Reviewed by Michael Specter
The cold war wasn't good for much, but it certainly was a terrific time for thrillers: the East and West were so neatly divided, the atmosphere so ominously noir, and everything fit so well into a world in which the angels of democracy were destined always to live in conflict with the alluring tug of the devil. Read more »
The next big medical breakthroughs may result from one scientist's battle to map the Viking gene pool.
by Michael Specter
If not for a single genetic peculiarity, passed invisibly through the generations, it is unlikely that we would know a thing about a sixteenth-century Icelandic cleric named Einar. Read more »
In its planned invasion of Italy, Starbucks is armed with Frappuccinos and Americanos–but will that win over a nation of espresso drinkers?
by Michael Specter
A couple of years ago, after a long dinner in a medieval Tuscan village, I asked my father–who was visiting Italy for the first time–if he wanted a cup of coffee. His eyes went blank. "Not the thimbleful," he said, with dread, as if the waiter were about to deliver a thumbscrew instead of an espresso. Read more »
After years of controversy and bungling, the members of the secretive Swedish Academy are more divided than ever.
by Michael Specter
One Thursday in October, a man named Sture Allen will carry out what he calls "my little ritual." Read more »
KAMPALA, Uganda–Raphael Nawiro got up extra early one steamy morning this summer. He walked a mile from his home, then took two long bus rides until he reached Uganda's principal medical complex, the aging, overburdened Old Mulago Hospital. Read more »
Weighing Health Risks
by Michael Specter
KAKULU, Uganda — This village is really just a muddy patch of ground in the tall trees near where the Nile flows out of Lake Victoria. The men work on coffee plantations. The women bear children, fetch water from the well about a mile away and cultivate cassava, potatoes and bananas. Read more »
As one of the few remaining people with frequent access to the increasingly volcanic President of Russia, Valentin Yumashev knows when to step lightly. So it was with careful planning–and a slightly queasy stomach–that the Kremlin chief of staff decided to present an important document to Boris Yeltsin one day this spring. Read more »
Population Implosion Worries a Graying Europe
by Michael Specter
Mia Hulton is a true woman of the late 20th century. Soft-spoken, well-educated and thoughtful, she sings Renaissance music in a choral group, lives quietly with the man she loves and works like a demon seven days a week. Read more »
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in his Life
by Michael Specter
Nobody can quite figure out what to do about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He is one of the century's most important writers, but it has been decades since he produced a book worth talking about. A bearded, inflexible prophet whose blazing truths were too much for a police state to bear, Solzhenitsyn was forcibly ejected from the Soviet Union and immediately transformed into a living martyr. Read more »
Traffickers' New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women
by Michael Specter
RAMLE, Israel–Irina always assumed that her beauty would somehow rescue her from the poverty and hopelessness of village life. A few months ago, after answering a vague ad in a small Ukrainian newspaper, she slipped off a tour boat when it put in at Haifa, hoping to make a bundle dancing naked on the tops of tables. Read more »
Michael Specter has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998.
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