L et me tell you about this one stretch of Hillsborough Road in Durham, North Carolina. It’s between two freeways, just a short drive from the noble towers of Duke University, and in the space of about a mile, you will find a McDonald’s, a Cracker Barrel, a Wendy’s, a Chick-fil-A, an Arby’s, a…

Rome_wasn't_beta_tested_in_a_day I hate how glib this sounds, but there’s really no other way to put it: playing Rome II feels like playing a beta. It’s as if someone sent me an early build, but forgot the caveat sheet. Okay, this is a work in progress, so you’re going to see some bugs. Also, we…

The world’s first female grandmaster was ready to deliver her regular Thursday-night lecture. Susan Polgar was perfumed, coiffed, made-up and dressed in a sleek black pantsuit, an elegant contrast to the boys and young men hunched over their boards in her Queens, New York, chess club. “I have a…

['Guernica' by Pablo Picasso] From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that…