They are not com- back to the 1980s, when women now in their late 40s and mitted enough, we say, to make the trade-offs and sacrifices 50s were coming out of graduate school, and remember that that the women ahead of them made. our classes were nearly 50-50 men and women. We were sure Yet instead of chiding, perhaps we should face some basic then that by now, we would be living in a 50-50 world. Somefacts. Very few women reach leadership positions. The pool thing derailed that dream. of female candidates for any top job is small, Sandberg thinks that “something” is an and will only grow smaller if the women “ambition gap”—that women do not dream who come after us decide to take time out, One phrase says big enough. I am all for encouraging young or drop out of professional competition alto- it all about women to reach for the stars. But I fear that gether, to raise children. That is exactly what current attitudes the obstacles that keep women from reachhas Sheryl Sandberg so upset, and rightly so. ing the top are rather more prosaic than the In her words, “Women are not making it to among elites: in scope of their ambition. My longtime and inthe top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; Washington, valuable assistant, who has a doctorate and nine are women. Of all the people in parlia- “leaving to spend juggles many balls as the mother of teenage ment in the world, 13 percent are women. In twins, e-mailed me while I was working on time with your the corporate sector, [the share of ] women at this article: “You know what would help the the top—C-level jobs, board seats—tops out family” is a vast majority of women with work/family at 15, 16 percent.” balance? MAKE SCHOOL SCHEDULES euphemism for Can “insufficient commitment” even MATCH WORK SCHEDULES.” The present being fired. plausibly explain these numbers? To be system, she noted, is based on a society that sure, the women who do make it to the top no longer exists—one in which farming was are highly committed to their profession. On closer ex- a major occupation and stay-at-home moms were the norm. amination, however, it turns out that most of them have Yet the system hasn’t changed. something else in common: they are genuine superwomen. Consider some of the responses of women interviewed Consider the number of women recently in the top ranks by Zenko about why “women are significantly underin Washington—Susan Rice, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, represented in foreign policy and national security positions Michelle Gavin, Nancy-Ann Min DeParle—who are Rhodes in government, academia, and think tanks.” Juliette Kayyem, Scholars. Samantha Power, another senior White House of- who served as an assistant secretary in the Department of ficial, won a Pulitzer Prize at age 32. Or consider Sandberg Homeland Security from 2009 to 2011 and now writes a herself, who graduated with the prize given to Harvard’s foreign-policy and national-security column for The Boston top student of economics. These women cannot possibly be Globe, told Zenko that among other reasons, the standard against which even very talented professional the basic truth is also this: the travel sucks. As my youngest of women should measure themselves. Such a standard sets three children is now 6, I can look back at the years when they up most women for a sense of failure. were all young and realize just how disruptive all the travel What’s more, among those who have made it to the top, was. There were also trips I couldn’t take because I was prega balanced life still is more elusive for women than it is for nant or on leave, the conferences I couldn’t attend because (note to conference organizers: weekends are a bad choice) men. A simple measure is how many women in top posikids would be home from school, and the various excursions tions have children compared with their male colleagues. that were offered but just couldn’t be managed. Every male Supreme Court justice has a family. Two of the three female justices are single with no children. And the third, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, began her career as a judge only Jolynn Shoemaker, the director of Women in International when her younger child was almost grown. The pattern is Security, agreed: “Inflexible schedules, unrelenting travel, the same at the National Security Council: Condoleezza and constant pressure to be in the office are common feaRice, the first and only woman national-security adviser, is tures of these jobs.” These “mundane” issues—the need to travel constantly to also the only national-security adviser since the 1950s not succeed, the conflicts between school schedules and work to have a family. The line of high-level women appointees in the Obama ad- schedules, the insistence that work be done in the office— ministration is one woman deep. Virtually all of us who have cannot be solved by exhortations to close the ambition gap. I stepped down have been succeeded by men; searches for would hope to see commencement speeches that finger Amerwomen to succeed men in similar positions come up empty. ica’s social and business policies, rather than women’s level of 90

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Year of the Dragon by Jonathan Bartlett

ambition, in explaining the dearth of women at the top. But changing these policies requires much more than speeches. It means fighting the mundane battles—every day, every year—in individual workplaces, in legislatures, and in the media. It’s possible if you marry the right person. Sandberg’s second message in her Barnard commencement address was: “The most important career decision you’re going to make is whether or not you have a life partner and who that partner is.” Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, recently drove that message home to an audience of Princeton students and alumni gathered to hear her acceptance speech for the James Madison Medal. During the Q&A session, an audience member asked her how she managed her career and her family. She laughed and pointed to her husband in the front row, saying: “There’s my work-life balance.” I could never have had the career I have had without my husband, Andrew Moravcsik, who is a tenured professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton. Andy has spent more time with our sons than I have, not only on homework, but also on baseball, music lessons, photography, card games, and more. When each of them had to bring in a foreign dish for his fourth-grade class dinner, Andy made his grandmother’s Hungarian palacsinta; when our older son needed to memorize his lines for a lead role in a school play, he turned to Andy for help. Still, the proposition that women can have high-powered 92

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careers as long as their husbands or partners are willing to share the parenting load equally (or disproportionately) assumes that most women will feel as comfortable as men do about being away from their children, as long as their partner is home with them. In my experience, that is simply not the case. Here I step onto treacherous ground, mined with stereotypes. From years of conversations and observations, however, I’ve come to believe that men and women respond quite differently when problems at home force them to recognize that their absence is hurting a child, or at least that their presence would likely help. I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job. Many factors determine this choice, of course. Men are still socialized to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the breadwinner; women, to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the caregiver. But it may be more than that. When I described the choice between my children and my job to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, she said exactly what I felt: “There’s really no choice.” She wasn’t referring to social expectations, but to a maternal imperative felt so deeply that the “choice” is reflexive. Men and women also seem to frame the choice differently. In Midlife Crisis at 30, Mary Matalin recalls her days working as President Bush’s assistant and Vice President Cheney’s counselor: Even when the stress was overwhelming—those days when I’d cry in the car on the way to work, asking myself “Why am I doing this??”—I always knew the answer to that question: I believe in this president.

But Matalin goes on to describe her choice to leave in words that are again uncannily similar to the explanation I have given so many people since leaving the State Department: I finally asked myself, “Who needs me more?” And that’s when I realized, it’s somebody else’s turn to do this job. I’m indispensable to my kids, but I’m not close to indispensable to the White House.

To many men, however, the choice to spend more time with their children, instead of working long hours on issues that affect many lives, seems selfish. Male leaders are routinely praised for having sacrificed their personal life on the altar of public or corporate service. That sacrifice, of course, typically involves their family. Yet their children, too, are trained to value public service over private responsibility. At

the diplomat Richard Holbrooke’s memorial service, one of his sons told the audience that when he was a child, his father was often gone, not around to teach him to throw a ball or to watch his games. But as he grew older, he said, he realized that Holbrooke’s absence was the price of saving people around the world—a price worth paying. It is not clear to me that this ethical framework makes sense for society. Why should we want leaders who fall short on personal responsibilities? Perhaps leaders who invested time in their own families would be more keenly aware of the toll their public choices—on issues from war to welfare— take on private lives. (Kati Marton, Holbrooke’s widow and a noted author, says that although Holbrooke adored his children, he came to appreciate the full importance of family only in his 50s, at which point he became a very present parent and grandparent, while continuing to pursue an extraordinary public career.) Regardless, it is clear which set of choices society values more today. Workers who put their careers first are typically rewarded; workers who choose their families are overlooked, disbelieved, or accused of unprofessionalism. In sum, having a supportive mate may well be a necessary condition if women are to have it all, but it is not sufficient. If women feel deeply that turning down a promotion that would involve more travel, for instance, is the right thing to do, then they will continue to do that. Ultimately, it is society that must change, coming to value choices to put family ahead of work just as much as those to put work ahead of family. If we really valued those choices, we would value the people who make them; if we valued the people who make them, we would do everything possible to hire and retain them; if we did everything possible to allow them to combine work and family equally over time, then the choices would get a lot easier. It’s possible if you sequence it right. Young women should be wary of the assertion “You can have it all; you just can’t have it all at once.” This 21st-century addendum to the original line is now proffered by many senior women to their younger mentees. To the extent that it means, in the words of one working mother, “I’m going to do my best and I’m going to keep the long term in mind and know that it’s not always going to be this hard to balance,” it is sound advice. But to the extent that it means that women can have it all if they just find the right sequence of career and family, it’s cheerfully wrong. The most important sequencing issue is when to have children. Many of the top women leaders of the generation just ahead of me—Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O’Connor, Patricia Wald, Nannerl Keohane—had their children in their 20s and early 30s, as was the norm in the 1950s through the 1970s. A child born when his mother is 25 will finish high school when his mother is 43, an age at which, with full-time immersion in a career, she still has plenty of time and energy for advancement. Yet this sequence has fallen out of favor with many highpotential women, and understandably so. People tend to marry later now, and anyway, if you have children earlier, you may have difficulty getting a graduate degree, a good first job,

and opportunities for advancement in the crucial early years of your career. Making matters worse, you will also have less income while raising your children, and hence less ability to hire the help that can be indispensable to your juggling act. When I was the dean, the Woodrow Wilson School created a program called Pathways to Public Service, aimed at advising women whose children were almost grown about how to go into public service, and many women still ask me about the best “on-ramps” to careers in their mid-40s. Honestly, I’m not sure what to tell most of them. Unlike the pioneering women who entered the workforce after having children in the 1970s, these women are competing with their younger selves. Government and NGO jobs are an option, but many careers are effectively closed off. Personally, I have never seen a woman in her 40s enter the academic market successfully, or enter a law firm as a junior associate, Alicia Florrick of The Good Wife notwithstanding. These considerations are why so many career women of my generation chose to establish themselves in their careers first and have children in their mid-to-late 30s. But that raises the possibility of spending long, stressful years and a small fortune trying to have a baby. I lived that nightmare: for three years, beginning at age 35, I did everything possible to conceive and was frantic at the thought that I had simply left having a biological child until it was too late. And when everything does work out? I had my first child at 38 (and counted myself blessed) and my second at 40. That means I will be 58 when both of my children are out of the house. What’s more, it means that many peak career opportunities are coinciding precisely with their teenage years, when,

Taken, given: friendships riven. From shadow or shade, it instantly puts paid to hard-won clarities and causes us to freeze up with unearned righteousness; it makes us less. How much better to combat it. We should take umbrage at it. —Ben Downing Ben Downing’s forthcoming book is Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross. He lives in New York.

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experienced parents advise, being available as a parent is just as important as in the first years of a child’s life. Many women of my generation have found themselves, in the prime of their careers, saying no to opportunities they once would have jumped at and hoping those chances come around again later. Many others who have decided to step back for a while, taking on consultant positions or part-time work that lets them spend more time with their children (or aging parents), are worrying about how long they can “stay out” before they lose the competitive edge they worked so hard to acquire. Given the way our work culture is oriented today, I recommend establishing yourself in your career first but still trying to have kids before you are 35—or else freeze your eggs, whether you are married or not. You may well be a more mature and less frustrated parent in your 30s or 40s; you are also more likely to have found a lasting life partner. But the truth is, neither sequence is optimal, and both involve trade-offs that men do not have to make. You should be able to have a family if you want one— however and whenever your life circumstances allow—and still have the career you desire. If more women could strike this balance, more women would reach leadership positions. And if more women were in leadership positions, they could make it easier for more women to stay in the workforce. The rest of this essay details how.

organization. In 2009, Sandra Pocharski, a senior female partner at Monitor Group and the head of the firm’s Leadership and Organization practice, commissioned a Harvard Business School professor to assess the factors that helped or hindered women’s effectiveness and advancement at Monitor. The study found that the company’s culture was characterized by an “always on” mode of working, often without due regard to the impact on employees. Pocharski observed: Clients come first, always, and sometimes burning the midnight oil really does make the difference between success and failure. But sometimes we were just defaulting to behavior that overloaded our people without improving results much, if at all. We decided we needed managers to get better at distinguishing between these categories, and to recognize the hidden costs of assuming that “time is cheap.” When that time doesn’t add a lot of value and comes at a high cost to talented employees, who will leave when the personal cost becomes unsustainable—well, that is clearly a bad outcome for everyone.

I have worked very long hours and pulled plenty of allnighters myself over the course of my career, including a few nights on my office couch during my two years in D.C. Being willing to put the time in when the job simply has to get done is rightfully a hallmark of a successful professional. But looking back, I have to admit that my assumption that I would stay late made me much less efficient over the course of the day than I might have been, and certainly less so than some Back in the Reagan administration, a New York Times story of my colleagues, who managed to get the same amount of about the ferociously competitive budget director Dick Dar- work done and go home at a decent hour. If Dick Darman man reported, “Mr. Darman sometimes manhad had a boss who clearly valued prioritiaged to convey the impression that he was zation and time management, he might have the last one working in the Reagan White Every male found reason to turn out the lights and take House by leaving his suit coat on his chair Supreme Court his jacket home. and his office light burning after he left for justice has a Long hours are one thing, and realistihome.” (Darman claimed that it was just eascally, they are often unavoidable. But do they ier to leave his suit jacket in the office so he family. Two of the really need to be spent at the office? To be could put it on again in the morning, but his three female sure, being in the office some of the time is record of psychological manipulation sug- justices are single beneficial. In-person meetings can be far gests otherwise.) more efficient than phone or e-mail tag; trust with no children. and The culture of “time macho”—a relentless collegiality are much more easily built competition to work harder, stay later, pull up around the same physical table; and sponmore all-nighters, travel around the world and bill the extra taneous conversations often generate good ideas and lasting hours that the international date line affords you—remains relationships. Still, armed with e-mail, instant messaging, astonishingly prevalent among professionals today. Nothing phones, and videoconferencing technology, we should be captures the belief that more time equals more value better able to move to a culture where the office is a base of operathan the cult of billable hours afflicting large law firms across tions more than the required locus of work. the country and providing exactly the wrong incentives for Being able to work from home—in the evening after chilemployees who hope to integrate work and family. Yet even dren are put to bed, or during their sick days or snow days, in industries that don’t explicitly reward sheer quantity of and at least some of the time on weekends—can be the key, hours spent on the job, the pressure to arrive early, stay late, for mothers, to carrying your full load versus letting a team and be available, always, for in-person meetings at 11 a.m. down at crucial moments. State-of-the-art videoconferencing on Saturdays can be intense. Indeed, by some measures, the facilities can dramatically reduce the need for long business problem has gotten worse over time: a study by the Center trips. These technologies are making inroads, and allowing for American Progress reports that nationwide, the share of easier integration of work and family life. According to the all professionals—women and men—working more than 50 Women’s Business Center, 61 percent of women business hours a week has increased since the late 1970s. owners use technology to “integrate the responsibilities of But more time in the office does not always mean more “val- work and home”; 44 percent use technology to allow employue added”—and it does not always add up to a more successful ees “to work off-site or to have flexible work schedules.” Yet 94

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our work culture still remains more office-centered than it can “backfire if the broader norms shaping the behavior of needs to be, especially in light of technological advances. all employees do not change.” When I was the dean of the One way to change that is by changing the “default rules” Wilson School, I managed with the mantra “Family comes that govern office work—the baseline expectations about first”—any family—and found that my employees were both when, where, and how work will be done. As behavioral productive and intensely loyal. economists well know, these baselines can make an enorNone of these changes will happen by themselves, and mous difference in the way people act. It is reasons to avoid them will seldom be hard one thing, for instance, for an organization to find. But obstacles and inertia are usually to allow phone-ins to a meeting on an ad hoc For three years, surmountable if leaders are open to changing basis, when parenting and work schedules beginning at their assumptions about the workplace. The collide—a system that’s better than nothing, age 35, I did use of technology in many high-level governbut likely to engender guilt among those ment jobs, for instance, is complicated by the calling in, and possibly resentment among everything need to have access to classified information. those in the room. It is quite another for that possible to But in 2009, Deputy Secretary of State James organization to declare that its policy will conceive and was Steinberg, who shares the parenting of his be to schedule in-person meetings, whentwo young daughters equally with his wife, frantic at the ever possible, during the hours of the school made getting such access at home an immeday—a system that might normalize call-ins thought that I diate priority so that he could leave the offor those (rarer) meetings still held in the late had simply left it fice at a reasonable hour and participate in afternoon. important meetings via videoconferencing until too late. One real-world example comes from the if necessary. I wonder how many women in British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, similar positions would be afraid to ask, lest a place most people are more likely to associate with dis- they be seen as insufficiently committed to their jobs. tinguished gentlemen in pinstripes than with progressive thinking about work-family balance. Like so many other places, however, the FCO worries about losing talented While employers shouldn’t privilege parents over other members of two-career couples around the world, particu- workers, too often they end up doing the opposite, usually larly women. So it recently changed its basic policy from a subtly, and usually in ways that make it harder for a primary default rule that jobs have to be done on-site to one that as- caregiver to get ahead. Many people in positions of power sumes that some jobs might be done remotely, and invites seem to place a low value on child care in comparison with workers to make the case for remote work. Kara Owen, a other outside activities. Consider the following proposicareer foreign-service officer who was the FCO’s diversity tion: An employer has two equally talented and productive director and will soon become the British deputy ambassa- employees. One trains for and runs marathons when he is dor to France, writes that she has now done two remote jobs. not working. The other takes care of two children. What asBefore her current maternity leave, she was working a Lon- sumptions is the employer likely to make about the marathon don job from Dublin to be with her partner, using telecon- runner? That he gets up in the dark every day and logs an ferencing technology and timing her trips to London to co- hour or two running before even coming into the office, or incide “with key meetings where I needed to be in the room drives himself to get out there even after a long day. That he (or chatting at the pre-meeting coffee) to have an impact, or is ferociously disciplined and willing to push himself through to do intensive ‘network maintenance.’ ” In fact, she writes, distraction, exhaustion, and days when nothing seems to go “I have found the distance and quiet to be a real advantage right in the service of a goal far in the distance. That he must in a strategic role, providing I have put in the investment up manage his time exceptionally well to squeeze all of that in. Be honest: Do you think the employer makes those same front to develop very strong personal relationships with the game changers.” Owen recognizes that not every job can be assumptions about the parent? Even though she likely rises done this way. But she says that for her part, she has been in the dark hours before she needs to be at work, organizes her children’s day, makes breakfast, packs lunch, gets them able to combine family requirements with her career. Changes in default office rules should not advantage par- off to school, figures out shopping and other errands even if ents over other workers; indeed, done right, they can im- she is lucky enough to have a housekeeper—and does much prove relations among co-workers by raising their awareness the same work at the end of the day. Cheryl Mills, Hillary of each other’s circumstances and instilling a sense of fair- Clinton’s indefatigable chief of staff, has twins in elementary ness. Two years ago, the ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts school; even with a fully engaged husband, she famously gets decided to replace its “parental leave” policy with a “family up at four every morning to check and send e-mails before leave” policy that provides for as much as 12 weeks of leave her kids wake up. Louise Richardson, now the vice chancelnot only for new parents, but also for employees who need to lor of the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, combined care for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condi- an assistant professorship in government at Harvard with tion. According to Director Carol Rose, “We wanted a policy mothering three young children. She organized her time so that took into account the fact that even employees who do ruthlessly that she always keyed in 1:11 or 2:22 or 3:33 on the not have children have family obligations.” The policy was microwave rather than 1:00, 2:00, or 3:00, because hitting the shaped by the belief that giving women “special treatment” same number three times took less time. 96

