The New Republic

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For Cecelia Prewett, the phone calls and e-mails began pouring in immediately. On November 6, her former boss, Representative Rahm Emanuel, had just been named chief of staff to President-elect Barack Obama. Suddenly, it seemed everyone Prewett had ever met in Washington was getting back in touch with her. Her inbox filled with notes from well-wishers. Her cell phone rang so incessantly that she had to turn it off at work. READ MORE >>

'Take off your veil!" the Somali soldier shouted at the woman in the mostly empty street. Steadying his assault rifle with his right hand, he ripped away the woman's black niqab with his left. "Why are you coming so close to us? You have explosives?" He leveled the muzzle of his gun against the bridge of her nose. Her mouth, suddenly embarrassed and exposed, broke into a jester's forced grin. READ MORE >>

In July, 1994, when Bill Clinton was touring Europe, the president's aides were, well, awestruck by the tenacity of Richard Holbrooke, then the United States Ambassador to Germany. What accounted for this reaction? During the president's visit to Germany, Holbrooke was, as one official put it, "a whirling dervish." He managed to wangle his way into top-level meetings and hounded White House staff to get airplane and helicopter seats close to Clinton. READ MORE >>

Twentieth Avenue in Bensonhurst starts in the Hudson River, where it's called Gravesend Bay, only a couple of miles from the Atlantic Ocean. You can see the ocean across the Belt Parkway, but Bensonhurst rarely looks. The neighborhood focuses inland, toward the hub of 86th Street, with its railway track suspended some sixty feet above the road, and beyond all the way down to 50th. READ MORE >>