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Jodi Kantor’s wonderful and voyeuristic reported treatise on the Obama marriage runs in the New York Times Magazine this weekend. It’s absolutely worth the time to delve into the personal insights (and funny audio!) Kantor squeezes out of interviews with friends and associates of the Obamas, many of whom are now co-workers of the world-famous ...

The news of the hour is a new vote in Afghanistan. This is good news for Peter Galbraith, a United Nations representative in Afghanistan who had been fired from the U.N. team for blasting Afghanistan's “tainted vote” in public. This new Washington- and Kabul-sanctioned runoff election, to be held on Nov. 7, may well delay an official White ...

From the same Chicago schools system that saw 16-year-old Derrion Albert bludgeoned to death, another troubling story: It is a Chicago public school full of energy and spirit. It has about 800 girls, and 115 of them have something in common – something you might find disturbing. ... All those young ladies are moms or moms-to-be at Paul ...

Here's a regular statistic, and then a shocking one: Every month, a large percentage of the world's adult population menstruates. But in emerging markets, that group can scarcely afford the protection. Women worldwide are no longer exiled to tents and deemed ''unclean''—but according to the She28 Campaign, a fledgling advocacy group, ...

A week and some change after President Barack Obama's widely praised speech to Congress on health care reform, Michelle Obama is making it a double feature. By overtly bringing the first lady into the contentious policy debate, the White House is upping the ante—but with a smart bet. The FLOTUS, as a former administrator at the University of ...

One knows all's fair in love and war—unless you toss health care into the mix. Under the prevailing practices of American health insurers, getting punched by a lover makes you a liability. Ryan Grim has the details: Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in ...

On the heels of Caitlin Mostacella's insightful post on double standards and warped cultural values when it comes to female athletes, here's some beauty news on Caster Semenya to curl your teeth (via Broadsheet): The 18-year-old appears on the cover of You magazine with her cheeks rouged, lips glossed and nails painted. Instead of her ...

A new book by Arianne Cohen says that estrogen correlates to shortness. Testosterone correlates to height. Though I spent my ‘tween years in a steady hunch—the better to hear my wee male classmates—the idea of taking hormonal treatments to squelch normal growth seems medieval ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

As Frank Rich pointed out in the Sunday New York Times, this season of Mad Men has a new tagline—no longer ''Where the truth lies,'' but rather, ''The World's Gone Mad.'' Things seem relatively normal in the early 1963 moment with which the season begins—though by year's end, we know that history alone, not to speak of the tangled lives of Mad ...

I read Liza’s summary of Mimi Swarz’s take on mature women in the most powerful workplace in the world with some interest. After all, I’d previously written on the preponderance of single women in the Obama White House, lamenting the fact that a bold-face name like Melody Barnes put off marriage for years, in order to run policy in an ...