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Elizabeth Warren, who is now running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, has a similar story. When she had two young children and a part-time law practice, she struggled to find enough time to write the papers and articles that would help get her an academic position. In her words:

good health can easily work until they are 75. They can expect to have multiple jobs and even multiple careers throughout their working life. Couples marry later, have kids later, and can expect to live on two incomes. They may well retire earlier—the average retirement age has gone down from 67 to 63—but that is commonly “retirement” only in the sense I needed a plan. I figured out that writing time was when Alex of collecting retirement benefits. Many people go on to was asleep. So the minute I put him down for a nap or he fell “encore” careers. asleep in the baby swing, I went to my desk and started workAssuming the priceless gifts of good health and good foring on something—footnotes, reading, outlining, writing … I tune, a professional woman can thus expect her working life learned to do everything else with a baby on my hip. to stretch some 50 years, from her early or mid-20s to her The discipline, organization, and sheer endurance it takes mid-70s. It is reasonable to assume that she will build her to succeed at top levels with young children at home is eas- credentials and establish herself, at least in her first career, ily comparable to running 20 to 40 miles a week. But that’s between 22 and 35; she will have children, if she wants them, rarely how employers see things, not only when making al- sometime between 25 and 45; she’ll want maximum flexibillowances, but when making promotions. Perhaps because ity and control over her time in the 10 years that her children people choose to have children? People also choose to run are 8 to 18; and she should plan to take positions of maximum marathons. authority and demands on her time after her children are out One final example: I have worked with many Orthodox of the house. Women who have children in their late 20s can Jewish men who observed the Sabbath from sundown on expect to immerse themselves completely in their careers Friday until sundown on Saturday. Jack Lew, the two-time in their late 40s, with plenty of time still to rise to the top director of the Office of Management and Budget, former in their late 50s and early 60s. Women who make partner, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, and managing director, or senior vice president; get tenure; or now White House chief of staff, is a case in point. Jack’s wife establish a medical practice before having children in their lived in New York when he worked in the State Department, late 30s should be coming back on line for the most demandso he would leave the office early enough on Friday afternoon ing jobs at almost exactly the same age. to take the shuttle to New York and a taxi to his apartment Along the way, women should think about the climb to before sundown. He would not work on Friday after sun- leadership not in terms of a straight upward slope, but as down or all day Saturday. Everyone who knew him, including irregular stair steps, with periodic plateaus (and even dips) me, admired his commitment to his faith and when they turn down promotions to remain his ability to carve out the time for it, even in a job that works for their family situation; Climbing highest when they leave high-powered jobs and with an enormously demanding job. It is hard to imagine, however, that we in the shortest spend a year or two at home on a reduced would have the same response if a mother time made sense schedule; or when they step off a conventold us she was blocking out mid-Friday aftertional professional track to take a consulting noon through the end of the day on Saturday, in the 1950s, position or project-based work for a number every week, to spend time with her children. when most of years. I think of these plateaus as “investI suspect this would be seen as unprofes- people were dead ment intervals.” My husband and I took a sional, an imposition of unnecessary costs sabbatical in Shanghai, from August 2007 to on co-workers. In fact, of course, one of the by age 71. It May 2008, right in the thick of an election great values of the Sabbath—whether Jewish makes far less year when many of my friends were advisor Christian—is precisely that it carves out a sense today. ing various candidates on foreign-policy family oasis, with rituals and a mandatory issues. We thought of the move in part as setting-aside of work. “putting money in the family bank,” taking Our assumptions are just that: things we believe that are advantage of the opportunity to spend a close year together not necessarily so. Yet what we assume has an enormous im- in a foreign culture. But we were also investing in our chilpact on our perceptions and responses. Fortunately, changing dren’s ability to learn Mandarin and in our own knowledge our assumptions is up to us. of Asia. Peaking in your late 50s and early 60s rather than your late 40s and early 50s makes particular sense for women, who live longer than men. And many of the stereotypes The American definition of a successful professional is some- about older workers simply do not hold. A 2006 survey of one who can climb the ladder the furthest in the shortest human-resources professionals shows that only 23 percent time, generally peaking between ages 45 and 55. It is a defini- think older workers are less flexible than younger workers; tion well suited to the mid-20th century, an era when people only 11 percent think older workers require more training had kids in their 20s, stayed in one job, retired at 67, and were than younger workers; and only 7 percent think older workdead, on average, by age 71. ers have less drive than younger workers. It makes far less sense today. Average life expectancy for Whether women will really have the confidence to stairpeople in their 20s has increased to 80; men and women in step their careers, however, will again depend in part on THE ATLANTIC

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perceptions. Slowing down the rate of promotions, taking be bad for their family life, and about her determination to time out periodically, pursuing an alternative path during limit her participation in the presidential election campaign crucial parenting or parent-care years—all have to become to have more time at home. Even as first lady, she has been more visible and more noticeably accepted as a pause rather adamant that she be able to balance her official duties with than an opt-out. (In an encouraging sign, Mass Career Cus- family time. We should see her as a full-time career woman, tomization, a 2007 book by Cathleen Benko and Anne Weis- but one who is taking a very visible investment interval. We berg arguing that “today’s career is no longer a straight climb should celebrate her not only as a wife, mother, and chamup the corporate ladder, but rather a combination of climbs, pion of healthy eating, but also as a woman who has had the lateral moves, and planned descents,” was a Wall Street Jour- courage and judgment to invest in her daughters when they nal best seller.) need her most. And we should expect a glittering career from Institutions can also take concrete steps to promote this her after she leaves the White House and her daughters leave acceptance. For instance, in 1970, Princeton established a for college. tenure-extension policy that allowed female assistant professors expecting a child to request a one-year extension on their tenure clocks. This policy was later extended to men, and broadened to include adoptions. In the early 2000s, two One of the most complicated and surprising parts of my jourreports on the status of female faculty discovered that only ney out of Washington was coming to grips with what I really about 3 percent of assistant professors requested tenure ex- wanted. I had opportunities to stay on, and I could have tried tensions in a given year. And in response to a survey question, to work out an arrangement allowing me to spend more time women were much more likely than men to think that a ten- at home. I might have been able to get my family to join me in ure extension would be detrimental to an assistant profes- Washington for a year; I might have been able to get classified technology installed at my house the way Jim Steinberg did; sor’s career. So in 2005, under President Shirley Tilghman, Princeton I might have been able to commute only four days a week changed the default rule. The administration announced that instead of five. (While this last change would have still left all assistant professors, female and male, who had a new child me very little time at home, given the intensity of my job, it might have made the job doable for another would automatically receive a one-year exyear or two.) But I realized that I didn’t just tension on the tenure clock, with no opt-outs need to go home. Deep down, I wanted to allowed. Instead, assistant professors could Perhaps leaders go home. I wanted to be able to spend time request early consideration for tenure if they who invested with my children in the last few years that wished. The number of assistant professors time in their own they are likely to live at home, crucial years who receive a tenure extension has tripled families would be for their development into responsible, prosince the change. ductive, happy, and caring adults. But also One of the best ways to move social more keenly irreplaceable years for me to enjoy the simnorms in this direction is to choose and aware of the toll ple pleasures of parenting—baseball games, celebrate different role models. New Jerthat their public piano recitals, waffle breakfasts, family trips, sey Governor Chris Christie and I are poles and goofy rituals. My older son is doing very apart politically, but he went way up in choices may take well these days, but even when he gives us a my estimation when he announced that on private lives. hard time, as all teenagers do, being home to one reason he decided against running for shape his choices and help him make good president in 2012 was the impact his campaign would have had on his children. He reportedly made decisions is deeply satisfying. The flip side of my realization is captured in Macko and clear at a fund-raiser in Louisiana that he didn’t want to be away from his children for long periods of time; according Rubin’s ruminations on the importance of bringing the differto a Republican official at the event, he said that “his son ent parts of their lives together as 30-year-old women: [missed] him after being gone for the three days on the road, If we didn’t start to learn how to integrate our personal, soand that he needed to get back.” He may not get my vote if cial, and professional lives, we were about five years away and when he does run for president, but he definitely gets from morphing into the angry woman on the other side of my admiration (providing he doesn’t turn around and join a mahogany desk who questions her staff’s work ethic after the GOP ticket this fall). standard 12-hour workdays, before heading home to eat moo shoo pork in her lonely apartment. If we are looking for high-profile female role models, we might begin with Michelle Obama. She started out with the Women have contributed to the fetish of the onesame résumé as her husband, but has repeatedly made career decisions designed to let her do work she cared about and dimensional life, albeit by necessity. The pioneer generation also be the kind of parent she wanted to be. She moved from a of feminists walled off their personal lives from their profeshigh-powered law firm first to Chicago city government and sional personas to ensure that they could never be discrimithen to the University of Chicago shortly before her daugh- nated against for a lack of commitment to their work. When I ters were born, a move that let her work only 10 minutes away was a law student in the 1980s, many women who were then from home. She has spoken publicly and often about her ini- climbing the legal hierarchy in New York firms told me that tial concerns that her husband’s entry into politics would they never admitted to taking time out for a child’s doctor 98

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appointment or school performance, but instead invented a writes that the regret she heard most often was “I wish I’d much more neutral excuse. had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others Today, however, women in power can and should change expected of me.” The second-most-common regret was “I that environment, although change is not easy. When I be- wish I didn’t work so hard.” She writes: “This came from evcame dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, in 2002, I decided ery male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s that one of the advantages of being a woman in power was youth and their partner’s companionship.” that I could help change the norms by deJuliette Kayyem, who several years ago liberately talking about my children and my left the Department of Homeland Security desire to have a balanced life. Thus, I would “You have to stop soon after her husband, David Barron, left a end faculty meetings at 6 p.m. by saying that talking about high position in the Justice Department, says I had to go home for dinner; I would also your kids,” one their joint decision to leave Washington and make clear to all student organizations that return to Boston sprang from their desire to I would not come to dinner with them, be- woman said. “You work on the “happiness project,” meaning cause I needed to be home from six to eight, are not showing quality time with their three children. (She but that I would often be willing to come the gravitas that borrowed the term from her friend Gretchen back after eight for a meeting. I also once told Rubin, who wrote a best-selling book and people expect.” the Dean’s Advisory Committee that the asnow runs a blog with that name.) sociate dean would chair the next session so I I told her I was It’s time to embrace a national happiness could go to a parent-teacher conference. project. As a daughter of Charlottesville, Virdoing it After a few months of this, several female ginia, the home of Thomas Jefferson and the deliberately. assistant professors showed up in my office university he founded, I grew up with the quite agitated. “You have to stop talking about Declaration of Independence in my blood. your kids,” one said. “You are not showing the gravitas that Last I checked, he did not declare American independence people expect from a dean, which is particularly damaging in the name of life, liberty, and professional success. Let us precisely because you are the first woman dean of the school.” rediscover the pursuit of happiness, and let us start at home. I told them that I was doing it deliberately and continued my practice, but it is interesting that gravitas and parenthood As I write this, I can hear the reaction of some readers to don’t seem to go together. Ten years later, whenever I am introduced at a lecture or many of the proposals in this essay: It’s all fine and well for a other speaking engagement, I insist that the person introduc- tenured professor to write about flexible working hours, ining me mention that I have two sons. It seems odd to me to vestment intervals, and family-comes-first management. But list degrees, awards, positions, and interests and not include what about the real world? Most American women cannot the dimension of my life that is most important to me—and demand these things, particularly in a bad economy, and their takes an enormous amount of my time. As Secretary Clin- employers have little incentive to grant them voluntarily. Inton once said in a television interview in Beijing when the deed, the most frequent reaction I get in putting forth these interviewer asked her about Chelsea’s upcoming wedding: ideas is that when the choice is whether to hire a man who “That’s my real life.” But I notice that my male introducers will work whenever and wherever needed, or a woman who are typically uncomfortable when I make the request. They needs more flexibility, choosing the man will add more value frequently say things like “And she particularly wanted me to the company. In fact, while many of these issues are hard to quantify to mention that she has two sons”—thereby drawing attention to the unusual nature of my request, when my entire and measure precisely, the statistics seem to tell a different purpose is to make family references routine and normal in story. A seminal study of 527 U.S. companies, published in the Academy of Management Journal in 2000, suggests that professional life. This does not mean that you should insist that your col- “organizations with more extensive work-family policies leagues spend time cooing over pictures of your baby or have higher perceived firm-level performance” among their listening to the prodigious accomplishments of your kinder- industry peers. These findings accorded with a 2003 study gartner. It does mean that if you are late coming in one week, conducted by Michelle Arthur at the University of Mexico. because it is your turn to drive the kids to school, that you Examining 130 announcements of family-friendly policies be honest about what you are doing. Indeed, Sheryl Sand- in The Wall Street Journal, Arthur found that the announceberg recently acknowledged not only that she leaves work ments alone significantly improved share prices. In 2011, a at 5:30 to have dinner with her family, but also that for many study on flexibility in the workplace by Ellen Galinsky, Kelly years she did not dare make this admission, even though she Sakai, and Tyler Wigton of the Families and Work Institute would of course make up the work time later in the evening. showed that increased flexibility correlates positively with Her willingness to speak out now is a strong step in the right job engagement, job satisfaction, employee retention, and employee health. direction. This is only a small sampling from a large and growing litSeeking out a more balanced life is not a women’s issue; balance would be better for us all. Bronnie Ware, an Austra- erature trying to pin down the relationship between familylian blogger who worked for years in palliative care and is friendly policies and economic performance. Other scholars the author of the 2011 book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, have concluded that good family policies attract better talent, 100

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which in turn raises productivity, but that the policies them- Schelling wrote The Strategy of Conflict, a classic text applyselves have no impact on productivity. Still others argue that ing game theory to conflicts among nations, he frequently results attributed to these policies are actually a function of drew on child-rearing for examples of when deterrence good management overall. What is evident, however, is that might succeed or fail. “It may be easier to articulate the pemany firms that recruit and train well-educated professional culiar difficulty of constraining [a ruler] by the use of threats,” women are aware that when a woman leaves because of bad he wrote, “when one is fresh from a vain attempt at using work-family balance, they are losing the money and time they threats to keep a small child from hurting a dog or a small invested in her. dog from hurting a child.” Even the legal industry, built around the billable hour, is The books I’ve read with my children, the silly movies I’ve taking notice. Deborah Epstein Henry, a former big-firm liti- watched, the games I’ve played, questions I’ve answered, and gator, is now the president of Flex-Time Lawyers, a national people I’ve met while parenting have broadened my world. consulting firm focused partly on strategies for the retention Another axiom of the literature on innovation is that the more of female attorneys. In her book Law and Reorder, published often people with different perspectives come together, the by the American Bar Association in 2010, she describes a more likely creative ideas are to emerge. Giving workers the legal profession “where the billable hour no longer works”; ability to integrate their non-work lives with their work— where attorneys, judges, recruiters, and academics all agree whether they spend that time mothering or marathoning—will that this system of compensation has perverted the industry, open the door to a much wider range of influences and ideas. leading to brutal work hours, massive inefficiency, and highly inflated costs. The answer—already being deployed in different corners of the industry—is a combination of alterna- Perhaps the most encouraging news of all for achieving the tive fee structures, virtual firms, women-owned firms, and sorts of changes that I have proposed is that men are joining the outsourcing of discrete legal jobs to other jurisdictions. the cause. In commenting on a draft of this article, Martha Women, and Generation X and Y lawyers more generally, are Minow, the dean of the Harvard Law School, wrote me that pushing for these changes on the supply side; clients deter- one change she has observed during 30 years of teaching law mined to reduce legal fees and increase flexible service are at Harvard is that today many young men are asking questions about how they can manage a work-life balance. And pulling on the demand side. Slowly, change is happening. At the core of all this is self-interest. Losing smart and mo- more systematic research on Generation Y confirms that many more men than in the past are asking tivated women not only diminishes a comquestions about how they are going to intepany’s talent pool; it also reduces the return grate active parenthood with their profeson its investment in training and mentoring. Sheryl Sandberg sional lives. In trying to address these issues, some firms recently Abstract aspirations are easier than conare finding out that women’s ways of work- acknowledged crete trade-offs, of course. These young men ing may just be better ways of working, for that she leaves have not yet faced the question of whether employees and clients alike. they are prepared to give up that more presExperts on creativity and innovation em- work at 5:30 for tigious clerkship or fellowship, decline a prophasize the value of encouraging nonlinear family dinners. motion, or delay their professional goals to thinking and cultivating randomness by takThis is a step spend more time with their children and to ing long walks or looking at your environsupport their partner’s career. ment from unusual angles. In their new book, in the right Yet once work practices and work culture A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the direction. begin to evolve, those changes are likely to Imagination for a World of Constant Change, carry their own momentum. Kara Owen, the innovation gurus John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas write, “We believe that connecting play and the British foreign-service officer who worked a London job imagination may be the single most important step in un- from Dublin, wrote me in an e-mail: leashing the new culture of learning.” I think the culture on flexible working started to change the Space for play and imagination is exactly what emerges minute the Board of Management (who were all men at the when rigid work schedules and hierarchies loosen up. Skeptime) started to work flexibly—quite a few of them started tics should consider the “California effect.” California is the working one day a week from home. cradle of American innovation—in technology, entertainment, Men have, of course, become much more involved parsports, food, and lifestyles. It is also a place where people take leisure as seriously as they take work; where companies like ents over the past couple of decades, and that, too, suggests Google deliberately encourage play, with Ping-Pong tables, broad support for big changes in the way we balance work light sabers, and policies that require employees to spend one and family. It is noteworthy that both James Steinberg, depday a week working on whatever they wish. Charles Baude- uty secretary of state, and William Lynn, deputy secretary of laire wrote: “Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood defense, stepped down two years into the Obama administration so that they could spend more time with their children recovered at will.” Google apparently has taken note. No parent would mistake child care for childhood. Still, (for real). Going forward, women would do well to frame workseeing the world anew through a child’s eyes can be a powerful source of stimulation. When the Nobel laureate Thomas family balance in terms of the broader social and economic THE ATLANTIC

