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Taxes, Table Tennis, and the American Dream: Today's TNR Reader

Editor’s Note: We’ll be running the article recommendations of our friends at TNR Reader each afternoon on The Plank, just in time to print out or save for your commute home. Enjoy!

Obama should take on Romney’s tax record. It would make for a powerful story about wealth and privilege that the president doesn’t want to tell.

Rolling Stone | 5 min (1,168 words)

Gu Kailai has been cast as a woman driven to murder by greed and overwhelming ambition. The historical precedent for this figure? Empress Wu.

Smithsonian Magazine | 14 min (3,518 words)

Spoiled by Victory: How China’s domination of table tennis ended the country’s obsession with the sport.

The Atlantic6 min (1,499 words)

Our affluence can’t keep rising forever. Is the door closing on the American dream?

Wilson Quarterly | 14 min (3,474 words)