Books An American (Working) in Paris On vacation to Paris, we sometimes imagine what it'd be like to live full-time among the locals. But ever wonder how it'd be to work—like, work work—with them, too? In this exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, Paris, I Love You But You're Bringing Me…

O f the many and conflicting stories about how The Huffington Post came to be—how it boasts 68 sections, three international editions (with more to come), 1.2 billion monthly page views and 54 million comments in the past year alone, how it came to surpass the traffic of virtually all the nation’s…

Amazing! Incredible! Unbelievable! Eyeglasses that let you see through clothes. The secrets to super-human strength. Scary seven-foot tall ghosts that do your bidding. All of this could be yours for a dollar or two. At least, that’s what vintage comic-book ads would have you believe. Six years ago,…

Portraits by Mike Piscitelli and Jason Henry A few days before I was set to interview Kenneth Anger, I started feeling weird. I kept imagining a terrible scene: sitting across from the 85-year-old filmmaker in a dimly lit, very old room while he grows increasingly frustrated with my line of…

Stephen M. Saland, Jim Alesi, Mark Grisanti and Roy J. McDonald. Mike Groll/Associated Press; Librado Romero/The New York Times; Mike Groll/Associated Press; Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times At the end of January, New York’s Conservative Party, the most influential of the minor parties that…

This morning AOL announced that it would sell or license about eleven hundred patents to Microsoft, in return for a billion dollars and change. Much of that money, AOL proclaims, will be passed to shareholders. The move is roughly akin to Warren Sapp selling off his massive collection of Air…

Illustrations by Aled Lewis In 1989, as communism was beginning to crumble across Eastern Europe, just a few months before protesters started pecking away at the Berlin Wall, the Japanese game-making giant Nintendo reached across the world to unleash upon America its own version of freedom. The new…

At the end of the meal, I’d given the waiter CUC $80 and received CUC $10 in change, and as I stood there with the ten-peso note in my hand Antonio grabbed and pocketed it. I shot him a confused look, and he responded with a half shrug that seemed calibrated somewhere between What’s it matter? and…

What went wrong Despite all of HavenCo's worst-case planning and bring-it-on rhetoric, the nations of the world never had to lift a finger to topple it. It failed of its own accord. In hindsight, it's hard to identify just one cause; HavenCo had so many problems, its failure was overdetermined. As a…

Marion Barry has been sitting in his car for 25 minutes, waiting for people to show up to his campaign kickoff rally. It’s a warm, sunny February day. The greatest politician in the history of the District of Columbia lingers in his silver Jaguar in the parking lot next to Thurgood Marshall Academy…

Video of the Day Masthead Editor-in-Chief Alex Carnevale ( e-mail / tumblr / twitter ) Features Editor Mia Nguyen ( e-mail / tumblr / twitter ) Senior Editor Brittany Julious ( e-mail / tumblr / twitter ) This Recording is dedicated to the enjoyment of audio and visual stimuli. Please visit our…

Credit Illustration by Christoph Niemann Over the past decade, the Japanese fashion chain Uniqlo has become among the most successful retailers in the world. Its success is due in large part to the fact that it has found a way to sell basic stuff that is not only affordable but also stylish and…

You live in Manhattan below 125th Street, or gentrified Brooklyn, or a quiet part of Queens. You want Chinese food. You’re not following some recommendation from an old Sam Sifton column or a food blog, though. You just want some chicken lo mein, sweet and sour chicken, egg drop soup and fortune…

Last summer, in Detroit’s St. Paul Church of God in Christ, I watched Bill Cosby summon his inner Malcolm X. It was a hot July evening. Cosby was speaking to an audience of black men dressed in everything from Enyce T-shirts or polos to blazers and ties. Some were there with their sons. Some were…

The incident provides a glimpse into the complex situation in the eastern Congo, where gold traders attempt to make quick money off of the area’s conflict-tainted mineral resources — and end up exacerbating the region’s long-standing misery. It’s a reminder that the Congo gold trade is so dirty —…

Lydia Parker, foreground, at home with her sister. She got one of the bruises on her face when an uncontrollable tic caused her to hit herself with her cellphone. Gillian Laub for The New York Times Before the media vans took over Main Street, before the environmental testers came to dig at the…

Expect us The house on Chicago's south side where Hammond lived Google Maps Convinced that they had identified the right suspect, agents began continuous physical surveillance of Hammond's two-apartment home on Chicago's South Side on February 29. Their target only used the side entrance to the…

Ramsay, a Brit, had come to this country to serve the most mocked cuisine in the world. Photograph by Jillian Edelstein. Gordon Ramsay, the only chef in London honored with three stars by the Guide Michelin , is not a monster. Ramsay, who is also the host of three uniquely adversarial in-your-face…

The search for an amateur philosopher Marie-Lan Nguyen via Wikipedia. In the July/August 2001 issue of the late, great magazine Lingua Franca, James Ryerson published an enthralling article about an anonymous benefactor who was paying professors huge sums of money to review a strange 60-page…

THE REAL DEAL | Americana collector Hitoshi Tsujimoto, founder of high-end workwear brand the Real McCoy's, in his Kobe headquarters among a few of his approximately 100 Warhols. Photograph by Tung Walsh Imagine going into an espresso bar, as I did in Tokyo, ordering a single shot, and being told…

Phoney politeness and muddled messages: a guide to euphemisms SHORT sharp terms make big points clear. But people often prefer to soften their speech with euphemism: a mixture of abstraction, metaphor, slang and understatement that offers protection against the offensive, harsh or blunt. In 1945, in…

Mark Peterson/Redux, for the New York Times On the northern edge of Benton Harbor, just beyond the grim grid of housing projects, shuttered storefronts, boarded-up homes and junk-laden yards that dominate much of the town, sits an emerald oasis known as Harbor Shores. As the name suggests, Harbor…

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