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issues that affect both women and men. After all, we have a new generation of young men who have been raised by full-time working mothers. Let us presume, as I do with my sons, that they will understand “supporting their families” to mean more than earning money. to work with and be mentored by some extraordinary women. Watching Hillary Clinton in action makes me incredibly proud—of her intelligence, expertise, professionalism, charisma, and command of any audience. I get a similar rush when I see a frontpage picture of Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, deep in conversation about some of the most important issues on the world stage; or of Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, standing up forcefully for the Syrian people in the Security Council. These women are extraordinary role models. If I had a daughter, I would encourage her to look to them, and I want a world in which they are extraordinary but not unusual. Yet I also want a world in which, in Lisa Jackson’s words, “to be a strong woman, you don’t have to give up on the things that define you as a woman.” That means respecting, enabling, and indeed celebrating the full range of women’s choices. “Empowering yourself,” Jackson said in her speech at Princeton, “doesn’t have to mean rejecting motherhood, or eliminating the nurturing or feminine aspects of who you are.” I gave a speech at Vassar last November and arrived in time to wander the campus on a lovely fall afternoon. It is a place infused with a spirit of community and generosity, filled with benches, walkways, public art, and quiet places donated by alumnae seeking to encourage contemplation and connection. Turning the pages of the alumni magazine (Vassar is now coed), I was struck by the entries of older alumnae, who greeted their classmates with Salve (Latin for “hello”) and wrote witty remembrances sprinkled with literary allusions. Theirs was a world in which women wore their learning lightly; their news is mostly of their children’s accomplishments. Many of us look back on that earlier era as a time when it was fine to joke that women went to college to get an “M.R.S.” And many women of my generation abandoned the Seven Sisters as soon as the formerly all-male Ivy League universities became coed. I would never return to the world of segregated sexes and rampant discrimination. But now is the time to revisit the assumption that women must rush to adapt to the “man’s world” that our mothers and mentors warned us about. I continually push the young women in my classes to speak more. They must gain the confidence to value their own insights and questions, and to present them readily. My husband 102

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agrees, but he actually tries to get the young men in his classes to act more like the women—to speak less and listen more. If women are ever to achieve real equality as leaders, then we have to stop accepting male behavior and male choices as the default and the ideal. We must insist on changing social policies and bending career tracks to accommodate our choices, too. We have the power to do it if we decide to, and we have many men standing beside us. We’ll create a better society in the process, for all women. We may need to put a woman in the White House before we are able to change the conditions of the women working at Walmart. But when we do, we will stop talking about whether women can have it all. We will properly focus on how we can help all Americans have healthy, happy, productive lives, valuing the people they love as much as the success they seek. Anne-Marie Slaughter is a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, and the mother of two teenage boys. She served as the director of policy planning at the State Department from 2009 to 2011.

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—a tale of politics, rock and roll, and unrequited love , even in moments of tranquility—of which, in his life, there seem to be none—a torqued-up, joyously belligerent, easily baited, and preternaturally exuberant son of New Jersey, so bringing him to a Bruce Springsteen concert is an exercise in volcano management. Christie, in the presence of Springsteen—whom he would marry if he were gay and if gay people were allowed to marry in the state he governs— loses himself. He is, as is well known, a very large man—twice the width of Mitt Romney—but he is a very large man who dances at Springsteen concerts in front of many thousands of people without giving a damn what they think.

We are in a luxury suite at the Prudential Center—the Rock—in downtown Newark, the sort of suite accessible only to the American plutocracy, from which Springsteen seems to draw a surprisingly large proportion of his most devoted fans. (I know of three separate groups of one-percenters who recently flew in private jets to see Springsteen perform at Madison Square Garden.) Certainly not many residents of Newark could afford such a box, and the shrimp and steak that come with it. Christie’s bodyguards from the New Jersey State Police—he will sometimes play aloud on his iPhone Springsteen’s haunting and paranoid “State Trooper” while being driven by state troopers—keep the governor out of the cheap seats, where he says he’d rather be. Of course, he’s

JERSEY BOYS By

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Illustration by Andy Friedman

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not opposed to upmarket seating and grilled shrimp—he’s a and stirring song, and the fist-pumping governor seems unvociferous free-marketeer, who, for good reason, is a hero to containable. the hedge-fund grandees across the river. He just likes mixBehind us, Christie’s communications director, Maria ing it up with his constituents, several of whom, by the smell Comella, whose job it is to contain him, watches with alarm of it, are enjoying high-quality New Jersey marijuana right as the governor grabs his community-affairs commissionbelow us. er, Rich Constable, and his human-services commissioner, People see him out at the edge of the box, and they cheer Jennifer Velez, and simultaneously bear-hugs and headhis dancing and call him vice president (for what it’s worth, locks them. Christie turns from one to the other—his face he told me he’s not really interested in the job: “I’d rather be is maybe three inches from theirs—as he shouts along with here in New Jersey and be governor, but obviously if Gover- Springsteen: “Workin’ in the fields / Till you get your back nor Romney calls and wants to talk about it, I owe it to him to burned / Workin’ ’neath the wheel / Till you get your facts listen”), and they rain down curses on his political enemies. learned / Baby, I got my facts / Learned real good right now.” Many fans also give Christie grief for an incident that took He screams the song’s immortal lines: “Poor man wanna be place three weeks earlier, when a photograph of the governor rich / Rich man wanna be king / And a king ain’t satisfied till apparently sleeping through a Springsteen song—an affecting, he rules everything / I wanna go out tonight / I wanna find elegiac song called “Rocky Ground,” from his new, fuming- out what I got.” mad anti–Wall Street album, Wrecking Ball—at the Garden He is flushed and beaming. The song ends, and he releases pinged around the Internet. his commissioners, who seem happy to bask in their gover“Hey, Governor, where’s your pillow?” someone from an nor’s attention and also happy that he did not crack their upper deck screams. It is the sort of taunt he should obvi- windpipes. We’re all feeling elation—if the E Street Band at ously ignore, but Christie is incapable of being anything full throttle doesn’t fill you with joy, you’re probably dead— other than his obstreperous self. He screams back, “I didn’t and it strikes me that this is the moment to ask the governor fall asleep! How could you even believe that?” He turns to a trick question: “Do you think Mitt Romney could relate to me. “How could they believe that? I was meditating. It’s a this? To a Bruce Springsteen show?” very spiritual song.” I believe him. I’ve spent much of my He looks at me like I’m from France. “No one is beyond life as a pro-Springsteen extremist (defined here as some- the reach of Bruce!” he screams over the noise of the crowd, one who has spent an unconscionable amount of money on and then screams it again, to make sure I understand: “No Springsteen tickets and also refuses to contemplate the no- one is beyond the reach of Bruce!” tion that Bob Dylan might be the better writer), and I have What about Newt? met very few people who love Springsteen the way Christie “He’s been married three times!,” Christie answers. “He’d loves Springsteen. get this. You know what I mean?” This concert is the 129th the governor has attended. His Not really, but I accept the point: something about longing four children all went to Springsteen shows in utero. He and sin and betrayal and the possibility of redemption. knows every word to every Springsteen song. He dreams of Springsteen turns to a song from the new album. Christie playing drums in the E Street Band. People like Chris Chris- wanders back into the crowded suite, stopping to dance with tie don’t fall asleep at Springsteen shows. his wife. I think about what he said: no one is beyond the The depth of Christie’s love is noteworthy in part be- reach of Bruce. There is something odd about this assertion, cause most politicians—certainly most politicians of national beyond the obvious, which is that there are, in fact, people stature—are either too dull or too monomaniacally careerist who don’t like Springsteen, who find his singing akin to hogto maintain fervent emotional relationships with artists. And calling; others find his Tribune of the Downtrodden persona when they do, the objects of their affection resemble them a bit of a pose. But what is strange about this statement is that ideologically or dispositionally—think of the loyalty that Pat it is an inversion of a central, dispiriting truth of Christie’s Leahy, the liberal senator from Vermont, has for the Grateful life: Bruce Springsteen is beyond his reach. Dead. Christie’s passionate attachment to Bruce Springsteen Despite heroic efforts by Christie, Springsteen, who is is something different, and much more complicated. still a New Jersey resident, will not talk to him. They’ve met The E Street Band blasts into “Badlands,” the opening twice—once on an airplane in 1999, and then at the 2010 song from the great Born to Run follow-up album, Darkness ceremony inducting Danny DeVito into the New Jersey on the Edge of Town. Christie plays the air drums as 18,000 Hall of Fame, where they exchanged only formal pleasantpeople—three generations of Jersey Springsteen cultists— ries. (Christie does say that Springsteen was very kind to his dance with no inhibition and not too much skill. (It would children.) At concerts, even concerts in club-size venues— be correct for the reader to assume, by the way, that I also the Stone Pony, in Asbury Park, most recently—Springsteen jump around like a jackass while Springsteen sings—I’m just won’t acknowledge the governor. When Christie leaves a another of the many tristate ethnics who are, in Christie’s Springsteen concert in a large arena, his state troopers move words, “desperately trying to cling to their 40s.”) him to his motorcade through loading docks. He walks with“Badlands” contains many of Springsteen’s great themes— in feet of the stage, and of the dressing rooms. He’s never desire, desperation, defiance in the face of cruel fate, the gulf been invited to say hello. On occasion, he’ll make a public between the American dream and the American reality. But, plea to Springsteen, as he did earlier this spring, when Chrislike many of Springsteen’s most sweeping anthems—“Born tie asked him to play at a new casino in Atlantic City. “He says in the U.S.A.” being the most obvious—it is a propulsive he’s for the revitalization of the Jersey Shore, so this seems 106

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obvious,” Christie told me. I asked him if he’s received a reWait a second, this is Bruce Springsteen we’re talking sponse to his request. “No, we got nothing back from them,” about, the guy you adore? he said unhappily, “not even a ‘Fuck you.’ ” “I compartmentalize,” Christie says. Though he doesn’t like the cold shoulder, Christie takes He told me once that he accepts Springsteen’s “limousine comfort in something that, I imagine, leaves his idol unhappy liberal” politics the way a spouse accepts an annoying tic in and confused: the people who grew up with Springsteen in her partner. “There is some of his work that is dour and down,” Freehold, the people who first came to listen to Springsteen, he says, “but the thing that attracted me to his music is how the people whose lives Springsteen explores in his songs— aspirational it is—aspirational to success, to fun, to being a they voted for Christie. Sixty-three percent of better person, to figuring out how to make white voters with only high-school diplomas your life better—and you can’t say that about went for Christie in his 2009 race against the “No one is beyond most people’s music. They become successincumbent Democrat, Jon Corzine. ful and then they become self-consumed and the reach of Christie isn’t surprised by Springsteen’s then boring and narcissistic.” Bruce!” the snub. He is, after all, a Republican, and Bruce He turns to Velez, who runs New Jersey’s Springsteen is known as an enemy of Repub- governor hard-pressed social-services agencies. “Hey, licans. Christie has cut taxes, demonized the screams. But you, you’re the commissioner of human serteachers unions, and slashed spending on vices, this is for you, pay attention.” Velez, Bruce is beyond social services. Springsteen makes it clear he who grew up in a trailer park in the Meadowbelieves that the wealthy should pay to fix his reach— lands (and who is a holdover from the Corthe tears in the social safety net. He doesn’t Springsteen will zine administration), says of Springsteen’s seem to care that Christie is the sort of Re- not talk to him. preoccupation with the poor: “I always find publican many Democrats find appealing, this part very inauthentic.” or that Christie breaks left on such issues as From the indifferent reaction of the crowd, Islamophobia (he stood up for a Muslim judicial appointee not too many people understand, or care, what Springsteen is under specious attack for attempting, his critics said, to turn saying. Christie takes solace in this. Springsteen moves into New Jersey into a Sharia state—if you can imagine such a “Jack of All Trades,” from the new album, a song that seemed thing) and drug-law enforcement (he is campaigning for a to me, when I first heard it, to be the angriest song Springnew law that would divert nonviolent drug offenders away steen has ever written. It is the story of a man who works from prison and toward treatment). But Springsteen seems with his hands in a country that assigns no value to such men actively uninterested in engaging with Christie. When I anymore. “I’ll hammer the nails / I’ll set the stone / I’ll harasked to interview Springsteen about Christie, his people vest your crops when they’re ripe and grown,” he sings, and gave me the brush-off. then complains that “the banker man grows fat” while “the Springsteen soon wheels into “Bishop Danced,” one of working man grows thin / It’s all happened before and it’ll his more obscure songs—Christie knows the words—and happen again.” He concludes with one of the coldest lines then “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City,” the first song he he’s ever written: “If I had me a gun / I’d find the bastards played for his now-legendary audition at Columbia Records, and shoot ’em on sight.” 40 years old but miraculously new-seeming and not at all Christie rolls his eyes. “He feels guilty,” he says. “He feels preposterous for the 62-year-old onstage to be singing. guilty that he has so much money, and he thinks it’s all a zeroAnd then comes that moment in every Springsteen concert sum game: in order to get poor people more money, it has to when he brings everything to a halt in order to provide his be taken away from the rich. I don’t mean to get all serious, diagnosis of exactly what ails the country. It’s a tradition, but this is what I was trying to say at the Reagan Library”—a like playing “Born to Run” with the house lights up. The reference to the speech, delivered last year at Nancy Reagan’s band quiets, and Springsteen steps to the mic. I’m curious invitation, that thrilled Republicans looking for an electoral to see how Christie handles the homily. Springsteen has savior. In the speech, Christie criticized President Obama for become an angry man over the past 10 years, angry at the “telling those who are scared and struggling that the only way sort of people—billionaires, to be precise—who gathered their lives can get better is to diminish the success of others” last summer in New York to try to persuade Christie to run and “insisting that we must tax and take and demonize those for president. who have already achieved the American dream.” Christie calls over to his brother, Todd—who made his He wants to talk more—but then Springsteen rips into money as a Wall Street trader—and says, “Attention please, “Candy’s Room.” Christie grabs an imaginary mic and begins it’s a lecture. Lecture time.” Springsteen begins to mumble shouting. in what the music critic Jody Rosen calls his “flat Dust Bowl ignores ChrisOkie accent,” and I can’t make out a word he’s saying. I ask tie at shows, he has, on one occasion, let his feelings Christie if he understands him. about the governor be known. In a letter to the Asbury “You want to know what he’s saying?,” Christie asks. “He’s telling us that rich people like him are fucking over poor Park Press published a year ago, Springsteen complained of people like us in the audience, except that us in the audience state budget cuts that “are eating away at the lower edges of aren’t poor, because we can afford to pay 98 bucks to him to the middle class, not just those already classified as in poverty, and are likely to continue to get worse over the next few see his show. That’s what he’s saying.”

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years.” He didn’t mention Christie by name, but the governor the wealthiest people in music. He should enjoy it. What’s was the person doing the cutting. funny is that his progression is what Republicans believe can “Why would I be shocked that Bruce would be unhappy happen. That’s what Republicans believe—hard work, talent, with budget cuts?,” Christie asks. “I’m not shocked that he ambition. We all know he’s the hardest-working man in show would be unhappy with certain programs cut that are not business. It’s a meritocracy. fully funded.” He goes on to suggest that Springsteen should “This is where he’s inconsistent,” he continued. “I’d love to have a better understanding of what it means to balance a have that conversation with him. How does he square this? budget. “If you talk to folks who have associated with him, Maybe he’ll have a way to square it that would make some he is, from a business perspective, a no-nonsense capitalist. sense to me, but from the outside, it doesn’t make sense to He runs his business like a capitalist, he’s the boss, he’s in me.” Christie argues that the only thing separating his phicharge, he’s the one who makes the most money, he deter- losophy from Springsteen’s is a single word. At concerts, mines how much money everybody else makes. He knows Springsteen has often told his fans: “Nobody wins unless about budgets.” everybody wins.” Christie thinks hard about what he would say to Spring“I think I would agree with that statement if he added a steen, how he would explain himself, if he ever had the word,” Christie told me. “ ‘Nobody wins unless everybody has chance. I passed an afternoon with the governor in his office the opportunity to win.’ If he said that, I’d be 100 percent on in the Capitol, in Trenton, not long before the concert, listen- board.” ing to Springsteen—we spent half an hour dissecting “ThunBut here’s what I told him I imagine Springsteen might der Road,” Christie’s favorite song—and trying to untangle his ask: “Governor, do you really believe it’s a level playing field? complex feelings about his idol. Christie believes fiercely that Do you really believe that marginalized people even have acSpringsteen would understand him if he only made the effort. cess to opportunity?” “My view on it is that I’m not a priority of his right now,” he “Look,” Christie said to the imaginary Springsteen. “I’m said. “At some point maybe I will be. If Bruce and I sat down attempting to level the playing field. We just disagree about and talked, he would reluctantly come to the conclusion that how to level it. I think we level it by improving an urban eduwe disagree on a lot less than he thinks.” cation system that is dominated by union interests that are He would certainly disagree with you on unions, I said. not working for the best interests of kids, but working in the “There’s a split in the union movement, interest of their next contract. You do it by between the private sector and the public bringing more private-sector business to the sector,” he answered. “The private sector is “Bruce is writing state.” where they’re having huge unemployment. about … the And I asked one more question: What You think they want to pay higher property would happen if Springsteen did speak to carpenter and taxes and bloated benefits for their publicyou, but only to say “You absolutely don’t sector union brothers who don’t want to the pipe fitter, understand me.” make any sacrifices? Those are not the guys the bricklayer. “Just because we disagree doesn’t mean Bruce is writing about. He’s writing about I don’t get him,” Christie said. “I get what And let me tell the carpenter and the pipe fitter, the brickhe’s trying to express and advocate for, I just layer.” He pauses for effect. “And let me tell you something. don’t agree that those are the most-effective you something. Those guys voted for me.” Those guys voted policies for our government.” I asked him if I asked him if he thought Springsteen was for me.” Springsteen’s rejection would trigger a freaka hypocrite. This suspicion has scratched at out. “If this was 10 years ago, maybe it would me ever since my discovery, a dozen years have. But I have much thicker skin now. I’m ago, while visiting Boston to interview one of his guitarists, more mature, I’m more prepared to have that kind of converSteven Van Zandt, that Springsteen and his band had parked sation with a guy I’ve idolized since I was 13 years old.” themselves at the Four Seasons. , Christie’s younger children are “I don’t think the fact that he’s successful and that he uses fading. So is his Cabinet. Velez tells him she has to his wealth as he sees fit is a proof point of the fact that he’s leave early so she can testify the next morning at the lost touch with who he is,” Christie said. “I think the exact opposite. I think his success is proof that what he writes state Senate’s budget-committee hearing. “Come on, you about in ‘Born to Run’ is absolutely achievable. He did it. He can’t leave,” Christie implores. Velez is making what Chrisgot out. I disagree with the people who say ‘Look at Bruce tie calls the Corzine move. The Corzine move is to leave a Springsteen show before it’s completely over. now, he doesn’t drive a beat-up car.’ ” “There was this moment early on when I realized that CorHe went on, “Your Four Seasons thing isn’t fair. Why wouldn’t you stay in a Four Seasons if you could afford to? zine just didn’t understand New Jersey,” Christie explains. “It Who would rather stay in a Residence Inn by Marriott if was a benefit show at the Count Basie Theatre, in Red Bank— you could afford to be more comfortable in a Four Seasons? it was the first time that Bruce did whole albums through. It I think he’s the personification of the American dream: the was the best show I’ve ever seen. It’s a small venue, maybe kid from Freehold whose father had nothing but a bunch of 600 or 700 people. I’m U.S. attorney then, I’m thinking about very difficult and seemingly unsatisfying jobs, and a mother running for governor, and I’m in the front row of the balcony. who was a working-class office worker, and now he’s one of Corzine is governor and he’s in the front row. And he left

