Newsweek articles from March 2009

Newsweek archives from March 2009

The Other Lincoln.(Columnist; THE LAST WORD)(Mary Todd Lincoln)(Column)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Anna Quindlen Mary Todd may have been the first to see greatness in her husband. But once he was a legend, history saw only the worst in her. As a Catholic schoolgirl I supplemented the obligatory "Lives of the Saints" with the...

Brother, Can You Spare a Painting?(Entertainment; ARTS)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Peter Plagens The recession has been disastrous for the contemporary-art market. That may turn out to be good for the art. Imagine a Wynton Marsalis quartet playing in Wembley, or the Stade de France, or Giants Stadium in New...

Her Cups Runneth Over.(Entertainment; CULTURE)(Barbie dolls)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Eliza Gray Barbie turns 50--she looks good, doesn't she?--and gets dueling biographies as a gift. No one thinks a lot about the prepubescent Barbie, but she was young once too, and she's got a doozy of a nativity narrative. It...

Love on the Blocks.(Entertainment; BOOKS)(Book marketing)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Jennie Yabroff You've gotta have a gimmick to sell a book. We're sold on an auction catalog that's really a novel. Lenore Doolan met Harold Morris at a Halloween party in 2002. She was dressed as Lizzie Borden in a bloodstained...

Old Media Strikes Back.(Business; TECHTONIC SHIFTS)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Daniel Lyons Hulu, founded by NBC and Fox, has become a better moneymaker than Web darling YouTube. The moral: better content wins. As the worlds of technology and media collide, the same contest keeps getting played out over...

Death of the Dream.(Business; ECONOMY)
March 2, 2009... California has come back before, but 'hysterical greens' aren't helping. For decades, California has epitomized America's economic strengths: technological excellence, artistic creativity, agricultural fecundity and an intrepid...

The Reeducation of Larry Summers.(presidential adviser's change in demeanor)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Michael Hirsh and Evan Thomas He's become a champion of massive government intervention in the economy, and he's even learning how to play nice. Larry Summers had the rumpled, slightly sleepy look of a professor who has been up...

In California, Green Means Growth.(Business; COUNTERPOINT)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Stefan Theil Why smart regulations can help, not hurt, the economy. With the global economy in a deep recession, there's a predictable debate going on: can we still afford to fight climate change and invest in a greener...

Is America Inching Closer to Socialism?(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 2, 2009... 'We Are All Socialists Now': Readers reacted heatedly to our Feb. 16 cover, which argued that America is adopting some socialist ideas to address our fiscal woes. "Modifying American capitalism in this financial crisis so that our system...

The Editor's Desk.(political leadership of Barack Obama and other American presidents)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Jon Meacham Nothing against Abraham Lincoln, but in a way it is too bad that President Obama has replaced President Bush's Oval Office bust of Winston Churchill with one of the 16th president. True, American conservatives,...

Tibet's Rising Son.(Karmapa Lama)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Patrick Symmes Traditionally, the Karmapa Lama would not become the leader of the Tibetan people. Tradition may need to change. For a god, he is a nice young man. lean and assured, dressed in red and gold, the Karmapa Lama is a...

To Pack a Real Punch.(Alex Molinaroli, the president of power solutions at Johnson Controls, on automotive batteries for plug-in electric vehicle)(Interview)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Fareed Zakaria Everything hangs on the race to build tomorrow's battery. Discussions of cutting-edge energy always come down to a technology that's more than 200 years old: the battery. Modern versions are much more powerful...

Man Bites 'Slumdog'.(India's slums and poverty)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Sudip Mazumdar Don't let the movie mislead you: there are no fairy-tale endings for most of India's street kids. I was one of them myself. On the way to see "Slumdog Millionaire" in Kolkata, I had my cabdriver pass through the...

Finally, the Surreal Deal.(Entertainment; MOVIES)(The Exterminating Angel)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Seth Colter Walls After 40 years, a Bunuel masterpiece is back. We miss our late, great artists even more during trying times. With so many people quoting "Baby, It's Cold Outside," who wouldn't like to have Ella Fitzgerald...

