New York
How Hurricane Sandy Could Spoil Election Day
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! New York’s last king of print on the disappearance of Newsweek from his shelves. New York Times | 3 min (627 words) READ MORE >>
The Most Important Tech Issue Nobody’s Talking About
Where Woody Guthrie's Anti-Commercial Legacy has Lived On
Of all the tributes to Woody Guthrie that I’ve seen or heard about in this year of his centennial—including an exuberant concert at Brooklyn College and an extravagant gala at the Kennedy Center—the only surprising one took place last Wednesday evening at the Cabaret Convention in New York. The event, its mercantile name notwithstanding, is a series of glitzy concerts by (mostly) serious-minded nightclub performers, staged annually under the auspices of the Mabel Mercer Foundation. READ MORE >>
The Critic Wall Street Loves to Lunch With
THERE AREN’T MANY people who can get the Treasury secretary on the phone—and fewer still who can get away with yelling at him on the call. His wife, sure. Probably the president. Add to that group Felix Salmon, Reuters’s finance blogger, who has no problem raising his voice and giving Timothy Geithner the what-for while bobbing away on the yoga ball that serves as a desk chair in his Times Square workspace. READ MORE >>
Mike Bloomberg’s Genius Idea
The Campaign to Steal Ohio
WHEN I HEARD the sound of loud drumming on a sleepy Toledo street on a Tuesday afternoon, I knew I had come to the right place. I followed the beat to a garage, where I found a guy in his forties hammering away on a large drum kit. He no longer had the shaggy hair or the leather jacket, but I knew it was Jon Stainbrook, the frenetic former drummer of ‘80s punk band The Stain. READ MORE >>
The Mormon Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
The Mormonizing of America: How The Mormon Religion Became a Dominant Force in Politics, Entertainment, and Pop CultureBy Stephen Mansfield (Worthy Publishing, 264 pp., $22.99) People of Paradox: A History of Mormon CultureBy Terryl L. Givens (Oxford University Press, 414 pp., $29.99) Falling in Love with Joseph Smith: My Search for the Real Prophet By Jane Barnes (Tarcher, 294 pp., $25.95) READ MORE >>