Arts, entertainment, and more.

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• Speed Reading Once a Runner, the best novel ever about distance running.
  Marc Tracy Dec. 31, 2008
  
• Oops! She Crashed It Again. Why celebrities are such bad drivers.
  Tom Vanderbilt Dec. 30, 2008
  
• Good Germans and Uplifting Uprisings Hollywood's take on the Holocaust.
  Ben Crair Dec. 29, 2008
  
• Who Says Obama Was the Story of the Year? Miley Cyrus, Marc Chagall, and 39 other topics that distracted us—at least briefly—from the election.
  Chris Wilson Dec. 26, 2008
  
• Is That the Baby Jesus in a Manger or a Bowl of Fruit Salad? We asked for your photos of weird holiday displays. You responded.
  Dec. 23, 2008
  
• Harvard, Yale, or Princeton? Benjamin Button and how F. Scott Fitzgerald decided where to send his characters to college.
  Juliet Lapidos Dec. 23, 2008
  
• The Man Who Told A Christmas Story What I learned from Jean Shepherd.
  Donald Fagen Dec. 22, 2008
  
• Captain Underpants Doesn't Need a Newbery Medal In defense of the premier award in children's literature.
  Erica S. Perl Dec. 19, 2008
  
• Lights, Camera, Christmas The weirdest and worst holiday light displays in America.
  Sara Mosle Dec. 15, 2008
  
• Killer Serial It's really time you started watching Dexter.
  Matthew Gilbert Dec. 12, 2008
  
• "Harvey Would Have Opened It in October" Could Milk have changed the Prop 8 vote?
  Dennis Lim Nov. 26, 2008
  
• I Vant To Upend Your Expectations Why movie vampires always break all the vampire rules.
  Christopher Beam Nov. 20, 2008
  
• The J. Crew Catalog Destroyed My Spirit Why mailmen give up.
  Paul Collins Nov. 20, 2008
  
• Zen and the Art of New York Times Headline Writing There's nothing to it, except when there is.
  Jessica Winter Nov. 11, 2008
  
• Black Presidents A pop-cultural survey.
  Troy Patterson Oct. 24, 2008
  
• Bush on Film Hollywood's eight-year romance with the 43rd president.
  Elbert Ventura Oct. 16, 2008
  
• Emily Dickinson's Secret Lover! Why the big news is being ignored.
  Christopher Benfey Oct. 9, 2008
  
• Nobel Gas The Swedes have no clue about American literature.
  Adam Kirsch Oct. 3, 2008
  
• The Bluest Eyes The pleasures of watching Paul Newman.
  Dana Stevens Sept. 29, 2008
  
• The Sexy Puritan Sarah Palin embodies a powerful new Christian right archetype. What could that mean for America?
  Tom Perrotta Sept. 26, 2008
  
• One and Done How not to be the first contestant kicked off a reality show.
  Joanna Weiss Sept. 24, 2008
  
• Read Me a Story, Brad Pitt When audiobook casting goes terribly wrong.
  Nate DiMeo Sept. 18, 2008
  
• Finite Jest 
  Sept. 17, 2008
  
• Finite Jest Editors and writers remember David Foster Wallace.
  Sept. 17, 2008
  
• Grand Old Wit Since when are Republicans better at humor than Democrats?
  Ted Widmer Sept. 12, 2008
  
• MF'er Why McCain can't stop saying "my friends."
  Paul Collins Sept. 1, 2008
  
• Viz Whiz How artists are mining data sets to make you see the unseen.
  Amanda Schaffer Aug. 20, 2008
  
• The Deciders Ted Solotaroff, Rust Hills, and the mysterious motives of fiction editors.
  Thomas Beller Aug. 20, 2008
  
• Was New American Review the Best Literary Magazine Ever? I dare you to name a better one.
  Gerald Howard Aug. 19, 2008
  
• Dude, You Stole My Article How I investigated a suspicious alt weekly.
  Jody Rosen Aug. 6, 2008
  
• "Baboons Are Simply Too Small for Leopard Bait" The 10 oddest travel guides ever published.
  Paul Collins Aug. 4, 2008
  
• Let's Step Outside The evolution of the fight scene, from the Duke to the Dark Knight.
  Dennis Lim July 28, 2008
  
• Aliens Are Overrated The best X-Files episodes weren't about extraterrestrials.
  Juliet Lapidos July 24, 2008
  
• Situation Normal What Generation Kill gets right about the invasion of Iraq.
  Peter Maass July 18, 2008
  