The Truth About Multiple Births.(reproductive medicine guidelines on in vitro fertilization)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Mark I. Evans, M.D.; Evans is the director of Comprehensive Genetics in New York City. Lost in the octuplets saga is the scary medical reality: without selective reduction, lots of lives are at risk. More than 20 years ago, I...

America's New Shrink.(Nation; COVER STORY: NATIONAL AFFAIRS)(Cover story)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Jonathan Alter Chin up, everyone. This president is well poised to bring us back from the brink. If Ralph Waldo emerson had a 19th-century Facebook page, his "Favorite Quotation" (or maybe I should say my favorite Emerson...

Paging Doctor Zeke.(Ezekiel Emanuel on medical ethics and health care industry)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Howard Fineman Moving from hospital to hospital, a young oncologist named Ezekiel Emanuel made a startling discovery. The doctors he worked with often didn't know if the treatment they were administering was the most sensible one...

Why Marbury V. Madison Still Matters.(United States' judiciary system)
March 2, 2009... More than 200 years after the high court ruled, the decision in that landmark case continues to resonate. Tuesday, Feb. 24, is the 206th anniversary of Marbury v. Madison, the most important decision the Supreme Court--and perhaps any...

Dubious New Models for News.(Nation; THE BIG IDEA)(Column)
March 2, 2009... Top media institutions have never adhered to a single business plan. They are even less likely to follow one in the future. The sorry predicament of the newspaper industry has given rise to a testy argument about journalism's future. In one...

A New Mission for the NAACP.(Nation; FACING FACTS)(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Ellis Cose The youngest president in association history leads at a time when many question the body's very necessity. This February the NAACP marked its 100th anniversary. The venerable organization was on the front lines of...

Reefer Madness.(Michael Phelps' marijuana use)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Suzanne Smalley and Weston Kosova Everyone wanted a piece of the great bong brouhaha. That's the American way. Here's what usually happens to a college kid who's caught with a small stash of marijuana: the police give him a...

Q&A: Rosie Goes Back to Therapy.(Newsmakers)(Rosie O'Donnell )(Interview)
March 2, 2009... Rosie O'Donnell isn't really a therapist, but she's playing one on TV, in the Lifetime movie "America." She spoke to Ramin Setoodeh. Is this your first Lifetime movie? Yes. My first of many, I hope. Are you a big fan of them? ...

Perspectives.(Perspectives)(Quotation)
March 2, 2009... "In things racial we have always been, and I believe continue to be, in too many ways essentially a nation of cowards." Attorney General Eric Holder, in remarks to Department of Justice employees at an event celebrating Black History Month...

Where Being Our Friend Doesn't Help.(Periscope; AFGHANISTAN)(American troop presence in Afghanistan affects potential candidates' polls)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Dan Ephron When visitors stop by his office at the national Defense University in Washington, Ali Jalali enjoys showing off a mug stamped with the words I'M A ROCK STAR IN AFGHANISTAN. The country's former interior minister says he...

To Catch a Mini-Madoff.(Periscope; JUSTICE)(Allen Stanford called as mini Bernie Madoff)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff They're already calling him Mini-Madoff, but Allen Stanford, the Texas tycoon whose alleged "massive, ongoing fraud" was shut down last week by the SEC, is a different character than Bernie....

Busted: The Churchill Flap.(Periscope; Diplomacy)(bust of Sir Winston Churchill)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Katie Connolly Has America's even- tempered new president already ruffled feathers in the land that spawned Borat and Benny Hill? That's certainly how the spiky British press responded after the White House sent back to the British...

Illinois Tries, Fails to Have Scandal-Free Week.(Periscope; THE DIGNITY INDEX)(Brief article)
March 2, 2009... A weekly mathematical survey of dubious behavior that measures, on a scale of 1 to 100, just how low a person can go. After all that fuss, Blago's chosen Illinois Sen. Roland Burris admits he forgot to share some key details about raising...

Still Gloomy Edition.(Periscope; CONVENTIONAL WISDOM WATCH)
March 2, 2009... In a sign of the times, GM says it'll "shrink" Pontiac. No longer building excitement with horsepower, will it be building anything at all? Obama SIDE: Signs biggest spending bill ever, and he'll probably have to do it again. Cheers! ...