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Chris Christie at his home in Mendham, New Jersey, with his wife, Mary Pat; his daughter Bridget; and his collection of ticket stubs from Springsteen concerts. Photographed September 12, 2009.

during the encores. He just left. You could see him look at his watch. He left during ‘Raise Your Hand’—Bruce is on top of the piano screaming—and it just struck me that unless there’s an emergency, which I found out later there wasn’t, you don’t leave. You just don’t leave.” Just after the Count Basie Theatre concert, Christie was introduced to Steven Van Zandt’s mother, who asked him whether he was going to run for governor. He told her he hadn’t yet decided. “She said, ‘Did you see the governor here tonight? Did you see that he left early?’ I said I did, and told her that this was because he’s not from Jersey. And she said, ‘That’s right!’ ” Springsteen, onstage in Newark, turns to “Rocky Ground,” the song to which Christie allegedly fell asleep at the Garden. “Rise up, shepherd, rise up,” Springsteen sings. Christie’s response: “Rise up and stay awake! I’m fully awake!” Then Springsteen rips through “Born to Run,” “Dancing in the Dark,” and, to our delight, the riotous “Rosalita.” And then he launches into “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” a song that tells the story of Scooter and the Big Man—Springsteen and his saxophonist Clarence Clemons, the central figure of the E Street Band, who died less than a year ago. “You think it’s too soon?,” Christie asks me. “Yes,” I say.

“Just watch what he does with this,” he says. Clemons’s death, Christie says, crushed him. “I felt like all the energy was drained out of my body. I just lay there silent on the bed, and [my wife] said to me, ‘I just want to understand what you’re feeling,’ and I said, ‘My youth is over. He’s dead and anything that is left of me being young is over.’ ” Springsteen reaches the crucial moment of the song: “The change was made uptown / And the Big Man joined the band” and suddenly everything stops. A video tribute appears on huge screens above the stage, and an immense, sustained roar fills the arena. Christie has seen this before, at the Garden. “It’s just … Bruce,” he says. “He’s a genius.” He looks out at Springsteen in wonder. The show ends on this transcendent note. Christie says his goodbyes and makes his way out of the suite. He is mobbed. Everyone wants a handshake, a hug, or a picture. We make our way down to the loading dock. Springsteen is somewhere nearby. Christie looks in the direction of the stage, turns around, and makes his way out. State troopers have his motorcade ready. He gets into the car and drives away. Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic.

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, , has a new project: charting his every bodily function in minute detail. What heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s discovering may be the future of health care.

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who are careful about and will enable scientists to create, among many other things, their weight, Larry Smarr once spent two a working computational model of your body. Your particuweeks measuring everything he put in his lar body, mind you, not just some generalized atlas of the mouth. He charted each serving of food in human frame, but a working model of your unique corpus, grams or teaspoons, and broke it down into grounded in your own genome, and—using data collected by these categories: protein, carbohydrates, fat, nanosensors and transmitted by smartphone—refreshed consodium, sugar, and fiber. tinually with measurements from your body’s insides. This Larry used the data to fine-tune his diet. With input nailed information stream will be collated with similar readings down, he turned to output. He started charting the calories from millions of other similarly monitored bodies all over he burns, in workouts on an elliptical trainer and in the steps the planet. Mining this enormous database, software will he takes each day. If the number on his pedometer falls short produce detailed guidance about diet, supplements, exerof his prescribed daily 7,000, he will find an excuse to go for cise, medication, or treatment—guidance based not on the a walk. Picture a tall, slender man with the supple, slightly current practice of lumping symptoms together into broad deflated look of someone who has lost a lot of weight, plod- categories of disorders, but on a precise reading of your own ding purposefully in soft shoes along the sunny sidewalks of body’s peculiarities and its status in real time. La Jolla, California. “And at that point,” says Larry, in a typically bold proOf course, where outputs are concerned, calories are nouncement that would startle generations of white-coated only part of the story, and it is here that Larry begins to dif- researchers, “you now have, for the first time in history, a fer from your typical health nut. Because human beings also scientific basis for medicine.” produce waste products, foremost among them … well, poop. When Socrates exhorted his followers, “Know thyself,” he Larry collects his and has it analyzed. He is deep into the could not have imagined an acolyte so avid, or so literal, as biochemistry of his feces, keeping detailed charts of their Larry. You’ve heard of people who check their pulse every microbial contents. Larry has even been known to haul care- few minutes? Amateurs. When Larry works out, an armband fully boxed samples out of his kitchen refrigerator to show records skin temperature, heat flux, galvanic skin response, incautious visitors. He is eloquent on the subject. He could and acceleration in three dimensions. When he sleeps, a sell the stuff. headband monitors the patterns of his sleep every 30 sec“Have you ever figured how information-rich your stool onds. He has his blood drawn as many as eight times a year, is?,” Larry asks me with a wide smile, his gray-green eyes and regularly tracks 100 separate markers. He is on a firstintent behind rimless glasses. “There are about 100 billion name basis with his ultrasound and MRI technicians, who bacteria per gram. Each bacterium has DNA whose length is provide him with 3-D images of his body, head to toe. Regular typically one to 10 megabases—call it 1 milcolonoscopies record the texture and color lion bytes of information. This means human of his innards. And then there are the stool stool has a data capacity of 100,000 terabytes Larry envisions samples—last year Larry sent specimens to of information stored per gram. That’s many a planetary a lab for analysis nine times. orders of magnitude more information denLarry is a mild, gentle soul, someone sity than, say, in a chip in your smartphone or computer that generally more interested in talking about your personal computer. So your stool is far will use you than about himself. He does not go more interesting than a computer.” out of his way to get your attention, and nanosensors Larry’s fascination is less with feces themnothing about him is remotely annoying or to collect data, selves than with the data they yield. He is not evangelical. But if you show an interest in a doctor or a biochemist, he’s a computer continually his project and start asking questions—look scientist—one of the early architects of the refreshed, from out. Beneath the calm and the deference, Internet, in fact. Today he directs a world- your body’s Larry is an intellectual pitchman of the first class research center on two University of order. His quest to know burns with the California campuses, San Diego and Irvine, insides. pure intellectual passion of a precocious called the California Institute for Telecom10-year-old. He visibly shudders with pleamunications and Information Technology, or “Calit2” (the sure at a good, hard question; his shoulders subtly rise and 2 represents the repeated I and T initials). The future is ar- square, and his forehead leans into the task. Because Larry riving faster at Calit2 than it is in most places. Larry says his is on a mission. He’s out to change the world and, along the eyes are focused “10 years ahead,” which in computer terms way, defeat at least one incurable disease: his own. (More is more like a century or two, given how rapidly the machines on this in a moment.) are transforming modern life. Intent on that technological Larry is in the vanguard of what some call the “quantified horizon, Larry envisions a coming revolution in medicine, life,” which envisions replacing the guesswork and supposiand he is bringing his intellect and his institute to bear on it. tion presently guiding individual health decisions with specifAt 63, he is engaged in a computer-aided study of the ic guidance tailored to the particular details of each person’s human body—specifically, his body. It’s the start of a pro- body. Because of his accomplishments and stature in his field, cess that he believes will help lead, within 10 years, to the Larry cannot easily be dismissed as a kook. He believes in imdevelopment of “a distributed planetary computer of enor- mersing himself in his work. Years ago, at the University of mous power,” one that is composed of a billion processors Illinois, when he was taking part in an experiment to unravel

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complex environmental systems with supercomputers, Larry ’ with that most Ameriinstalled a coral-reef aquarium in his home, complete with can of preoccupations, losing weight. Larry doesn’t shrimp and 16 other phyla of small marine critters. It was update the photo each time he renews his California maddeningly fragile. The coral kept peeling off the rocks and driver’s license, preferring to keep, as a reminder, the one takdying. He eventually discovered that just five drops of molyb- en soon after his arrival at UCSD 12 years ago, with his wife, denum, a metallic element, in a 250-gallon tank once a week Janet. It shows a 51-year-old Larry, one with more and lonsolved the problem. That such a tiny factor played so decisive ger hair, a wide, round face, and an ample second chin. Call a role helped him better grasp the complexity of the situation. him Jolly Larry. He had just arrived from Illinois, a place he And as he fought to sustain the delicate ecosystem in his tank, now refers to as “the epicenter of the obesity epidemic,” and he developed a personal feel for the larger he had a girth to match his oversize profesproblem his team was trying to solve. sional reputation. (Deep-fried, sugarcoated Today, he is preoccupied with his own eco- “Have you ever pastries were a particular favorite of his back system. The way a computer scientist tends then.) Arriving in La Jolla, Jolly Larry found figured how to see it, a genome is a given individual’s basic himself surrounded by jogging, hiking, bikprogram. Mapping one used to cost billions. information-rich ing, surfing, organic-vegetable-eating superToday it can be done for thousands, and soon your stool is?,” humans. It was enough to shame him into the price will drop below $1,000. Once people Larry asks. action. If he was going to fit in on this sunny know their genetic codes, and begin thornew campus, he would have to shape up. oughly monitoring their bodily systems, they “Human stool has So Jolly Larry started working out, readwill theoretically approach the point where a data capacity of ing diet books, and stepping on the scale computers can “know” a lot more about them 100,000 terabytes every day. At first, his charts were disapthan any doctor ever could. In such a world, pointing. Like countless strivers before him, of information people will spot disease long before they feel he dropped some weight, but not much, and sick—as Larry did. They will regard the doctor stored per gram.” it kept wanting to come back. Three or four as more consultant than oracle. popular books on weight loss left him mostNot everyone sees this potential revoluly confused, but they did convey a central tion as a good one. Do people really want or need to know truth: losing weight was only 20 percent about exercise. The this much about themselves? Is such a preoccupation with other 80 percent was about what he put in his mouth. What health even healthy? What if swimming in oceans of bio-data triggered his breakthrough was the advice of Barry Sears, causes more harm than good? the biochemist who created the Zone Diet, which pressed “Frankly, I’d rather go river rafting,” says Dr. H. Gilbert Larry’s buttons precisely. Sears proposed that to diet more Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute effectively, one needed to know more. Larry decided to study for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and the author of up on his body chemistry. Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health. Few people in history have been better positioned to act “Data is not information. Information is not knowledge. And on such advice. Larry had begun his professional life as an knowledge is certainly not wisdom.” Welch believes that indi- astrophysicist, trying to unravel the core puzzles of the unividuals who monitor themselves as closely as Larry does are verse. In 1975, when he was working toward his doctorate at pretty much guaranteed to find something “wrong.” Contra- the University of Texas, one of his advisers suggested that he dictory as it sounds, he says abnormality is normal. get a top-secret government security clearance: behind the “It brings to mind the fad a few years ago with getting walls of America’s nuclear-weapons program were not only full-body CT scans,” Welch says. “Something like 80 per- some of the nation’s premier physicists, but also the world’s cent of those who did it found something abnormal about first supercomputers, hundreds of times faster than anything themselves. The essence of life is variability. Constant available on any college campus. Larry got his clearance, and monitoring is a recipe for all of us to be judged ‘sick.’ Judg- in the following years, while working as a fellow at Princeton ing ourselves sick, we seek intervention.” And intervention, and at Harvard, he would disappear during summers behind usually with drugs or surgery, he warns, is never risk-free. the classified walls of the Lawrence Livermore National LabHumbler medical practitioners, aware of the sordid history oratory, in the San Francisco Bay Area. There he would work of some medical practices (see: bloodletting, lobotomy, tre- 16-hour shifts on some of the most difficult problems in his panning), weigh the consequences of intervention carefully. field—but with a crucial difference. Working with a computer Doing no harm often demands doing nothing. The human at one of his universities, Larry might set it a task to compute body is, after all, remarkably sturdy and self-healing. As overnight. He would go home, and when he returned the Welch sees it, “Arming ourselves with more data is guar- next morning, the task would be nearing completion. Workanteed to unleash a lot of intervention” on people who are ing with the new Cray supercomputer at Livermore, he could basically healthy. get the same result in a minute and a half. Not to mention creating an epidemic of anxiety. In other When he’d return to his university posts in the fall, and words, the “quantified life” might itself belong to the catalog rejoin his colleagues working at a comparative snail’s pace, of affliction, filed under Looking too closely, hazards of. he’d tell them, “You know, guys, we could be using superIn that sense, the story of Larry Smarr might be less a pio- computers to solve the laws of physics, instead of trying to do neering saga than a cautionary tale. these closed-form static solutions that you do.” They would

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CYBERWAR AGAINST IRAN. DRONE STRIKES AROUND THE GLOBE.

Welcome to America’s covert wars of the 21st Century.

B e s t s e l l i n g a u t h o r a n d a c c l a i m e d N e w Yo r k T i m e s c o r r e s p o n d e n t David Sanger takes readers deep inside the secret meetings and c l a s s i f i e d p r o g r a m s t h a t d e f i n e O b a m a ’s f o r e i g n p o l i c y.

“One of the finest journalists of our time.” —Michael Beschloss CROWN

look at him as if he was crazy. “What are you talking about?” and mooch off of our supercomputers because you don’t have they’d ask. “That can’t be done.” To them, it seemed impos- the wit to put them in your universities where people can sible. The supercomputer enabled not just faster work, but get access to them. Have I got that right?’ And I said, ‘Pretty a different style and language of experimentation. But when much.’ And he asks, ‘How did you guys win the war?’ ” he tried to explain to his colleagues, who were still working Larry brought that question home with him to his perch mostly with pencils and paper, they scratched their heads. “It at the University of Illinois. There, in 1983, he helped draft was like I was living in two different worlds,” Larry says. “The Black Proposal,” an unusually concise recommendation When one of the first Cray computers outside of secret (in a black cover) for a $55 million National Science Foundanuclear programs was set up in Munich, Larry started spend- tion supercomputer center. When it was funded, along with ing his summers there. “And in about ’82, we were at a beer four other NSF centers, Larry and others argued for using the garden and it was probably my second glass of beer, and I was protocols of the military’s (the precursor to the Inbeing hosted by a German astrophysicist, world-class,” Larry ternet) to link the centers, so that civilian researchers across recalls. “He asks, ‘Tell me something. My father helped build the nation could use the fastest computers in America for the trains Germany relied on during the war. And here in our basic research. The linking proposal was controversial not occupied country, you guys, you Americans, come over here only because it took on the cult of secrecy surrounding the most-advanced computers in America, but because it specifically recommended that the NSF include only computer networks using TCP/IP, a universal computer protocol designed to facilitate not secrecy, but collaboration. TCP/IP allowed Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity different kinds of computers to exchange data seamlessly. At the time, the large computer companies— , IBM, General In first grade when we learned to sing America Electric, etc.—preferred a market model where manufacturers competed to create large fiefdoms, networks that used only their own machines. By adopting Larry’s proposal, the The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner NSF enabled computer networks to plug into the system, a And say the Pledge of Allegiance to America critical step toward today’s Internet. By the time, years later, that Larry heeded Barry Sears’s suggestion to learn more about his body’s chemistry, Larry We put our hands over our first-grade hearts had at his disposal at UCSD a supercomputer with a capacity We felt proud to be part of America many times greater than that of any he’d worked on at Livermore. His research interests had shifted from astrophysics to the impact computers were having on all kinds of fields, I said One Nation Invisible until corrected including medicine. Calit2 already had numerous grants to Maybe I was right about America study “digitally enabled genomic medicine,” so in 2010 Larry signed himself up as a test subject. As his personal quest to lose weight evolved into an effort to understand human bioSchool days school days dear old Golden Rule days chemistry, his own body became the equivalent of the coralWhen we learned how to behave in America reef tank he’d once kept in his living room. Larry had already radically changed his diet, breaking his intake into subcategories, aiming for a caloric split of 40 perWhat to wear how to smoke how to despise our parents cent low-glycemic carbohydrates, 30 percent lean protein, Who didn’t understand us or America and 30 percent omega-3–enriched fat. His meal portions were about half of ordinary restaurant portions. Following Only later understanding the Banner and the Beautiful what was essentially Barry Sears’s Zone Diet, Larry had lost a pound every 10 weeks, dropping 20 pounds in four years. Lived on opposite sides of the street in America Most people would have been happy with that. But his dieting taught Larry something. If he wanted good health, he Only later discovering this land is two lands could not simply trust how he felt and wing it. If he wanted to understand what was happening in his body, he had to One triumphant bully one hopeful America examine the data. And despite his weight loss, the data were now telling him something that didn’t seem to make sense. Sometimes I still put my hand tenderly on my heart By his calculations, the pounds should still have been falling off, but they weren’t. Somehow or other still carried away by America According to his measurements, he had doubled his strength and tripled the number of steps he took each day. —Alicia Ostriker His periods, the most valuable periods of sleep, accounted for more than half the time he spent in the sack—twice Alicia Ostriker’s most recent collection is The Book of Seventy (2009). the typical proportion for a man of his age. His weight was She lives in Princeton, New Jersey. steady. But Larry wanted to know more. He had been getting 116

