Time, Sept. 1 In the cover package on Obama, a profile examines the “five faces” of the Democratic nominee: “the Black Man,” “the Healer,” “the Novice,” “the Radical,” and “the Future.” The first four “pose various threats to his hopes for victory” while the last “is the one his campaign intends to drive home.” Other coverage of the candidate includes an interview in which Obama tries to shift the attention away from himself to “focus this election on the American people and who can actually deliver for them,” a spread of candids snapped on the campaign trail, and an Obama family tree. … A related piece looks at some of the youthful stumpers campaigning for Obama, including a 17-year-old who will be the youngest delegate at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Denver, which “boasts the most 36-and-under delegates in decades.” The young delegates are just a few among the “millions of voters age 36 and under, who seem to be organizing entire states via text messages.”
Economist, Aug. 23 An article about Pervez Musharraf’s resignation as president of Pakistan seeks to disprove “the notion that his departure is a victory for the extremists and a setback for their enemies.” Instead of “a valiant standard-bearer for liberal, secular decency,” the piece calls Musharraf “an unelected usurper of the presidency” who lacked the “democratic mandate” that his successor should command among the Pakistani people. … A piece draws attention to wineries in “one of the least likely areas to have a wine boom”: the American Midwest. The nascent industry faces its fair share of obstacles. Wisconsin wineries import their grapes, and “branding is problematic.” But winemakers are using their heartland fortitude to find ways of circumventing these challenges. They’re growing grapes “that can survive at -36o F” in Minnesota and labeling their bottles with appellations that reflect “Midwestern places with conveniently French names,” like Marquette and Frontenac.
New York Times Magazine, Aug. 24 A profile examines tennis pro John McEnroe’s metamorphosis from “the world’s most notoriously … unglued athlete” to “an affably adjusted icon” who now spends about two months broadcasting from tennis’s biggest competitions. As a commentator, McEnroe “is far from lyrical,” but he has a “quirky candor that is appreciated by his audience.” Even off the court, “he remains a beguiling combination of the confessional and the elusive.”… A personal essay chronicles New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins’ years in Baghdad as a war correspondent. He describes a quest for a dead body with a few soldiers—because “I was a reporter, and I needed a corpse for the newspaper”—that left one Marine dead, “shot for a picture,” and a hardened photographer “seated on the stoop [of a mosque] … mumbling to himself like a child,” while Filkins himself remained “unscathed.” That moment, he says, emblematizes “the life of the reporter: always someone else’s pain.”
Seed, July/August 2008 A feature uses math to explain “what makes music sound good.” The experiment transposes the range of 88 notes represented on the piano, as well as frequencies in between, from a linear arrangement to one that uses a clock analogy. The study concludes “that superficially different styles—Renaissance music, classical and Romantic music, jazz, rock, and other popular forms—all make remarkably similar use of the geometry of chord space.”… A piec e explains recent neuroscience research that “link[s] the obscure details of the cortex to all sorts of important phenomena, from stock market bubbles to cigarette addiction to the development of trust.” Scientists are finding that the neurotransmitter dopamine might be “the Rosetta Stone … that just might allow the code to be broken.”
GQ, September 2008 A feature looks into causes behind the increase in HIV infections, such as reduced condom use among gay men, and explores possible solutions. These include a “morning-after approach—called post-exposure prophylaxis,” which is effective but not widely prescribed, as well as research conducted on mice injected with human cells and then infected with HIV. The efforts have been largely ineffective: “The last large-scale study was halted when people taking vaccines actually appeared more likely to catch HIV than a control group. …” Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that the number of Americans contracting HIV each year has risen from 40,000 to 56,000, with young gay men making up a large number of those cases. … Another article examines the growth of the tourism industry in “a country forever defined by bloodshed”: Rwanda. “[C]ranes are poised” in the capital city of Kigali, and government buildings are getting a “fresh coat of paint” in the hopes of augmenting the already growing numbers of tourists to a nation still associated with the 1994 genocide.
Must Read
The sprawling New Yorker feature on Burma imparts lessons from that country’s history that will add to your understanding of more recent turmoil there.
Must Skip
When compared with the deluge of Obama coverage in the press this week, the Economist’s leading article on the presumptive nominee sums up the salient points of his campaign thus far without offering anything fresh or even much of an angle at all, except to reveal a few of its own doubts about Obama’s candidacy.
Best Political Piece
New York Times Magazine tries to ferret out the message behind “Obamanomics” by analyzing Barack Obama’s policy suggestions and the origins of his economic philosophy.
Best Culture Piece
GQ’s multidimensional article on HIV/AIDS traces the epidemic from the author’s own awareness of the disease in the 1980s to his current reporting on a crisis that has received less attention recently.
Best Takedown of the Olympics
Joel Stein’s column in Time proposes a new scoring system with “anti-medals” for the losers and less sentimental sportsmanship: “No competition should be ruined by an undercurrent of peace and harmony. … If you want an endless event in which everyone pretends to respect everybody else, go to couples therapy.”