Swings & Misses Edition.(Periscope; A CW LOOK AT MLB 2009)
March 2, 2009... Baseball season is only a March Madness away. New Yankee Stadium acoustics will be tested early when A-Fraud is introduced. Bud Selig DOWN: Commish takes no responsibility for steroids era. What does MLB pay him $18 million for? ...

Even to Friends, The Goose Is Cooked.(Periscope; AIR SAFETY)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Matthew Philips Ever since us airways flight 1549 made its miraculous safe landing on the Hudson River in January, America has had a new public enemy--a villain so resilient that annihilation through open war appears to be the only...

Who's This Fella Keynes, Anyway?(Periscope; CHEAT SHEET)(John Maynard Keynes )
March 2, 2009... Byline: Matthew Philips The name of vaunted British economist John Maynard Keynes has been invoked so much in recent months--as hero and whipping boy--you'd think he was a member of President Obama's economic team. In a way, he is, even...

Sorry, Don't Know Anyone by that Name.(Periscope; BUSINESS)(businesses change their names to save the from public disgrace)(Brief article)
March 2, 2009... It's a classic trick for a company suffering through public disgrace: change your name. The latest example is Blackwater, the embattled private security firm. But does it work? Branding experts weigh in on recent cases: BEFORE: BLACKWATER:...

The Chick-Lit Culprit.(Periscope; CLOSURE)(How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life)(Brief article)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Tina Peng In the mass-media age, new stories captivate us, then vanish. We revisit those stories to bring you the next chapter. Starting Point In April 2006, The Harvard Crimson reports that passages in sophomore Kaavya...

James Gray.(Periscope; A LIFE IN MOVIES)(James Gray's movie picks)(Brief article)
March 2, 2009... The writer and director of "The Yards" and "We Own the Night," Gray (left) returns with "Two Lovers," a melancholy love story featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow. His picks: My Five Most Essential Movies 1. "The Nights of...

Another Banking Casualty.(Periscope; BOOKS)(Bailout Nation: How Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy)(Book review)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Barrett Sheridan To most publishers, it would've been a touch of golden luck: a manuscript about the worst economic crisis in decades, written by a financial insider and finished months before rivals had even a rough draft ready....

She's Just Not That Into Fidelity to You.(Periscope; WORTH YOUR TIME)(Mistresses)(Television program review)(Brief article)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Joshua Alston Of the all things "mistresses" has going for it, originality isn't one of them. Wives' husbands and husbands' wives slink away for scandalous trysts. Shocking secrets come to light. Dirty deeds are done dirt cheap....

The Good, the Bad, the Bible.(Periscope; BELIEF WATCH)(The Good Book)(Book review)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Lisa Miller The story of Dinah 'isn't a story they taught me at Temple Sinai's Hebrew school in 1980.' Is there a right way to read the Bible? This question came to me as I was reading "The Good Book," by David Plotz. The...

No Body Till Some Body Loves You.(Periscope; PAGE TURNER)(Bodies)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Jesse Ellison There was a time, believe it or not, when our bodies worked for us, instead of the other way around. In her new book, "Bodies," British author and psychologist Susie Orbach examines how science, culture and...

The Stunted Economic Stimulus.(Columnist; JUDGMENT CALLS)(Column)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Robert J. Samuelson Obama's package is too focused on political goals and projects. The effect is to weaken the program's basic purpose--to jolt the economy. Judged by his own standards, President Obama's $787 billion economic...

Anatomy of a Scare.(Society; SCIENCE)(link between childhood vaccines and autism)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Sharon Begley; With Jeneen Interlandi When one study linked childhood vaccines to autism, it set off a panic. The research didn't hold up, but some wounded families can't move on. Like many people in London on that bleak...

Men Will Be Men.(Society; JUSTICE)
March 2, 2009... Byline: Tony Dokoupil When guys lose jobs, the TV, den and gym win. Women? Sex? Not so much. Bankers no longer buying bottle service? Laid-off construction workers unable to summon the swagger to whistle at a pretty girl? Urban tales...

Suburban Stall.(Books)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Malcolm Jones 'Mad Men' is hot. So is Richard Yates. Where are the Cheever believers? A year or so ago, I was sitting in a Manhattan bar with A group of friends, and when the waiter arrived with the drinks, the talk turned to...