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blood tests once or twice a year as part of his normal health abdomen. At his doctor’s office, he was diagnosed with an maintenance, but by the end of 2010 he was sending off blood acute bout of diverticulitis, an intestinal disease caused by samples more often and graphing dozens of markers, which inflammation. He was put on a 10-day antibiotic program enabled him to at least better define the mystery. The Zone to treat the ailment. To Larry, this perfectly illustrated the Diet is designed to reduce inflammation, and because he problem. Doctors were ready, eager, and well-equipped to followed it faithfully, Larry expected his blood-test inflam- address a clinical symptom, but unwilling to wade with him mation score to be low. But the C-reactive into his charts, which, although undeniably protein (CRP), which rises in response to abstract, had foretold the problem! It was at A few weeks inflammation, was high. this point that Larry decided to take over his “I had discovered that my body is chroni- after doctors own health care. cally inflamed—just the opposite of what dismissed his He asked to see the written report from I expected!” he wrote in an account of his his last colonoscopy, and underwent another. project published last year in a special is- graphs as He began testing his stool, recognizing that sue of Strategic News Service, a computer/ “academic,” Larry all of us are, in fact, “superorganisms,” that telecommunications newsletter. (The article felt a severe pain our gastrointestinal, or GI, tracts are a colwas prefaced by an enthusiastic note from laboration between human digestive cells the publisher, Mark R. Anderson, who said in his abdomen. and the trillions of bacteria that line our inthat it “may be the most important Special testines. The stool samples provided detailed Letter we have ever published. For many of you reading it, it charts of the workings of these microorganisms, which is may also save your lives, or extend them.”) Larry wrote: what Larry means when he calls his poop “data-rich.” He was learning more about the biochemistry of his own body Even more intriguing: after I had been tracking my CRP for than any patient had ever known, and the numbers contintwo years, I noticed that it had suddenly more than doubled ued to add up in an alarming way. They suggested that he in less than a year. Troubled, I showed my graphs to my docwas suffering not from diverticulitis, but from some kind of tors and suggested that something bad was about to happen. inflamed-bowel disease. He then went looking for an expert Here you should try to imagine the average physician’s to help him interpret the data. He didn’t have to look far: reaction when a patient, outwardly healthy, arrives with de- Dr. William J. Sandborn had recently left the Mayo Clinic to tailed graphs of his body chemistry, concerned that some- take over the GI Division of UCSD’s School of Medicine. thing evil is stalking his insides. “I think he felt like he wasn’t really being taken seriously,” “Do you have a symptom?,” Larry was asked. says Sandborn. “So he came over and we looked, and we end“No,” he answered. “I feel fine.” ed up finding some degree of inflammation that was pointing He was assured that charts like his were “academic,” and in the direction of Crohn’s disease, but he wasn’t really havnot useful for clinical practice. The doctors told him to come ing many symptoms. So the question then became: Is this back if and when he found something actually wrong with some kind of early subclinical Crohn’s disease? Should we him, as opposed to finding anomalies in his charts. even go as far as treating it, or just wait?” I ask Larry a question his doctors might have been too Larry’s impressive quest to fine-tune his body had led him polite to ask: “Are you a hypochondriac?” to this: an early diagnosis of Crohn’s disease, an incurable “A hypochondriac is someone who imagines that they have condition. It isn’t fatal, but it has a long list of uncomfortable things that are wrong with them and worries about that,” he and sometimes painful symptoms that tend to flare up from says. “I am the opposite of a hypochondriac. I don’t make any time to time; they center around the GI tract, but may include assumptions about what might be right or wrong with me, eye inflammation, swollen joints, fever, fatigue, and others. and I don’t imagine it. I measure it.” Apart from that one episode of abdominal pain, Larry was Larry was beginning to have serious doubts about the way still feeling fine. But the graphs showed, and his new doctor medicine is practiced in this country. “Here’s the way I look more or less confirmed, that he was sick. at it; the average American has something like two 20-minute And that part about its being incurable? Let’s just say that visits a year with a doctor,” he explains. “So you have 40 min- in Larry, Crohn’s disease has encountered a very dedicated utes a year that that doctor is going to help you make good adversary. decisions. You have 500,000 minutes a year on your own, and leaned heavily on the steam engine every one of those, you are making decisions. So we’re already as an all-purpose analogy—e.g., contents under pressure in a situation where you are in charge of your ship—your will explode (think Marx’s ideas on revolution or Freud’s body—and you are making a lot of pretty horrible decisions, or else two-thirds of the United States’ citizens wouldn’t be about repressed desire)—today we prefer our metaphors to overweight or obese. You wouldn’t have the CDC saying that be electronic. We talk about neural “circuitry,” about “pro42 percent of Americans may be obese by 2030, and a third cessing” information, or about how genes “encode” our of all Americans may develop diabetes by 2050. That’s the physical essence. In this worldview, our bodies are computresult of a lot of bad decisions that people are individually ers, and DNA functions as our basic program, our “operating system.” making on their own.” This is certainly how Larry, the computer scientist, talks A few weeks after his doctors dismissed his graphs as “academic,” Larry felt a severe pain in the left side of his about the human body. In this context, all of human history

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Instead of identifying the 1 person or 2 people out of every can be seen as a progression from a world that was data100 who would benefit, the whole population with the critepoor to one that is data-rich. Starting with those early sumria that were tested is deemed treatable … What constitutes mers working in secrecy at Livermore, Larry has witnessed evidencebased medicine today is what is good for a large firsthand the exponential progress of computing power population, not for any particular individual. posited by Moore’s Law, which states that the computer-chip transistor count should double roughly every two years. So Pharmaceutical companies don’t mind. And as long as the when Larry talks about the potential for computers to help us understand our bodies, he isn’t talking about their show- harmful side effects are within acceptable limits, the Food ing us more isolated details about an unfathomably complex and Drug Administration doesn’t mind, either. Some patients will be helped. All of them will be buying the pills, and all system; he’s talking about knowing everything. “We are going to know—once you know each of your cells’ will be subjected to follow-up tests, some of them uncomfort6 billion genome bases, with all the imaging down to the able and most of them unnecessary. What if there were a way, micron level, and when you know every damn gene and ev- Topol asks, of knowing, before prescribing the drug, which ery bacterium—at a certain point, there is no more data to 2 percent would be most likely to benefit from it? In an obserknow,” he says. “So certainly by 2030, there is not going to be vation that Larry wholeheartedly endorses, Topol writes: that much more to learn … I mean, you are going to get the Fortunately, our ability to get just that information is rapidly wiring diagram, basically.” Once they are armed with the wiremerging, [and we are] beginning an era characterized by the ing diagram, Larry sees no reason why individuals cannot right drug, the right dose, and the right screen for the right maintain their health the way modern car owners maintain patients, with the right doctor, at the right cost. their automobiles. Getting there will mean essentially dismantling the healthLarry actually concedes the point made by Dartmouth’s Welch—that presented with enough data, pretty much every- care industry as we know it. (Thus the creative destruction one is going to find something wrong with them. He just of Topol’s title.) Or, as Larry puts it: “A lot of enormously disputes that this would be a bad thing. “All of us do have wealthy, established, powerful institutions in our society are something beginning to go wrong, but then, so do our auto- going to be destroyed.” And why not? Over the past 20 years, computers have been toppling and rebuildmobiles,” Larry says. “In today’s world of ing industries one by one, from retail sales automobile preventive maintenance, we (Walmart and Amazon), to banking (ATMs don’t wait for our cars to break down and When Larry talks and online services), to finance (high-speed then go to the ‘car doctor.’ Every 10,000 or about computers online investing), to entertainment (Web 20,000 miles, we go in and get an exhaus- helping us streaming, downloads, YouTube, etc.), to tive look at all the key variables since the last publishing (e-books and news aggregators). check. If they find something wrong with my understand We’re just babes in this new digital era, and car—which will be different from what they our bodies, he’s it will eventually upend almost every field of find about yours—then they take appropriate talking about human endeavor. action and I go back to driving a ‘healthy’ car. knowing Larry sees medicine as a stubborn holdOccasionally, something is discovered that out. Current efforts to reform the system— indicates a bunch of cars need to be called in everything. for instance, the Obama administration’s and get a certain item replaced. I can imaginitiative to digitize all health records by ine that occasionally, as a new DNA segment is related to some disease, people with that DNA signature 2014—are just toes in the water. Medicine has barely begun to take advantage of the million-fold increase in the amount will be called in for ‘preventive maintenance.’ ” If Larry is right, then our descendants may view early- of data available for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. 21st-century medical practices, which we consider a triumph Take the standard annual physical, with its weigh-in, bloodof reason over superstition, in the same way we now view pressure check, and handful of numbers gleaned from se18th- and 19th-century folk remedies. A particularly likely lect tests performed on a blood sample. To Larry, these data candidate for scorn in an age of “quantified” health care is our points give your doctor little more than a “cartoon” image of one-pill-fits-all approach to prescription drugs. In his book your body. Now imagine peering at the same image drawn The Creative Destruction of Medicine, the physician-author from a galaxy of billions of data points. The cartoon becomes Eric Topol cites such dosing as an example of medicine that is a high-definition, 3-D picture, with every system and organ “population-based,” rather than “patient-centered.” He notes in the body measured and mapped in real time. the widespread use of statins to lower LDL cholesterol, a factor , prototype of this kind of highin heart disease. Topol doesn’t deny the cholesterol-lowering definition image already exists at Calit2. It is, of course, effect of these drugs, but he argues that double-blind testing of Larry. also shows that this effect benefits only a tiny fraction of those Inside a “cave” fashioned from large HD screens (each treated. One of the most effective statins, Crestor, has been found to reduce the incidence of stroke, heart attack, or death with dual rear projectors) and linked to 18 gaming PCs to from 4 percent of patients in the placebo group to 2 percent create a graphics supercomputer, Larry and I step into a stunof the group taking the statin. And yet these drugs are widely ning image assembled from an MRI scan of his torso. The room, the size of a walk-in closet, is lined with giant screens, administered to patients considered at risk. Topol writes:

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front, sides, and back. More screens angle from these walls toward a floor that is illuminated from above. Two curved, waist-high metal railings offer support, because viewers at the center of this visual world can easily lose their balance. A sensor strapped to your forehead tells the computer where you are looking, so as you turn your head it smoothly blends the images on the screens to create a seamless 360-degree alternative world. (This is clearly the future of video games and cinema.) I had to lean on the metal bars to remind myself I was not someplace else. Once we were in position, Jürgen P. Schulze, a Calit2 research scientist, punched up a display of Larry’s own coiled, 63-year-old entrails. I felt as if I could reach out and touch the wrinkled contours of his intestines and arteries. Larry’s inner 10-year-old rejoices. “Look!” he says, lifting and opening his hands. “This is me!” He points to the source of his health concerns, the precise six-inch stretch of his sigmoid colon that is visibly distorted and inflamed. This is Larry’s discovery, and his enemy. I note that the display breaks new ground in the annals of self-disclosure: Larry is literally turning himself insideout for a journalist. He does worry a little about making

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public such intimate details, but this openness is part of how he believes medicine ought to be—and ultimately will be— practiced. The current consensus that medical records should be strictly private, subject to the scrutiny of only doctor and patient, will be yet another casualty if Larry’s health-care vision comes to pass. “A different way to organize society is to say it is human-focused, human-centered, patient-centered, and that there are no legal or financial repercussions from sharing data,” he says. “There is a huge societal benefit from sharing the data, getting it out from the firewalls, letting software look across millions of these things.” The way the system works now, when a technician examines the MRI of a patient’s abdomen, in two dimensions, on a single screen, she compares and contrasts it with perhaps thousands or even tens of thousands of other images she has seen. She then writes a report to the physician explaining, on the basis of her memory and experience, what is normal or abnormal in what she sees. But “software can go in, volumetrically, over, say, a million different abdomens,” says Larry, gesturing at the image of his own innards, “and come up with exquisite distribution functions of how things are arranged, what is abnormal or normal, on every little thing in there. In my case, what I have found is inflammation. Unaddressed, it may lead to structural damage and maybe eventually surgery, cutting that part out. So I am going to have another MRI in three months, and that will tell me whether the things I am doing have made it better, or if it is the same, or has gotten worse.” It’s that sense of control that appeals to Larry as much as anything. “The way we do things now,” he says, “the technician will examine it and write up a report, which goes to my doctor, and then he explains it all to me. So I am disembodied. Patients are completely severed from having any relationship with their body. You are helpless.” Shedding that sense of disembodiment and helplessness is, in theory, one of the most attractive features of Larry Smarr’s quantified self. Individuals will understand their own bodies and take care of themselves; doctors will merely assist with the maintenance and finetuning. With that sense of personal ownership established, Larry believes, the average American won’t continue to drink 500 cans of soda a year, or ingest some 60 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup. After all, educational campaigns about cigarettes have helped lower the share of smokers in America to below 20 percent. If we made such inroads into the obesity epidemic, Larry says, “we would have a national celebration.” For his part, Larry is no longer dis-

embodied. He has had key snippets of his DNA sequenced, assisted world of medical care, Dr. Welch allows: “I can conand will have the whole thing completely sequenced by the ceive of this happening. But is this the model we want for end of this year. In just what he has seen so far, he has dis- good health? What does it mean to be healthy? Is it somecovered telltale markers linked with late-onset Crohn’s dis- thing we learn from a machine? Is it the absence of abnormalease. He has developed his own theory of the disease, based ity? Health is a state of mind. I don’t think constantly monion his reading of the most recent medical literature and his toring yourself is the right path to that state of mind. Data growing perception of himself as a superorganism. In a nut- alone is not the answer. We went through all of this with the shell, he suspects that some of the essential bacteria that Human Genome Project. You heard it then: if we could just should line the walls of his intestine at the get all of this data, all of our problems would point where it is inflamed have been killed be solved. It turned out that the predictive off, probably by some antibiotic regimen he “Look!,” Larry power of mapping the genome wasn’t all that underwent years ago. So he has begun chart- says, opening his great, because there are other factors at play: ing, through stool samples, the bewilderingly hands to the the environment, behavior, and chance. Rancomplex microbial ecology of his intestines. domness has a lot to do with it.” He showed me a detailed analysis of one HD screens And these are not the only reasons to be such sample on his computer, drawing my surrounding us in skeptical of Larry’s vision. Researchers will attention to the word firmicute. “So, what every direction. certainly continue to map the human body the hell is a firmicute?” he asks rhetorically. in ever-greater detail, enabling doctors to “This is me!” “And in particular, it is in these two groups, spot emerging illness earlier and to design Clostridium leptum and Clostridium coccoides. drug treatments with far more precision. But So I go back, and I go, ‘Clostri-Clostri-Clostri, that rings a in the end, how many people will want to track their bodily bell. I had it in my last stool measurement.’ ” He pulls up an functions the way Larry does, even if software greatly simolder chart on his screen. “Here is my stool measurement plifies the task? Larry says the amount of time he has spent from January 1, 2012. And here are my bacteria. Lactobacillus monitoring and studying himself has grown a lot, but that and Bifidobacteria: that is what you get in, like, a yogurt and it still adds up to less time each day than most Americans stuff like that, right? Clostridiums: you can have them from spend watching television. But even if that time is radically zero to four-plus. Four-plus is what they should be. And you reduced by software, how many of us, understanding that can see I am deficient here on a number of them,” he says, our decrypted genome may reveal terrible news about our pointing to low numbers on the chart. “So then I went back future—Alzheimer’s, crippling neuromuscular diseases, over time and got them plotted, and they never were above schizophrenia, and so on—will even want to know? two, and now they are collapsed down to one. So it looks like When I ask Larry this question, he frowns and says, “I I am losing. So what do Clostridia do? Because I am missing can’t understand that.” The very idea stumps him. To him, them—I am missing that service.” not wanting to know something—even bad news—just doesn’t You may note the Alice in Wonderland quality of all this. compute. His whole life is about finding out. He’s a scientist Every question Larry seeks to answer raises new questions, to his core. every door he opens leads to a level of more-bewildering “I hear it a lot, but I don’t understand it. Because whatever complexity. One could easily conclude that these levels nev- it is, if you suspect that you are going to have, say, Alzheimer’s er bottom out, that the intricacy of the human body, com- within five years or 10 years, then that should focus your mind posed of its trillions of cells—each dancing to the tune of a on what it is you want to accomplish in the days that you have genetic program but also subject to random intersections left.” Then, after a moment more thought, he adds, “And if you with outside forces such as radiation, chemicals, and physi- don’t know, those days are going to just slide by, in which you cal accidents—is for all practical purposes infinite, and hence could have done something that you always meant to do.” permanently beyond our full comprehension. But Larry, He knows that the way he lives and works might seem with his astrophysics background, is utterly undaunted by eccentric or even a little crazy to others. “Most of my life, complexity. This is the gift of the computer age: things once people have thought I was crazy at any given point,” he says. considered too numerous to count can now be counted. And “Maybe being crazy simply means you are clear-sighted and Larry believes that questions about how the human body you are looking at the fact that you are in a period of rapid functions are ultimately finite. change. I see the world as it will be, and of course, that is a In his own case, Larry has zeroed in on what he believes is different world than the one we live in now.” the specific missing bacterial component behind the immuneLarry is in a hurry to get there. He sees himself 10 years system malfunction causing his bowel inflammation. He’s be- down the road as someone healthy and active and strong, ingun a regimen of supplements to replace that component. If stead of someone struggling to manage the increasingly unit doesn’t work, he’ll devise a new plan. He isn’t aiming for comfortable and debilitating effects of Crohn’s. As he makes immortality—not yet, although, as far as he is concerned, it’s his way down the supplements aisle of his Whole Foods Marnot out of the question. As we develop our ability to replace ket, looking for a very specific assortment of probiotics with broken-down body parts with bioengineered organs, and as which to mix his remedial cocktail, he’s not just trying to save we work toward a complete understanding of human sys- himself. He’s trying to save you. tems and biochemistry … Why not? Reflecting on Larry’s vision of a patient-centric, computer- Mark Bowden is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. THE ATLANTIC

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�� He saw deputies in their serious hats coming through the restaurant from the kitchen, four white guys who looked like they meant business.

