The Economist's former Lexington columnist on books about America's harsh criminal-justice system ...
DAVOS FOR THE DISTURBED
Notes from a gathering of far-right parties in Tokyo, with a cameo from Jean-Marie Le Pen ... read more »
EYES ON THE PRIZE
“Wolf Hall”, by Hilary Mantel, didn’t just win the Man Booker prize last year: it became the fastest-selling Booker winner ever. But behind her triumph, as she reveals in this memoir, lay a complicated relationship with awards ... read more »
ONE WORD: PLASTICS
Little seems more durable, insidiously, than plastic. In his latest Going Green column, Robert Butler makes a heartening trip to a high-tech recovery plant ...
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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
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REINVENTING THE LIBRARY
Francine Houben built a spectacular library for Delft. Now she has a bigger challenge: Birmingham. Robert Butler meets her ... read more »
PUBERTY BLUES
Boys’ voices are breaking earlier; girls are developing breasts as young as six. But why? Fiona Neill meets the Danish scientists who are on the case ... read more »
KICK IT GOOD
What happens when an anarchist creates rules for football? Laura Spinney heads to Switzerland's International Centre for Research on Anarchism to find out ... read more »
Comment of the moment
quote As a resident of Bolivia, I totally agree that travelling by road in Bolivia is terrifying, especially to rural areas in ancient rickety buses which are held together by elastic bands...