Reining In Bubbles So They Won't Pop.(Business; ADAPTATION)(managing the economy)
March 9, 2009... Our financial system accelerates the human instinct to go wild during good times. Perhaps we need some automatic brakes. When financial historians look back at the last six months, they'll be hard-pressed to explain precisely why our...

Where the Neon Lights Are Bright--and Drivers Are No Longer Welcome.(Business; URBAN PLANNING)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Nick Summers Under Mayor Bloomberg, New York City is embracing a controversial theory: closing down streets can reduce traffic jams. As the mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg usually takes the subway to work. When he...

'Our Country Has Faced Far Worse Travails'.(Business; ECONOMY)(Excerpt)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Warren E. Buffett A paralyzing fear has engulfed the country. But America's best days lie ahead. Warren Buffett's annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway share-holders is a highly anticipated, market-moving event. This year...

Confessions Of A Pundit.(Business; ECONOMY)(economic commentators)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Zachary Karabell; Karabell is president of River Twice Research. Economic commentators may be insightful, but they're not neutral. Market forces shape their views. With the financial system in tatters and trillions of dollars...

Stress: Better for Us Than We Think.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 9, 2009... 'Stress Could Save Your Life': Readers were skeptical about the benefits of stress, the subject of our Feb. 23 cover story. Heartened to hear of an upside, one reader, who had thought he'd be lucky to live until 50, wrote, "With the stress I...

The Editor's Desk.(The Editor's Desk)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Daniel Klaidman A few weeks after 9/11, when Americans were scared and bewildered, Fareed Zakaria wrote a cover story in this magazine under the deceptively simple headline "Why They Hate Us." At a time of confusion and...

FDR's Sweater Fable.(Columnist; THE LAST WORD)(Franklin D. Roosevelt )
March 9, 2009... Byline: George F. Will President Obama said he is strengthening government 'not because I believe in bigger government--I don't.' Chant: Yes you do. On April 12, 1933, the 40th day of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt met with...

Politics Takes a Right Turn in Jerusalem.(International; ISRAEL)(Benjamin Netanyahu )(Interview)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Lally Weymouth The next Israeli government is likely to be a narrow, hard-line coalition, led by some unlikely bedfellows. Likud Party | Benjamin Netanyahu Israel's Prime Minister-Elect, Benjamin Netanyahu, sat down last...

Learning to Live With Radical Islam.(International; COVER STORY: INTERNATIONAL)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Fareed Zakaria We don't have to accept the stoning of criminals. But it's time to stop treating all Islamists as potential terrorists. Pakistan's Swat valley is quiet once again. Often compared to Switzerland for its stunning...

Obama Should Talk To Syria Now.(International)(Barack Obama)
March 9, 2009... Damascus is signaling that it's ready to negotiate a separate peace with Israel. It won't happen without America's help. The silent treatment has to stop. Opportunity" and "Middle East" are rarely mentioned in the same breath, and for good...

Neighbors In Flight.(International)(Arab-Israeli conflicts)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Kevin Peraino; With Joanna Chen in Jerusalem Acre was a rare oasis of calm. Now hate and fear have taken charge. The Mediterranean port of acre has long attracted men with violent ambitions. Alexander the Great arrived in the...

There's a World of Trouble Out There.(International; INTELLIGENCE)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh; With Owen Matthews in Moscow, Melinda Liu in Beijing and John Barry in Washington The CIA faces a threat it's never been great at analyzing: the fallout from global recession. In 1930, few...

Till Death Do Us Part.(Movies)(Watchmen)(Movie review)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Devin Gordon The long-awaited 'Watchmen' movie takes loyalty to new limits. And that's exactly what's wrong with it. Till Death Do Us Part Somebody had better appreciate the guts it takes to admit this: the first time I...

Autism And Education.(My Turn)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Stephanie Lindsley; Lindsley lives in Beavercreek, Ohio. Who should we focus on--my disabled son or my gifted girl? My son and my daughter are happy, active, healthy children who enjoy school and are lucky to have a solid family...