Ice Man By Elmore Leonard

turned twenty he rode three bulls, big ones, a good 1,800 pounds each—Cyclone, Spanish Fly, and Bulldozer—rode all their bucks and twists, Victor’s free hand waving the air until the buzzer honked at eight seconds for each ride, not one of the bulls able to throw him. He rolled off their rumps, stumbled, keeping his feet, and walked to the gate not bothering to look at the bulls, see if they still wanted to kill him. He won Top Bull Rider, 4,000 dollars and a new saddle at the All-Indian National Rodeo in Palm Springs. It came to … Jesus, like 200 dollars a second. That afternoon Victorio Colorado, the name he went by in the program, was the man.

as Victor to celebrate with two Mojave boys, Nachee and Billy Cosa, brought along from Arizona when the boss, Kyle McCoy, moved his business to Indio, near Palm Springs. The Mojave boys handled Kyle’s fighting bulls, bringing them from the pens to the chute where Victor, a Mimbreño Apache, would slip aboard from the fence, wrap his hand in the bull rope tight as he could get it, and believe he was ready to ride. He’d take a breath, say “Let me out of here,” and the gate would swing open and a ton of pissed-off bull would come flying out. “His mind made up,” he told the Mojave boys at Mi Nidito in Palm Springs, “to kill anybody’s on his back. See, he behaves in the chute. What he’s doing, he’s saving his dirty tricks till he has room to buck you off and stomp you, kick out your teeth.” 122

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They were at a table on the bar side Never changed his expression. He had of the place, Mi Nidito, a good one, some size, but looked ten years past herding Agua Caliente Indians here after the ro- cows. It was the man’s U.S. Government deo. Victor was telling stories his Mojave jacket told Victor he was none of their buddies had heard, but they were happy, business. Victor said to his buddies: Victor was buying the tequila shooters “What Kyle did, he’d look for heifers and beers. Now he was telling them were always pissed off and started with what he’d learned about bulls working two of the meanest girls he could find. He for Kyle McCoy since he was a kid: how named one Stormy, after a stripper he’d to ride the bucks tight, feel what the see he went to New Orleans, and the othbull was about to do next. “I ask Kyle, er one Julie, after the movie star was his ‘What’s that mean? Feel what he’s gonna girlfriend on and off, everybody thinking do?’ I’m asking him how to ride a bull they’d get married till she walked out on twenty times bigger than me. Kyle goes, him. Kyle was spending more time get‘You become one with the bull or land ting his heifers laid than whatever he on your ass.’ I had to figure out for my- was doing with Julie Reyes.” self what he meant. Two years in a row “He was crazy,” Billy Cosa said. “Julie Kyle McCoy’s world’s best bull rider, Reyes is the coolest chick I ever saw in twenty-four, twenty-five years old. Five my life. She look at you with her dark years later he’s world champion again eyes has lights in them … ? Man, I forget and said, ‘That’s it,’ quit before he ever what I’m saying to her.” landed on his head. Kyle wore his range Victor said he heard Julie was in hat, never put on that helmet they offer Hollywood making vampire movies. you now. Quit in pretty good shape and “And Kyle’s in the bull-humping busimoved to Indio to raise his bulls.” ness. Kyle’s making more money than “All killers,” Nachee said. he ever did rodeoin and I guess Julie’s “But he started with heifers,” Victor a movie actress.” said. “You approach a mean heifer out “Vampire flicks,” Nachee said. “I see on the graze? She gives you a dirty look her last one, I come out of the show afand chases you the hell off.” ter, Kyle McCoy’s there lighting up. I Victor saw Nachee and Billy Cosa smoke one with him, ask him how he looking toward the entrance and turned like the flick. He say he don’t care for his head to see a Riverside County dep- her being a vampire. A week later he uty talking to the manager. Some more sole Julie, asking a hundred grand and law was outside. They’d go around to got close to it.” the kitchen and check on Mexicans “He sole the girl name Julie,” Billy without any papers. Victor saw the Cosa said, “or the heifer?” Riverside deputy look his way. No, he Nachee raised one hand to give Billy was looking at the white guy at the next a lazy high-five. table, the guy wearing a straw Stetson The white dude in the cowboy hat, he’d fool with, raising the curled brim still watching them, was laughing out and setting it close on his eyes again. loud.

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Victor looked over to see him grin- from the bar with a drink in her hand. so they could read the words reversed ning now, the guy telling them, “I’d say She walked up to the nitwit, saying, in white on the dark T-shirt. It said in the boy’s in trouble, he don’t know a “The bartender finally got the Stoli Doli capital letters: woman from a cow. Else he’s had too right.” ICE MAN much firewater.” She stood with the white dude lisHe said, “Fellas, you happen to know By this time Victor believed he and tening to him talking to her, nodding his what I-C-E stands for?” the Mojave boys had each put down cowboy hat at the three boys. Victor could tell him it meant Imfour shots of tequila, toasting his The girl’s shirt was open two but- migration and Customs Enforcement, rides, and a few Dos Equis for chas- tons, and her hair was mussed. The U.S. you turkey, but said, “Does it mean ers. No matter, he was celebratGovernment white dude leaned you deliver ice to places like this one ing with his NDN brothers and close to tell her—maybe, Victor for drinks, maybe shrimp cocktails? I would tell this nitwit Billy was thought—what he was going understand it’s what icemen do, but I kidding. But then he was thinkto do next. The girl seemed to don’t think I know any.” ing, Why you want to explain it listen but without much inter“What I deliver,” the Ice Man said, to him? Cause he wears a U.S. est. Now she was taking a pack “I take illegal aliens to prison. People Government jacket? Now the white of cigarettes from her shirt pocket, got speaking foreign tongues and think guy was getting up from the table, and one out but didn’t light it, waiting for obeying the law’s a bunch of shit, refuse Victor looked at his buddies and shook the white guy. to follow the goddamn law of the land. his head once, side to side, and said, He stood there a moment adjusting I heard you saying you work for Kyle “Don’t fuck with him,” though he be- his hat, setting it close on his eyes, the McCoy, but I don’t recall seeing you lieved he probably would. curved brim pointing at Victor. Now he since Kyle moved out here. I suppose This guy in the cowboy hat was used both hands to pop the snaps on his cause you people, same as the colored, standing now, watching a girl coming U.S. Government jacket. He held it open all look pretty much the same. You know THE ATLANTIC

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what white people in olden times use to Through the Woods Being Chased by a Nachee talked to Victor about those call Indins? Goddamn red niggers.” guys living the way they chose to. You White Dude Wearing a Cowboy Hat.” Victor said, “You know what Apaches Nachee said, “You know Agua Cali- hungry? Run off a mule, cut steaks and still call white people? Los Goddammies, entes operate the casinos? They get to cook them over a fire. Before General because many of you cannot talk with- watch white men become drunk and Crook came along on his mule, the one out swearing. You use God’s name lose all their money.” Nachee’s grandfather from that other even when you don’t have a reason to. time was dying to eat. Bring them all “Keep talking,” the Ice Man said. Maybe you agree with me, maybe you Nachee said, “You know how NDNs here to sit with their rifles, Victorio, don’t. But you said people who speak in know it’s safe to go fishing in the win- Cochise, Geronimo … those guys doforeign tongues refuse ter? When all the ing whatever they wanted. They never to follow the goddamn white guys quit falling carried ID but every horse soldier in laws of the land. You “They teach through the fucking the Arizona Territory knew who they saying all of us should you that at were. Now the deputies were coming ice.” speak only English?” and Nachee, smiling as they reached This time the Ice Indin school? This Ice Man took Man only stared, no ex- the table, said: time to stare at Victor. I hope you aren’t “What can I do for you boys?” pression on his face. He said, “They teach getting smart One of the deputies banged Nachee’s “I was in a bar,” Nachyou that at Indin school? with me.” ee said, “where a white head down on the table, held him while I hope you aren’t getting man with a cigar was they cuffed his hands behind his back. smart with me. I see you “All three,” the Ice Man said, “I’m blowing smoke rings, drinkin … Can you show me you’re old nine or ten of them hanging in the air. placing these boys under federal arenough by law?” I look at the rings and said to him, ‘One rest.” Victor said, “This is what it’s about, more remark like that, I’ll bust you in The deputy he’d spoken to on the my age?” phone, Wesley, said, “What have you the mouth.’ ” “You show me you’re old enough,” The Ice Man said, “I was at a Indin thought of to charge ’em with?” the Ice Man said, “I’ll let you step out- wedding on the rez one time. The flower “Mouthin off,” the Ice Man said, stepside and arrest you for being shit-faced girls were all the bride’s kids, her bas- ping over to pick up the fold of hundreddrunk.” tards. You hear that one? Or, how do you dollar bills Victor had dropped on the “You kidding me?” tell a rich Indin from a poor one? The table. They had Victor bent over now, “Drunk and disorderly, arguing with rich Indin has two cars up on blocks.” handcuffing him. me.” Victor straining to look at the Ice He waited a moment and said, “We’re Victor said, “You go to all this trouble—” through here,” picked up his cellphone Man riffling through his bills. Nachee said, “Because we NDN, we and said, “Wesley, I might need a hand.” “You know that’s rodeo money I won must be drunk.” today.” “The three of you actin up,” the Ice “How much you have left?” ? Nachee never Man said. “I been watchin you since carried ID working bulls. Victor didn’t “Four thousand. I haven’t spent you come in.” either. They both believed if you know none.” “Man,” Nachee said, “Victor rode who you are, what do you need ID for? “We’ll catalog it, pay your fines, three bulls today. We drinking to his You want to tell somebody your name, your upkeep, you get your release I’ll honor.” give you what’s left,” the Ice Man said. tell him. You don’t want to, don’t. “What’d he win,” the Ice Man said, The only question Nachee thought “How’s that set with you?” “trading beads?” Celeste, the girl sipping a Stoli Doli of: Why did Kyle McCoy move his bull “Four thousand dollars, man, and a ranch from Arizona to Indio, Califor- earlier, was outside now having a cigasaddle.” nia? The only reason he could think rette. Victor took the roll of bills from his of: now that Kyle’s bulls were making She said to the Ice Man, “You finshirt pocket and laid the wad on the him rich, he had time for Julie Reyes ished holding up the law?” table. “They’re in detention till I say let ’em in Hollywood making movies. He The Ice Man, looking at the money, hoped so. Nachee was dying to see out.” raised his hat and set it on his head her again. “The only reason being they’re Inagain saying, “The bulls buck any, or He saw deputies in their serious dians?” they too old? I can cite you now for hats coming through the restaurant The Ice Man’s name was Darryl tryin to bribe an officer of the law.” from the kitchen, four white guys Harris. Victor said, “I’m not offering you who looked like they meant business, He said, “What’s wrong with that?” anything.” serious, minds made up, and Nachee Elmore Leonard has written more than 40 books “You’re mouthin off, arguing with me. thought of a grandfather now from during his highly successful writing career, and Give me your names and we’ll get her the other time, more than a hundred many of his novels have been made into movies. done.” years ago, Nachitay, sitting in Mi He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from P E N Center USA and the Grand Victor said, “My Mimbreño Apache Nidito with Victor’s grandfather from Master Award from the Mystery Writers of name is Deer With Horns Running the same time, Victorio. Sometimes America. He lives in Bloomfield Village, Michigan. 124

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VINTAGE

��

This monument to the Counter-Reformation holds thousands of body parts.

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A Harsh Beauty ,

By Benjamin Schwarz

R U G G E R O VA N N I / C O R B I S

de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, known simply as the Escorial—royal palace, monastery, basilica, seminary, library, art gallery, tomb—stands north of Madrid on a bleak plain of boulder and pine, 3,000 feet up, at the base of the icy Sierra Guadarrama. David Watkin, in his authoritative A History of Western Architecture, declares this colossal, severe, rectilinear edifice “surely one of the wonders of the modern world.” Built for Philip II between 1563 and 1582 of blue-gray granite quarried from the surrounding mountains, it measures 675 feet (nearly two football fields) by

530 feet (one and a half football fields), lurid—objects: more than 7,000 relics, and contains 100 miles of corridors, including at least 10 whole bodies, 144 4,000 rooms, 16 courtyards. Its 2,673 heads, 306 arms and legs, thousands of windows pierce the cold grandeur of its bones and other body parts, and what unadorned walls. It holds 45,000 books, have been said to be the hairs of Christ 5,000 manuscripts (many in and the Virgin and fragments Arabic), 1,600 paintings (Philip THE ESCORIAL: of the True Cross and the was among Titian’s most avid ART AND POWER IN crown of thorns. THE RENAISSANCE patrons), and 540 frescoes. The Escorial’s unforgiving, Henry Kamen But even as the Escorial otherworldly austerity has YALE was a storehouse of learning led countless writers (largely and art, it was also a house of the dead— Protestants) to assert that it embodPhilip established it as the mausoleum ies the morbid Catholicism that was for Spanish royalty, and the remains of said to define the supposedly ascetic, most of Spain’s kings and queens are in- coldly fanatical Philip, who boasted terred in its walls. It was also a reposi- that he ruled a globe-girdling empire tory for what many today would regard “from the foot of a mountain, with two as superstitious and bizarre—even inches of paper”—that is, from the THE ATLANTIC

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Philip’s youthful eight-year sojourn in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy molded his intense interest in art, architecture, and garden design—a history that belies the stereotype of the king as a provincial, inward-looking, monkish figure. But, of course, the extent to which an early exposure to culture bestows a genuinely cosmopolitan viewpoint is debatable—and more so is the proposition that an appreciation and knowledge of the arts is incompatible with, say, a pitiless and retrograde religious or ideological zealotry (one hesitates to drag in the profound devotion to music that many leading Nazis shared, or Lenin’s love of Turgenev, but there you have it). Generally, Kamen overstates and under-argues his case. Moreover, he fails to illuminate with precision—or even to probe—the degree to which the man who commissioned the building determined its form and strange beauty, rather than the architects, Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera, who actually designed and built it. In this way, Kamen’s characterization throughout the book of Philip as the Escorial’s “creator” is wrongheaded, or at the very least unearned. But Kamen is completely right to approvingly quote—twice!—Miguel de Unamuno’s observation:

of its creation. Kamen rightly excoriates those whose speculations on the Escorial’s context are untethered to historical knowledge. But ultimately, artistic wonders of the world are too important to be left to the historians.

history of perhaps the most maligned and emblematic American food—industrially made white bread—BobrowStrain subtly upends common prejudices while illuminating fundamental shifts in the nation’s economy, gender relations, aesthetic preferences, diet, and cultural politics. Nearly all who visit the Escorial go In the early 20th century, Americans with blinkers, and political and religot more of their calories from bread gious prejudices, in one sense or anthan from any other single food. This other; they go less as pilgrims of art, meant that they had to depend either than as progressives or traditionalists, Catholics or Freethinkers. They go on keeping women close to home— in search of the shadow of Philip II, where wives and mothers were “tetha man little known and even less ered by the slow understood, and if they do not find it schedule of rising WHITE BREAD they invent it. dough” and ener- Aaron vated by the tedious Bobrow-Strain By enlisting the Escorial in his long- and exhausting standing project to rehabilitate Philip, work required to and by simplistically focusing on “the produce the daily staple—or on buying role of its creator,” Kamen continues the bread from the thousands of unregulong tradition of reducing the Escorial to lated “cellar bakeries” that typically a means of special pleading, and so does produced adulterated loaves in filthy it a disservice. Surely this immense, won- conditions. The solution, developed drous, reactionary building, almost mod- early in the century (a period “when ernist in its severity—and in that respect food-borne illnesses were the leading oddly similar to the aesthetic of the late causes of death”), was inexpensive creations of the great, archtraditionalist, bread mass-produced in sanitary, monastic Spanish couturier, Cristóbal factory-like conditions, wrapped in Balenciaga—is a product of its historical packaging to prevent exposure to circumstance. Like all great works of art, germs. Consumers preferred the very it ultimately transcends the conditions whitest bread—achieved by chemically

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writing table in his cell-like room in the Escorial. The forbiddingly beautiful palace-monastery of Philip—pillar of the Counter-Reformation, implacable enemy of Good Queen Bess and of doughty England, husband of Bloody Mary, villain of Verdi’s Don Carlo—has thus been described by the great English critic and Hispanophile V. S. Pritchett as an Iberian Lubyanka, “the oppressive monument to the first totalitarian state of Europe.” That 68 Augustinian monks from the Escorial were murdered by Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War—a fact that for Franco, the defender of Catholicism, conferred enormous symbolic value on the palace—at once confirms and undermines this caricature. Henry Kamen will have none of it. One of the most important living historians of Spain, Kamen has devoted his career, most famously in his revisionist books on Philip II and on the Spanish Inquisition, to taking on the so-called Black Legend, promoted by Spain’s Protestant opponents, which held that Spain’s Catholicism, polity, and society were peculiarly cruel, illiberal, intolerant, and fanatical (think of those menacing Spaniards in The Sea Hawk and Fire Over England, and the ruthless Conquistadors). Given the Black Legend’s persistence—and the fact that, especially in the modern academy, it’s difficult to gain much of a hearing for what you could call a nuanced view of, say, the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews—Kamen has had his work cut out for him. That he has in many ways succeeded, thanks to decades of engaged scholarship, in fundamentally altering historians’ understanding of 15th- and 16th-century Spain is testimony to the force of his arguments and the depth and quality of his rigorous, archive-based research. Still, here and elsewhere, he has extended a contrarian approach further than can be sustained. Kamen examines the Escorial for what it reveals about the role and motivations of the monarch who commissioned it; as such, this book is, as he acknowledges, “in some sense a continuation” of his groundbreaking 1997 biography, Philip of Spain. To be sure, much of what he brilliantly elucidates here does humanize Philip. Kamen demonstrates, for instance, that

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bleaching the flourâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;because they could see that no dirt, sawdust, or any of the other usual impurities had been added. And they now wanted their loaves to be extremely softâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not because they liked the taste of the gummy bread (they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t) but because they considered squeezing to be the best way to determine if store-bought, factory-made loaves were fresh. This squishy bread proved all but impossible to cut into sandwich- and toaster-ready slicesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a problem that led, in 1928, to maybe the greatest revolution in American food processing: presliced loaves. Owing to the then-popular streamlined aesthetic, these were elongated and made flat on top (better for stacking). The result was a product that, although called bread, looked, felt, and tasted like nothing from a home oven or traditional bakery. To an underfed population, however, it was a cheap and safe source of calories andâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;thanks to vitamin enrichment, a radical innovation of the war yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;essential nutrients. Health advocates decried the stuff until scientific studies convinced the Consumers Union and similar groups that loaves like Wonder Bread and its ilk were in fact extremely nutritious (albeit high in sodium). Industrial bread was still vilified, but as Aaron BobrowStrain, a politics professor at Whitman College, perceptively contends, the arguments against it were now exclusively â&#x20AC;&#x153;aesthetic and epicureanâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;and hence grounded largely in cultural politics and class-based scorn. Urban sophisticates use white bread as a disdainful term connoting bland, conformist, suburban Middle America; the stuff itself has become â&#x20AC;&#x153;an icon of poor choices and narrow lives.â&#x20AC;? As the swanky, ever with-it Diana Vreeland pronounced, â&#x20AC;&#x153;People who eat white bread have no dreams.â&#x20AC;? Bobrow-Strain, a progressive foodie, is astute enough to note that they did have dreamsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but modest, democratic dreams of safe, reliable, nourishing, if hardly delicious, food made universally availableâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;dreams whose very modesty has made them an object of derision among the â&#x20AC;&#x153;individual- centered, consumer-drivenâ&#x20AC;? hipster types who now largely define the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cultural values. Benjamin Schwarz is The Atlanticâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s literary editor and national editor.