• Folioed Again! Why Shakespeare is the world's worst stolen treasure.
  Paul Collins July 17, 2008
  
• Last Night a Beat Box Saved My Life Pitch Perfect and the strange allure of a cappella.
  Nina Shen Rastogi July 15, 2008
  
• ; ( Has modern life killed the semicolon?
  Paul Collins June 20, 2008
  
• Lil Wayne and the Afronaut Invasion Why have so many black musicians been obsessed with outer space?
  Jonah Weiner June 20, 2008
  
• Long Live the Little Man Defense! How R. Kelly got off.
  Josh Levin June 13, 2008
  
• Being John Cusack The latest phase in the War Inc. star's career.
  Dana Stevens June 3, 2008
  
• How To Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest A champion reveals the recipe for victory.
  Patrick House June 2, 2008
  
• We Don't Know Jack The clever narrative trick that has made this season of Lost the best one yet.
  Juliet Lapidos May 28, 2008
  
• Lawn Pox Children's play equipment and the decline of the American yard.
  Tom Vanderbilt May 2, 2008
  
• iHero Why Iron Man is like Steve Jobs.
  Grady Hendrix May 1, 2008
  
• The Sweet Smell of Success The mysterious art of writing about perfume.
  Jim Lewis April 30, 2008
  
• Mickey Mouse Operation Forget Miley Cyrus. Check out Disney's Chinese underwear ad.
  Daniel Brook April 29, 2008
  
• The Music Industry's Extortion Scheme The record labels want you to pay a tax on music. It's not as horrible as it sounds.
  Reihan Salam April 25, 2008
  
• Falling for Fall Out Boy Did the Roots just trick me into liking a lame emo band?
  Ben Mathis-Lilley April 24, 2008
  
• Save the Mount! Why Edith Wharton's house is an architectural treasure.
  Kate Bolick April 21, 2008
  
• Yo Mamma Hillary Clinton as the battleground in the war between mothers and daughters.
  Linda Hirshman April 18, 2008
  
• Why Don't Modern Poems Rhyme, Etc. Frequently asked questions about the business of verse.
  Robert Pinsky April 17, 2008
  
• Risky Businesses Are Ice Road Truckers and Ax Men as good as Deadliest Catch?
  Robert Weintraub April 15, 2008
  
• The Soiling of Old Glory The photograph that captured Boston's busing crisis: How it was taken, and why it still matters.
  Louis P. Masur April 10, 2008
  
• The Caped Crusader Frederic Wertham and the campaign against comic books.
  Jeet Heer April 4, 2008
  
• This Film Should Be Played Loud! What makes a great concert movie?
  Jonah Weiner April 3, 2008
  
• Monkey Business So is that Vogue cover racist or not?
  Wesley Morris March 31, 2008
  
• The Book of the Undead Why won't phone books die?
  Paul Collins March 21, 2008
  
• The Silda Spitzer Lesson Don't quit your day job.
  Linda Hirshman March 12, 2008
  
• Going Native Why do writers pretend to be Indians?
  David Treuer March 7, 2008
  
• Believe It or Not Memoir fabulists getting caught means the system is working.
  Ben Yagoda March 6, 2008
  
• The Fog of Memoir The feud over the truthfulness of Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone.
  Gabriel Sherman March 6, 2008
  
• Crying Wolf Why did it take so long for a far-fetched Holocaust memoir to be debunked?
  Blake Eskin Feb. 29, 2008
  
• My So-Called Internetlife How I launched the Web series quarterlife.
  Marshall Herskovitz Feb. 20, 2008
  
• The Impossible Art of Deciphering Manuscripts Robert Frost is hardly the first to give editors trouble.
  Megan Marshall Feb. 8, 2008
  
• The Shrink Rap At last, a realistic TV portrayal of psychotherapy: In Treatment.
  Glen Gabbard Jan. 28, 2008
  
• Way Up in the Sky What to read if you're afraid of flying.
  Inigo Thomas Jan. 23, 2008
  
• Who Is Grady Harp? Amazon's Top Reviewers and the fate of the literary amateur.
  Garth Risk Hallberg Jan. 22, 2008
  
• Class 4! OT-7! Platinum Meritorious! More Tom Cruise Scientology footage emerges.
  Troy Patterson Jan. 18, 2008
  
• Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise, Scientologist Watching the leaked recruitment video.
  Troy Patterson Jan. 17, 2008