Obama's Pelosi Problem.(Politics; WASHINGTON)(Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Holly Bailey The president has laid out a paradigm-shifting agenda. There will be pushback from the GOP--but less, perhaps, were it not for the House Speaker. Charlie Dent wanted to vote for Barack Obama's stimulus package....

The Busiest Woman in Washington.(Politics; THE WHITE HOUSE)(Desiree Rogers)(Interview)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Katie Connolly and Evan Thomas As social secretary, Desiree Rogers is gatekeeper and imagemaker. But her top job is brand promoter--casting the Obamas as occupants of a 'People's House.' The White House has been, historically,...

Perspectives.(Perspectives)(Quotation)
March 9, 2009... "There's not a single line in the budget that won't have someone who cares about it very strongly. And yet if we allowed all of those lines to -- grow over time, we would wind up with a fiscal crisis." White House budget director Peter...

Try a Little Tea and Sympathy.(Periscope; PAKISTAN)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Dan Ephron, Ron Moreau, John Barry And Mark Hosenball ADM. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, likes to tell people he's on his third cup of tea with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who heads Pakistan's Army. During...

A Big Swing And a Miss.(Periscope; CIA)(on Kyle Foggo)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Mark Hosenball In retrospect, Kyle (Dusty) Foggo probably wasn't such a smart choice to be CIA Director Porter Goss's No. 3 during the Bush administration. Foggo, who was sentenced to three years in prison last week after pleading...

Blog the Record Straight.(Periscope; CHINA)(Brief article)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Melinda Liu The role of bloggers has been firmly established: they are self-appointed ombudsmen, documenting mistakes by media and government. But in China, where the Web is less censored than the mainstream media, Netizens have...

IM Sory I Sed You Were a Gonner.(Periscope; THE DIGNITY INDEX)(Brief article)
March 9, 2009... A weekly mathematical survey of dubious behavior that measures, on a scale of 1 to 100, just how low a person can go. Sure, the private-jet gripes are tired, but you'd still have to be a PR fool to fly one to meet an attorney general. Bank...

Robin Hood Edition.(Barack and Michelle Obama, and Bobby Jindal, evaluated)(Brief article)
March 9, 2009... From tax reform to a realistic budget, Obama's making big changes so fast our heads are spinning. But CW likes the dizzy feeling. Obama UP: Home-run speech before Congress; every day making good on his promises. Michelle UP: Sleeveless...

Fiscal Blueprint Edition.(President Barack Obama's financial planning)(Brief article)
March 9, 2009... A CW LOOK AT THE BUDGET PROPOSAL Obama's $3.5 trillion budget is a doozy. As for that mounting deficit, well, let's just hope those rosy growth predictions are right. Renewables UP: With $150 billion going to clean energy over the...

And Now, a Word From Our Nemesis.(Politics)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Jesse Ellison and Matthew Philips Begun in 1966, the rebuttal to the State of the Union (and other major presidential addresses) has evolved into a high-profile audition for a rising star from the opposing party. But it's a dubious...

The Ugly Truth About That Poor Little Rich Girls Blog.(Periscope; WALL STREET)(Dating a Banker Anonymous )
March 9, 2009... Byline: Tony Dokoupil It was billed as a blog and support group for Wall Street's saddest cases: the once pampered young women forced to adjust to life without bottle service, Bergdorf Goodman accounts and boom-time sex--the collateral...

A Swedish Model That's Not So Pretty.(Periscope; APPLES AND ORANGES)(bank nationalization)(Brief article)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Matthew Philips History repeats itself, but not without a few wrinkles. We make the comparisons, then pick them apart. The Comparison Some say it'll never happen. Some say it already has. Either way, the air is thick with...

Why Don't We Do It on The Road?(Periscope; PHOTOGRAPHY)(Brief article)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Sarah Ball It has the feel of a lovingly crafted album of vacation photos on Facebook: a bunch of young guys in beach chairs, nursing fruity drinks and flipping the bird at the camera. The captions could read SPRING BREAK '09. Only...

The Nurse Will See You Now.(Periscope; HEALTH MATTERS)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Jerry Adler Nurses perform much of the patient care that TV shows attribute to the much more glamorous profession of doctor. The first nurse who saved my son's life was actually a doctor--a first-year pediatric resident who had...