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JFK: devoted family man, crude exploiter of women

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Jackie and the Girls .

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—

By Caitlin Flanagan

who could be crushed by a day or a dependent on the kind- month or a year of bad news or bad ness of sadists—first Black press. She was playing a long game, Jack Bouvier, who got too and against all odds she’s still winning drunk to walk her down the it. She had her eye on what she grandly aisle on her wedding day; then John called History, a concept large enough Kennedy, whose lasting gift to her was to encompass both her interest in a bimbo eruption that won’t quit half a 18th-century France and the necessity century on; then Aristotle Onassis, who of maintaining a complicated covered his yacht’s bar stools with the fiction—at once face-saving skin of whale testicles and hardballed and humiliating—about the her on the prenup—but she could hold nature of her marriage. It’s not her own, Jackie Kennedy. She never a tissue of lies, but it is a tissue, played all her aces. Even in the recently one that has been rent so many released tape recordings of her con- times that it should be nothing more versations with Arthur Schlesinger than dust motes by now, but she was a Jr.—talks that occurred less than four woman who brought every one of her months after her husband’s murder— formidable gifts to bear when it came you realize that she was never playing to the subject of John Kennedy; and a short game, that she wasn’t a person we’re no match for her.

J O H N F. K E N N E DY L I B R A RY/ G E T T Y

There she is on those tapes, alive as you and me, with the Babykins voice that her in-laws teased her for, tipsy on cocktails, chain-smoking, whispering at times, giggling at others, eerily composed, understandably adamant about the vastness of her late husband’s mission, but also surprisingly clear on its details. Dean Rusk turned out to be a disappointment at State because he was “terribly scared to make a decision”; Udall had been given Interior because Jack owed him for Arizona, and he had made the most of it—“he really cares about conservation and all that.” Johnson was completely useless, much given to taking boondoggles to irrelevant places; he came home from a tour of Finland with a bunch of glass

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A LOOK AT THE STATE OF OUR NATION BY ONE OF AMERICAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FOREMOST POLITICAL COMMENTATORS

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birds that he passed out as souvenirs, almost offended by the suggestion, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lyndonâ&#x20AC;? painted on every one. â&#x20AC;&#x153;and to everybody in my generation, But what sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really doing on those certainlyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and, I think, a larger number tapesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the reason they so easily lent than that.â&#x20AC;? themselves to two hours of Diane SawWhat were these 50-year-old picyer in prime-time ecstasy last fall and tures, the ones that Caroline could the reason that, bundled confidently predict were with their bound transcripts, JACQUELINE thoroughly familiar to his they made such an unlikely KENNEDY: large television audience HISTORIC best sellerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is telling us a CONVERSATIONS and that Letterman called so beautiful story, the one that ON LIFE WITH important to him, to his genJOHN F. KENNEDY goes with the pictures. You eration, to â&#x20AC;&#x153;a larger number Interviews With know the pictures. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re Arthur Schlesinger than thatâ&#x20AC;?? the ones weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re still looking Jr. Pictures of two children at, still marveling over, the HY PE R I O N playing in their fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ofones that fuse some powerfice: John crouching under UPON A ful ideas together and that ONCE the big desk, peeking out SECRET: make us fall in love all over MY AFFAIR WITH from the secret panel; CaroPRESIDENT again with a family weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve JOHN line and her brother dancing F. KENNEDY never met and specifically AND ITS on the lush carpet. In the AFTERMATH with the man at the center of background, their delighted Mimi Alford that family, who was apparfather looks on, clapping his R AN DO M HO US E ently willingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;eagerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to conhands, as though nothing on tain the most vital and alluring of his his agenda could be more pressing than protean energies within it. These pho- these hijinks. tographs have had an outsized effect Suffer the little children to come unto on our assessment of JFKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presidency, me is the unwritten caption of all these and our collective feelings about them saintly images. The Soviets can kiss off have served as his magic fishbone, get- for five minutes; the blacks can hold ting him out of one scrape or another their water. John-John has an adorable as the years pass by and the revelations new hiding place, and the most powerand reassessments pile up. ful person in the world is fully absorbed by it. These pictures represent 2011, the pure distillation of what the word appeared on the David Letterman father means in the deepest imaginashow, her first visit, and Dave was tion of many people, even (especially) thrilled, almost starstruck, to have this those who have never lived with or singular woman sitting beside him. even known their own. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the father as There were any number of things they a person of great importance in some could have talked about, but what Dave vaguely apprehended larger world was dying to do was look at some of those where the grown-ups live, and where old pictures with her. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d had two of he takes care of essential and necessary the most famous of them mounted on matters but will gladly put all of that black cardboard, and before he held aside to spend an extra moment with them up to the camera, he apologized his precious children. for taking up her time with them. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There must be a great deal of good in â&#x20AC;&#x153;These are pictures youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had all a man who could love a child so much,â&#x20AC;? your life,â&#x20AC;? he said, tapping the stack ea- is what the Atlanta biddies said, forgivgerly and grasping for words. Maybe, in ingly, of Rhett Butler when he set out fact, she was tired of looking at themâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; to redeem his reputation by showing â&#x20AC;&#x153;but do you mind if I show these?â&#x20AC;? off how much he adored Bonnie Blue, â&#x20AC;&#x153;No,â&#x20AC;? she said graciously, laughing his little daughter. Rhettâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sins were in her easy, appealing way, conducting many, but no one can resist an alpha perfectly the job she was born to and male fussing over a small child, and his has never shirked; â&#x20AC;&#x153;but everybody else PR campaign did the trick. JFKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famis probably tired of looking at them.â&#x20AC;? ily photos have done much the same for Hardly. him over the years. With each new alleâ&#x20AC;&#x153;These pictures are important to me,â&#x20AC;? gation (many of them witheringly wellLetterman said with great seriousness, supported) of risk-taking, womanizing,

THE ATLANTIC

criminal behavior, overweening selfinterest, and/or simple incompetence thrown up against matters of planetary importance, the vast legion of Kennedy fans are rocked backward. But only for a moment. Because by the end of the nightly-news report featuring a heartbroken anchor chewing over the broken glass of the latest bad news, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always the same triumphant finishâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the montage of photographs of Jack playing with Caroline and John, smiling at his pretty wife, confirming all over again the things that, in our childish and stubborn way, we insist on believing about him. On the Schlesinger tapes, Jackie describes a man whose deep affection for his children was central among the many pleasures of his life. He liked having them underfoot, and he complained bitterly when Jackie delayed moving them to the White House until their rooms were painted. He was forever opening the door of the Oval Office to them, or catching sight of them playing outside and sneaking them candy. In the morning, as his wife dreamed

on in her own bedroom, he would eat As for the marriageâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;whatever it breakfast from a tray in his, while the may or may not have been, the tapes are children sat near him, blasting cartoons persuasive on one point: it clearly was or Jack LaLanne on the television. He not a cold or mercenary arrangement. would be in his rocking chair, dressed Their time together was unsullied by in his shirtsleeves and boxer shorts domestic drudgery, enriched by their as he read the dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newspapers and shared love of reading and gossip, made briefings, but he would pause to watch meaningful by the joy of raising two them tumble and chatter, not irritated children and the sorrow of losing two but invigorated by their noisy, energetic others. Their homeliest routines were presence. He was hugely proud of them, those of rich people from an earlier era, showing them off to people in the midst and so seem novelistic and appealing of important meetings, and he was also in descriptions. He loved to give her fond of them, waking them early from gifts of the antiquities and watercolors naps to play, making dignitaries at state she adored, and sometimes heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be so dinners wait for their first glimpse of unsure of what to choose for her that the president because he always want- heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have the New York dealers send ed to have time with John and Caroline him 50 different items so she could at the end of the day. Everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chil- take her pick. On the night of their 10th dren seem like the most consequential anniversary, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been in such a swivet ones ever to walk the Earth, but the two about what to give her that he locked Kennedy kids could lay actual claim to himself in his bedroom trying to choose the title; when one of the family dogs the right gift. In the end he gave her an nipped John on the nose, Mac Bundy Egyptian snake bracelet, but he also was sent running for George Burkley, considered keeping an Assyrian horse JFKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personal physicianâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and a Navy bit, because he wanted to try out the anadmiralâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;who carefully inspected the cient artifact on Carolineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pony to see if pampered little schnoz. it really worked. (The rich are different

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from you and me.) On the weekends, he about the bungling and risky behavior would read the New York Times book that marked so much of his brief presisection and mark the titles he was in- dency; what does it is each new revelaterested in, and the following week, she tion about his womanizing and the way would place his order at the Savile Book these revelations impugn the photoShop. She had a wifely sense of loyalty graphs for which David Letterman and to a manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dreams and accomplish- so many other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;myself includments, and she nursed grudges heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d edâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;have such strong feelings. Those long since abandoned. The banked fires pictures make me realize anew what of her anger at Ted Sorensen for steal- a patsy Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been. How could they be ing Jackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thunder over anything more than a Profiles in Courage (She shrewd campaign, one knew Jack had written Everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s that plays on the very the thing himself! Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d children seem sentimentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an essenseen the yellow manu- like the most tially bourgeois regard script pages!) keep for what is nowadays flaming back to life on consequential called â&#x20AC;&#x153;the sanctity of the tapes, as does her ones ever to walk marriageâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;for which sadness over the pains the Earth, but JFK himself had such and surgeries that had contempt? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll the two Kennedy obvious composed such a large swear to myself that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll part of their married kids could lay never backslide again, life. but then Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll catch sight actual claim Most of all, you get of one of those pictures, to the title. the sense of a young orâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in this caseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;listen couple busy with chilto Jackieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beautiful dren and with figuring out, as all young story about the well-loved children, couples must, how to occupy and dis- the besotted father, the romance at the tract them. â&#x20AC;&#x153; Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to get me some heart of the operation, and once again, books, or something. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m running out of Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sunk. childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stories,â&#x20AC;? he once told Jackie And so there I was, back in my happy after trying to make up yet another sto- dream, until, just a scant few months ry for Caroline. Another time he asked after encountering the Historic Conher to buy some toys for his bathroom, versations, I read a book that is in many because John would wander in while ways its evil twin: Once Upon a Secret. he was bathing and he had nothing to It was written by Mimi Alford, who entertain him with. So Jackie bought as a 19-year-old college student began some rubber ducks, which led to a fond both a summer internship at the White family storyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the bathroom that male House and an affair with John Kennedy dinner guests had use of was JFKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, that would last 18 months. The details causing Jackie to imagine what in the of this affair reveal that no matter what world they would think when they saw Jackie may have believed about the inall those rubber ducks lined up on the violability of her refugeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the â&#x20AC;&#x153;hermetiedge of the presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tub. She laughs cally sealedâ&#x20AC;? nature of the compartment prettily when she tells Schlesinger John shared with her aloneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not one about it, but thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something heart- inch of it was sacred to her husband. breaking in that laugh; when someone Not the bedrooms, not the bathrooms. you love has died, you are suddenly left Not even the rubber ducks. with a trove of private jokes that no one The relationship began on Alfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s else understands. fourth day on the job, when she was And it was right thenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with the de- asked to the Kennedy residence for a scription of the rubber ducks, and the new-staffer cocktail party. Dave Powers way they evoked the closeness of father escorted her up to the deserted apartand son, the intimacy of husband and ment, and she kicked around with a wife, and the essential nature of mar- couple of other office girls, drinking dairied lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that I got back together with quiris, nibbling cheese puffs, and waitJohn Kennedy. We had been broken up ing for the president. Within seconds of for a few years, at least; Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d lost track. his arrivalâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;signaled by the partygoersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; What busts us up is never a revelation jumping formally to their feet, for this THE ATLANTIC

was part of the thrill of being in the inner circle: the fun and debauchery of the endless party, and the awesome formality of the American presidency— Mimi was in his thrall. When JFK invited her on a private tour of the joint she eagerly agreed, and before she knew it they were standing alone together at the open door to Jackie’s bedroom. “This is a very private room,” John Kennedy said to her, and as she tried to comprehend what he meant by that puzzling remark, he maneuvered her smoothly into it. And then he nailed her—a virgin, a Wheaton sophomore, a girl who wore a circle pin and a side part, and who had ordered two dripdry shirtdresses from the Johnny Appleseed’s catalog before coming to Washington—right there on his wife’s bed. The one with the horsehair mattress and the stiff board to accommodate his bad back. The pastel portrait of Caroline looked on silently; the new-staffer cocktail party in the other room quietly disbanded. Kennedy realized that this new girl was a virgin.

“Are you okay?” he asked. the record player, and he was sexually “Yes,” she said, and so he quickly sadistic, asking her to perform sexual passed the torch to a new generation services on his friend Dave Powers— and sent her home in a car. But she the president’s “leprechaun”—which wasn’t discarded; she was worked into she once did (while JFK stood in the the rotation. pool and watched), to her everlasting It was in many ways a giddy year regret. Sometimes he treated her like and a half, marked by a variety of phys- the debutante she was, begging her to ical pleasures, and the 35th president sing a Miss Porter’s School song and schooled Mimi in all the skills a mis- teasing her for dating a Williams boy; tress must know, from performing and sometimes he treated her like the fellatio to making scrambled eggs. He kept woman she had become, peeling treated her every way it is possible for a off $300 and telling her, “Go shopping man to treat a woman. He was by turns and buy yourself something fantastic.” paternal, calling her at college and pepAbove all, she reports, he was playful. pering her with fatherly questions— The two lovers especially enjoyed get“What were the courses I was taking? ting it on in his bathroom, which they Were the teachers good? What was I turned into their own “mini-spa,” outreading? Were the girls interesting? fitted as it was with “thick white towels, What did they talk about? What did I luxurious soaps, and fluffy white bathhave for dinner?”—and childlike, sitting robes embossed with the presidential patiently while she helped him with his seal.” But there was something else in shirt, or rubbed amber-colored oint- that wonderful, elegant bathroom of his ment into his scalp and then brushed that Mimi thinks reveals so much about his hair just so, while other staffers his true nature, something she wants walked in and out of the Oval Office. He to tell us about for the unique insight was romantic, sharing late-night din- it gives into the man. In addition to all ners with her and putting love songs on the grown-up accoutrements, he also

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had his very own collection of—wait about her husband’s extramarital life, for it—rubber ducks! Can you imagine? and how did she feel about it? How did The president of the United States col- she make peace with the private life she lected rubber ducks. It turned out a lived with JFK, knowing that so much of buddy of his had sent them as a gag gift. it was implicitly mocked by his behavior? And Mimi—unlike super-sophisticated These are questions we will apparently Jackie—knew how to have fun with be turning over until the end of time. something like that. That was one of , the special things she was able to bring John always had girls: there were to the relationship. She and Jack gave girlfriends and comfort girls; call the ducks funny names, and they had bathtub races with them, and it was like girls and showgirls; girls on the campaign trail and girls who seemed to a sexy playdate. Every affair is a series of betrayals, materialize out of thin air wherever he some so huge that the betrayed can bare- was. There was also the occasional wife ly take them in, others so inconsequen- of a friend, or the aging paramour of his tial that they would seem the simplest randy pop, for those moments when the to dismiss when the bill finally comes fancy ran to mature horseflesh or mascudue—yet in many cases these are the line competition. His penchant for prosones that hurt the most. On the one hand, titutes demoralized the agents assigned once Jack Kennedy had begun a long- to protect him: “You were on the most standing physical relationship with this elite assignment in the Secret Service,” girl, one that began on his wife’s bed and the former agent Larry Newman told included flying her around the country a television interviewer a decade ago, along with his baggage so that he would “and you were there watching an elevahave access to her whenever he wanted, tor door, because the president was telling her a fib about the how and the inside with two hookers.” Mimi Alford why of those rubber ducks is hardly a describes a JFK who once asked her to significant matter. Maybe it even con- service his friend (and his “baby brother,” stituted a weird bit of loyalty, keeping Teddy, though she refused), who took her to a sex party and his wife and son entirely forced drugs on her, out of things. But I have to say that when I came Caroline Kennedy and who callously had a functionary line her across Mimi’s gushing feared that up with an abortionist account of the ducks, releasing these when she thought she so soon after hearing was pregnant, and yet Jackie explain how they tapes would Janet Maslin can write, symbolized something expose her significant and lovely in mother’s memory accurately, in her New York Times review of her marriage, my first “to one more Once Upon a Secret, reaction was “What a round of gossip that there’s “not a lot of bastard.” news” in the book. “I grew up feeling and speculation.” Discrediting the ugly I needed to protect It has. stories told by John her,” Caroline Kennedy Kennedy’s women has writes poignantly of her mother in the introduction to His- become a loser’s game. The Times had toric Conversations, discussing her own to apologize for its own obituary of Juambivalence about making the Schle- dith Exner (a woman who was the lover, singer tapes public. Releasing them simultaneously, of the president of the would “expose her memory to one more United States and of the Mafia boss Sam round of gossip and speculation,” and Giancana), which had suggested, strongindeed Caroline had barely five months ly, that she was a fabulist. In the Editor’s to enjoy the glowing new light that the Note that appeared a few outraged days tapes shed on her parents’ marriage be- later, the paper shamefacedly admitted fore the next book to sully the memory that—despite its having roundly disparcame along, and the speculation begins aged her various “allegations”—in fact all over again. The same old questions “a number of respected historians and hound us: Just what did Jackie know authors” held the view that the affair