A 'Terrible, Horrible, No Good' Trend.(Periscope; MEDIA)(Brief article)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Seth Colter Walls The wave began in the spring of 2007, as then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales prepared to face an inquisition over the U.S. attorney firings scandal. The licking of liberal chops was so heavy that Salon.com...

Why Doctors Hate Science.(Society; ON SCIENCE)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Sharon Begley Scaremongers warn that 'effectiveness research' threatens the lives of Americans. Thank God doctors in the United States are free to treat patients as they deem best, free from interference by faceless...

When Judges Behave Badly.(Society; THE VERDICT)
March 9, 2009... Judges are not gods. But we must trust them to do their jobs, or do away with the institution itself. February was a spectacularly bad month for the judging business. Last week Samuel Kent, a federal district judge in Texas, pleaded guilty...

Now 4 Restaurant 2.0.(Society; CULTURE)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Andrew Romano Thanks to Twitter and the Web, L.A. is obsessed with the Korean tacos of America's first viral restaurant. Imitation, as they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Which is why the most revealing part of a...

Rethinking Race In the Classroom.(Society; EDUCATION)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Allison Samuels In the age of Obama, some want to banish 'Huck Finn' and abolish Black History Month. Why they're wrong. The day my ninth-grade english teacher, Mr. Buzzell, assigned my class "To Kill a Mockingbird" still...

The Science Behind Our Generosity.(Society; GIVING)
March 9, 2009... How psychology affects what we give charities. Imagine that you are walking near a shallow ornamental pond when you notice that a small child has fallen in, and is apparently in danger of drowning. You look around for the child's caregiver,...

No Apologies.(Society; RACE)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Raina Kelley We're all worried about seeming racist. Some advice: just relax. Dear fellow journalists (especially the ones on TV): can I offer you a bit of unsolicited advice? Be brave. Listening to you talk (and talk and...

Midnight Madness.(Entertainment; TELEVISION)(late night television shows)
March 9, 2009... Byline: Joshua Alston Jimmy Fallon prepares for the late-night wars. It's hard to imagine pitying someone who just got a glitzy, lucrative, high-profile job (or any job, for that matter). But Jimmy Fallon, the charming, if a bit...

Let's Talk About Sex.(Columnist; THE LAST WORD)(sex education)
March 16, 2009... Byline: Anna Quindlen Congress loves abstinence-only programs so much it has thrown big bucks at them. The public? It's got better ideas. It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is a deep schism in this country, a schism...

Death Be Not Allowed.(Entertainment; BOOKS)(portrayal of death in literature)
March 16, 2009... Byline: Claire Messud; Messud, a NEWSWEEK contributing editor, is the author of "The Emperor's Children." No one likes to think about dying, but novelists seem scared to--well, death--to write about it. Characters in fiction don't...

Cash In A Mattress? No, Gold In The Closet.(Business)
March 16, 2009... Byline: Lisa Miller; With Jessica Ramirez With prices setting new records, the worried wealthy are piling up ingots in home safes. NEWSWEEK goes shopping for precious metal. A hundred-ounce gold bar, when you hold it in your hand, is...

Where Death Comes Cheap.(Business)(costs of funeral services)
March 16, 2009... Byline: Matthew Philips; With Karen Springen Many families want to cut burial costs. One funeral director stands ready. On Jan. 10, Diane and Randy Bathurst were having breakfast when Randy began to feel ill. He excused himself to lie...

Dancing With The Woz.(Business; TECHTONIC SHIFTS)(Steve Wozniak in 'Dancing with the Stars')(Column)
March 16, 2009... Byline: Daniel Lyons Some tech moguls are like pro athelets: their careers end early, and they miss fame A lot of people in Silicon Valley either laughed or groaned or both when it became known that Steve Wozniak, the cofounder of...

The Biggest Thing to Fear Is Fear.(Business; CONSUMERS)(public opinion of the economy)
March 16, 2009... Byline: Zachary Karabell; Karabell is president of RiverTwice Research. American consumers are in better shape than you think. As the equity markets take another huge step downward, it's likely that American consumers will continue to...