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had taken place, a view supported by â&#x20AC;&#x153;evidence cited by various authorities in recent years [including] White House phone logs and memos from J. Edgar Hoover.â&#x20AC;? The overheated White House swimming pool, painted in a lurid Caribbean theme (its renovation a kinky father-son gift from Joe to Jack), was, according to a number of respected sources (among them Seymour Hersh and three on-therecord Secret Service agents), the locus of endless lunchtime sex parties. Two young secretaries named Priscilla Wear and Jill Cowenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the now infamous Fiddle and Faddleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;often left their desks to splash and skinny-dip with Jack, returning to their desks with wet hair so they could go on with their important work of autographing his photographs and wondering how to type. They, like Mimi, were regularly packed along on official trips, apparently so that the president could always get laid if there was any trouble scaring up local talent. Although neither has ever commented on their relationship with Kennedy, their joint interview for the JFK oralhistory project is astonishing for the number of trips they casually allude to having taken with him; they were the sex-doll Zeligs of JFKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s foreign diplomacy, their eager faces just out of frame in Berlin, Rome, Ireland, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Nassau, to say nothing of their extensive domestic work in places like Palm Beach and Hyannis Port. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impossible to think Jackie had no idea that any of this was taking place. Once while giving a Paris Match reporter a tour of the White House, she passed by Fiddleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desk and remarkedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;acidly, and in Frenchâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is the girl who supposedly is sleeping with my husband.â&#x20AC;? Moreover, she was one of the worldliest women of the 20th century, no stranger to the variety of sexual experiences that so often shaped the lives of bored aristocrats. Her father was a chronic cheater, and her mother later became the third wife of a notorious lady-killer. By means of this second marriage, Jackie became a sort of stepsister and a close pal of Gore Vidal, one of the few people who could explain completely the nature of her husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sexuality, as it was so much like his own: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Neither [of us] was much interested in giving pleasure to his partner,â&#x20AC;? he wrote in Palimpsest. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Each THE ATLANTIC

wanted nothing more than orgasm with as many attractive partners as possible.â&#x20AC;? And Jackie was herself a sexual sophisticate. She hung illustrations from the Kama Sutra in the dining room of one of her country houses; she was selfconfident enough to include pretty young women on the guest lists of her private parties because she knew they invigorated her husband; she understood that she had married a man with a vivid sexual past, and certainly wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have wanted it any other way. There seem to have been some limits on the effrontery of his behavior, perhaps resulting from the legendary meeting between Jackie and her fatherin-law, when she was so fed up with Jack that she was ready to cash in her chips on the marriage. Joe somehow persuaded her to hang in thereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the story persists that he gave her some sort of annual stipend to stay on in the role of wifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and certainly there was a significant brake on JFKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s White House antics. By all accounts, even those of his most searing critics, such as Seymour Hersh in The Dark Side of Camelot, he refrained from humiliating her when she was in residence at the mansion. This is easy enough to believe when you take a close look at her schedule; the amount of time she spent out of Washington is astonishing. In 1962, for example, she spent close to a month in India and Pakistan with her sister Lee, almost all of July in Hyannis Port, and most of August in Italy with Caroline. She spent most weekends at a rented Virginia horse farm that Jack loathed, and she was forever dashing off to New York to spend a rejuvenating few days at their Carlyle apartmentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all of these absences giving Jack plenty of time for his hookers and lovers. It is, of course, possible to see the two of them in a distinctly unflattering light, as a couple of pampered children of very rich men, whose highest calling was toward their own best interests and constant diversion. She was a shopaholic who loved to party and ride horses and vacation in the most happening ports of call, to settle her boyish, perfectly dressed frame into wellupholstered chairs with her pack of Salems and her glass of champagne and to exercise her savage gifts for mimicry and comic malice. She was no fan of Martin Luther King Jr., that â&#x20AC;&#x153;phony,â&#x20AC;?

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that “tricky” person. “I just can’t see a picture of him,” she told Schlesinger, without thinking, “That man’s terrible.” Jack had told her of Hoover’s tape of King arranging an orgy (later Bobby also told her “of the tapes of these orgies they have”), a predilection that, tellingly, had scandalized Mrs. Kennedy far more than her husband. Her regard for “that freedom march thing” is clearly low, while her voice thrums with excitement when she’s describing good furniture and good food. As for John Kennedy—what did he do for us? He started the Peace Corps and the Vietnam War. He promised to put a man on the moon, and he presided over an administration whose love affair with assassination was held in check only by its blessed incompetence at pulling off more of them. (“That administration,” said LBJ—painted birds long forgotten, the mists of Camelot beginning to clear—“had been operating a damned Murder, Inc.”) He fought for a tax break the particulars of which look like the product of a Rush Limbaugh fever dream, he almost got us all killed during his “second Cuba” (writing of JFK and the missile crisis, Christopher Hitchens noted: “Only the most servile masochist … can congratulate [Kennedy] on the ‘coolness’ with which he defused a ghastly crisis almost entirely of his own making”), and he brought organized crime into contact with the highest echelons of American power. More than anyone else in American history, perhaps, he had a clear vision of what his country could do for him. But most of all, he made us feel good about ourselves; he inspired us. Toward what? Mostly toward him. All these years later—half the time hating ourselves for it—we’re still as thrilled by him as Mimi Alford was. He had a singular masculinity, and his very callousness and recklessness with women don’t blight his appeal; they enhance it. The typical progressive woman thinks she is drawn to him because of his groovy, feel-good work on behalf of civil rights, but that’s an assertion that doesn’t bear 15 minutes’ exploration. John Kennedy voted against Eisenhower’s 1957 Civil Rights Act; he made lofty campaign promises that assured him the black vote but then sat on his hands for all of 1961; his nickname for James 142

J U LY/ A U G U S T 2 0 1 2

Baldwin was “Martin Luther Queen.” The reason so many women love him really has nothing to do with his actual accomplishments and everything to do with his being the kind of man whose every inclination runs counter to their best interests. If history—to say nothing of fictional characters, including the Dons, Draper and Juan—has taught us anything, it is that a significant number of women are desperately, often tragically, attracted to that very trait. Men recognize and respond to this in Kennedy, just as strongly as women do. Even young boys recognize it. Tobias Wolff, in Old School, describes the way the boys in an East Coast prep school felt about JFK compared with that old boob Nixon: Nixon was a straight arrow and a scold. If he’d been one of us we would have glued his shoes to the floor. Kennedy, though—here was a warrior, an ironist, terse and unhysterical. He had his clothes under control. His wife was a fox. And he read and wrote books … We recognized Kennedy; we could still see in him the boy who would have been a favorite here, roguish and literate, with that almost formal insouciance that both enacted and discounted the fact of his class.

And here is an 11-year-old schoolboy, writing in a condolence book in London four days after the assassination: “I thought that he was a peace loving, brave and kind man. In fact, all that a man should be.” JFK was a man whose sexual life remained a central fact of his existence, who did not allow it to be diminished by anything—not his political ambitions, not issues of national security, not his Catholicism, not loyalty to his friends and his male relatives, not physical limitation or pain, not the risk of infecting any of his partners with the venereal disease that regularly plagued him, not fear of impregnating someone, not the potential for personal embarrassment, and certainly, certainly, not his marriage. John Kennedy, that ravishing creature, could spend a morning riding unbroken horses, bareback, in the Newport sunshine with a very young Jacqueline Bouvier, and he could maneuver a 19-year-old Wheaton sophomore into bed within minutes of encountering her at a cocktail party, could groom her so completely to his liking that she could

THE ATLANTIC

be goaded into giving a blow job to his friend while he stood and watched. We’re not supposed to like men like that; the ones who put in a boorish performance at it, we loathe. But the ones who can pull it off—God help us. And here is Jackie, Scheherazade from beyond the grave, telling us her beautiful story about the wonderful husband and devoted father, and at the end of the day her personal glamour is only enlarged by what we now know. Jackie makes a point of describing to Arthur Schlesinger the “naps” she and Jack would take together, on those afternoons when they were both in residence at the White House. They would sometimes eat lunch from trays in bed, and then she would open the window for a breeze and close the curtains. To underscore her message, she lets him know that Jack always undressed for these naps, and the point is clear: no matter how many women John Kennedy may have had, he also took care of his own wife too, and he did it in a languorous and elegant manner—the filtered light, the breeze, the marital bed where generations had been conceived—that none of those chippies in the fetid fiesta pool could ever hope to enjoy. I recently came across a Kennedy photograph I’d never seen before. The family is entering the White House for the first time, John-John wrapped in a blanket in his mother’s arms. JFK’s hands are in the pockets of his overcoat, his eyes glued to the precious head of his new baby boy—and I was gone. Let him have the girls, I thought; he could handle the girls and still put in an ace performance as Father of the Century. John Kennedy was the kind of guy who could get his PT boat rammed in half by a Japanese destroyer, losing two of his men, and end up not with a court-martial but with a medal. He was a winner, and we like winners. He’ll get out of every scrape history can serve up. All the aging hookers and cast-aside girlfriends with book contracts better take notice: We don’t care about you. JFK is more important to us than you can ever be, so you might as well keep quiet. The cause endures, sweetheart. The hope still lives. And the dream will never die. Caitlin Flanagan’s most recent book is Girl Land.

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�� A Guide to Additional Releases Bring Up the Bodies Hilary Mantel

144

J U LY/ A U G U S T 2 0 1 2

What’s the difference between a book with pictures and a picture book?

so, since it allows the reader at once seemingly, more straightforward. She to see through Cromwell’s eyes and to knows no other place as home. “We observe him. A brilliant study of char- wasn’t new anything. We was ourselves,” acter, this sequel expands Mantel’s rich she says. Her father’s actions, however, portrait of 16th-century society, deftly form a terrible, hidden history that will revealing the ramifications of birth, al- pain and thwart and eventually spur liance, and personality at a time when this spirited, intensely observant, and being on the wrong side in a political self-aware heroine. That history was the focus of The Secret River, and in that argument meant death. book, Grenville, winner of the Orange, Commonwealth, and Christina Stead Sarah Thornhill prizes, creates a true tragedy, in which Kate Grenville the character’s desperate deed seems all Together with the best-selling The Secret but unavoidable. She renders the trap of River and The Lieutenant, Grenville’s lat- the situation with such clear-eyed imest novel forms a trilogy that grapples mediacy that the reader feels sympathy with the inevitable conflict between for the man, as well as horror for his the English settlers of Australia and the act. A generation later, however, such Aborigines. In this case, the perspective immediacy is long gone, and with it any is not that of a newcomer but of a girl hope of understanding. Although Grenborn in New South Wales. For her freed- ville muddies black and white (literally former-convict father, this new land has and figuratively) in Sarah Thornhill, ulbeen ironically both banishment and timately, there is no question of what is fresh start, but her generation is, at least right and what is wrong here, and the

THE ATLANTIC

H A R P E R C O L L I N S /A S S O C I AT E D P R E S S

A worthy sequel to the Man Booker Prize–winning Wolf Hall, this book sparkles on every level. Its prose is at once lyrical and tightly clever; its large cast of characters is acutely observed; and its well-known story is vivified and humanized. Mantel originally intended to present Thomas Cromwell’s role in the reign of Henry VIII over the course of two books, but then discovered that she and readers both would need more than the turn of a page to recover from the swift downfall and beheading of sharp-witted and sharp-boned Anne Boleyn, so this segment, more closely focused and intense than Wolf Hall, constitutes its own volume, the second of what will now be a trilogy. Here, as in the previous volume, Mantel’s unflagging Cromwell is wonderfully attractive despite his ruthlessness. Self-made and well educated, though low-born and roughly raised; sensitive and self-aware, though almost unhesitatingly brutal; quintessentially English but familiar with France, Italy, and the Netherlands, this Cromwell is omnicompetent. As Mantel describes him in Wolf Hall: he “can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury.” His grief over the deaths of his wife and daughters and his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, serves both to soften and to steel him, for as he says, “You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.” He labors to improve England by codifying law and assisting the poor, but as he pleases the king, he tirelessly machinates to take his own revenge and further his own ambition. His honesty with himself regarding his motives makes him more admirable than Henry, whom Mantel presents as straining to justify his self-interest with religion and duty. Mantel writes in the third person, although the point of view is entirely Cromwell’s—a device that is initially disconcerting, but effectively

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novelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s motivating idea is that the ugly Rethinking a Lot truth must be incorporated into history. Eran Ben-Joseph This makes for a story thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s laudable, even if somewhat less wrenching than This richly illustrated, intelligently that of The Secret River, but Grenville written book probes the history, decompensates with her exquisite and vi- sign, and influence of a ubiquitous but brant depiction of the experiences and overlooked feature of modern life: the feelings of her illiterate but nevertheless parking lot. Perhaps the most regupoetic narrator as she matures in her un- larly used of public outdoor spaces, parking lots cover more than a third derstanding of herself and her country. of the land area of some American cities, and at least 1,713 square miles are Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Picturebooks dedicated to parking nationally. OneMartin Salisbury and Morag Styles half to three-quarters of the site of a This volume explores a variety of as- typical one- story commercial buildpects of childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s picture books, works ing is given over to parking, as is nearin which pictures tell as much of the sto- ly 80 percent of the site of a typical ry as the words doâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and sometimes even two-story building. The result: Parkmore. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s filled with tempting pages of ing lots inkblot urban and suburban art from these books, beginning with the downtowns; they front strip malls and title page from William Blakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Songs of big-box stores; and they girdle shopInnocence, and includes such highlights ping centers, office buildings, factories, as the gruesome Der Struwwelpeter, Leo resorts, motels, apartment complexes, Lionniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s charming Little Blue and Little and stadiums. They have altered both Yellow, and Maurice Sendakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Where the the land and the temperature. By actWild Things Are. It ranges as far as, say, ing effectively as thermal batteriesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Poland and Korea for current works storing heat in the daytime and releaswith dark themes. The book contains a ing it slowly overnightâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they have long brief history of the form, explores chil- helped create domes of higher temperdrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s responses to picture books, de- atures in built-up areas. Ben-Joseph, a scribes the education of picture-book professor of landscape architecture at artists, reviews the processes and ef- MIT, doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t decry parking lots, but fects of various printing techniques, and instead offers design and landscape even explains the procedure by which ideas (mostly plantings) to render this a picture book comes to be published. nearly century-old and unavoidable Perhaps not surprisingly in an amalgam facet of modern life more aesthetically of this kind, the pictures are generally pleasing, socially vibrant, and environfar more intriguing than the text that at- mentally sound. Although many of his tempts to explain them. But wholly fas- prescriptions are pie-in-the-sky, his cinating are the many case studies from analysis of the extraordinary impact both student and professional picture- of parking lots on our daily lives is book makers that intersperse analysis eye-opening. He vividly and precisely with thoughtful quotations from the art- shows readers their built environistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; descriptions of their thinking, along mentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most mundane and common with pages from their books at various aspect, which has hitherto been hidstages of development. ing in plain sight. The Atlantic Monthly (ISSN 1072-7825) is published monthly except for combined issues in January/February and July/August by The Atlantic Monthly Group, 600 New Hampshire Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20037 (202-266-6000). Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C., Toronto, Ont., and additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. Subscription queries: Atlantic Customer Care, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235 (or call 800-234-2411). Privacy: we make portions of our customer list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services we believe you may enjoy. If you do not want to receive this information, please write to the Customer Care address above. Advertising (212-284-7647) and Circulation (202-266-7197): 600 New Hampshire Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20037. Subscriptions: one year $39.95 in the U.S. and poss., add $8.00 in Canada, includes GST (123209926); add $15.00 elsewhere. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement 41385014. Canada return address: The Atlantic, P.O. Box 1051, Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7. Back issues: send $7.50 per copy to The Atlantic, Back Issues, 1900 Industrial Park Dr., Federalsburg, MD 21632 (or call 410-754-8219). Vol. 310, No. 1, July/August 2012. Copyright ÂŠ 2012, by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. Postmaster: send address changes to Atlantic Address Change, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235.

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� � �� ’� �� ? By Jeffrey Goldberg the moment when they actually do die, they are going to feel crappy because, though they read the statistics right, they ignored their intuition. My wife wants me to get a vasectomy, but I’m uncomfortable with the idea. Have you had a vasectomy, and if not, would you ever consider it? S.E., Springfield, Ill. Dear S.E., I don’t even like getting my hair cut. I really like your column, but please, you gotta come clean. Do people really submit those questions to you, or do you make them up yourself? If you print this one, the answer will be self-evident. J.R., Jamaica Plain, Mass.

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Dear J.R., Yes, the letters are real. Here’s my problem: I write an advice column for a major American magazine, and I want to bring it to an end. There is so much to do in journalism these days—so much content to produce, so many tweets to write—that I find myself exhausted by the pressures of advice-giving. How generous can one man be? But I’m not sure my editor will take kindly to my abandonment of his magazine’s back page. (Did I mention that the column runs on the back page?) How should I bring this column to an end? J.G., Washington, D.C. Dear J.G., Whatever you do, don’t be passiveaggressive about it. Be forthright. Say what you just said. It will be fine. And remember to express gratitude for the opportunity. One more thing: thank your readers for their questions, and for their loyalty. Readers love that sort of thing. And be sure to say goodbye. If you really need advice from Jeffrey Goldberg, or if you just miss him, he can be reached at jgoldberg @theatlantic.com.

N I S H A N T C H O KS I

his is a follow-up ques- Friends of ours just had their first tion to the exchange in child and are reconsidering whethwhich you argued that er they should keep enjoying such it is okay for parents to extreme activities as skydiving and tell children the truth skiing in avalanche- danger zones. about their previous drug use. Do you While this makes sense to me, I was think there is any time when lying to surprised to hear that they are also your children is okay? reconsidering whether to fly N.M., Miami, Fla. on airplanes together, though they accept riding in a car toDear N.M., gether as an unavoidable risk. I You can certainly tell small children told them I thought they were that a ringing bell means the ice-cream being ridiculous by ignoring truck is out of ice cream. But that’s data that say planes are safer than about it, I think. cars. Can you please explain the logic of decisions like these? A friend of mine was recently inE.E., Philadelphia, Pa. structing me on how I’m supposed to treat my wife now that she’s preg- Dear E.E., nant. He told me it is expected that I Surveys show that 117 percent of will buy my wife a “push gift,” such Americans don’t understand statistics, as expensive jewelry, once she deliv- and 92 percent don’t care about them. ers our baby. It seems to me with all Seventy-three percent of Americans bethe expenses associated with raising lieve that airplanes are held up by invisa child, we might be better off using ible steel wires, and 89 percent believe that money elsewhere. they will win Powerball, even without A.S., Chapel Hill, N.C. buying a ticket. My point? I don’t have one. Except the following: Your friends Dear A.S., are worried not only about dying, but Your wife deserves a piece of jewelry. about feeling like schmucks in the proThink of it this way: If you managed to cess. They understand that in the pesqueeze a baseball through your penis, riod between the realization that they wouldn’t you deserve a nice gift? are going to die in a plane crash and