Articles

2011
- Marine Le Pen, France’s Kinder, Gentler Extremist , New York Times Magazine
  April 30, 2011
  Step inside an office building in the town of Nanterre, just west of Paris, and you are confronted by what the nostrils register as an odor of the past, for it’s a rare thing these days to encounter the lingering … Continue reading →
- The Nanny and Her Sister , NRC Handelsblad
  April 27, 2011
  [Note: This is an English-language version, slightly revised, of an opinion piece that appeared in Dutch on 4/24/11] Not long ago my son’s Moroccan-born gastouder (daycare provider) asked if I would sign an immigration document in support of her sister, who … Continue reading →
- The Irish Affliction , New York Times Magazine
  February 11, 2011
  Andrew Madden is one of a relatively new breed of Irish celebrities who would just as soon be less well known. He was among the first people in Ireland to go public about being sexually abused by Catholic clergy — … Continue reading →
2010
- The Integrationist , New York Times Magazine
  May 28, 2010
  UPDATE, January 2011: This article was written during the very small window of time when Job Cohen–who as mayor of Amsterdam was internationally lauded for keeping a densely multiethnic city together during the post-9/11 era–stepped into the frontrunner’s position in … Continue reading →
- “Making Haste From Babylon” (Book Review) , New York Times Book Review
  May 21, 2010
  In 2006, Nathaniel Philbrick wrote “Mayflower,” a history of the Pilgrims that attempted to wipe centuries of mythic buildup from the dour features of America’s European primogenitors. Now Nick Bunker has written another history of the Pilgrims, which tries to do … Continue reading →
- How Christian Were the Founders? (cover story) , New York Times Magazine
  February 11, 2010
  LAST MONTH, A WEEK before the Senate seat of the liberal icon Edward M. Kennedy fell into Republican hands, his legacy suffered another blow that was perhaps just as damaging, if less noticed. It happened during what has become an annual … Continue reading →
2009
- Going Dutch , New York Times Magazine
  April 29, 2009
  PICTURE ME, IF YOU WILL, as I settle at my desk to begin my workday, and feel free to use a Vermeer image as your template. The pale-yellow light that gives Dutch paintings their special glow suffuses the room. The interior … Continue reading →
- “The Invention of Air” (book review) , New York Times Book Review
  January 23, 2009
  The Age of Categories is dead. Strangely, it never went by that name, or any name. Also curious is the fact that its boundaries are unclear: it overlapped the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason and some others, but … Continue reading →
2008
- Relics of Reason , NRC Handelsblad
  December 13, 2008
- Descartes’ Bones , Huffington Post
  October 31, 2008
- Childless Europe (cover story) , New York Times Magazine
  June 29, 2008
  IT WAS A SPECTACULAR LATE-MAY AFTERNOON IN SOUTHERN ITALY, but the streets of Laviano — a gloriously situated hamlet ranged across a few folds in the mountains of the Campania region — were deserted. There were no day-trippers from Naples, … Continue reading →
2007
- Keeping the Faith (cover story) , New York Times Magazine
  April 8, 2007
  Walk into a shop to buy a newspaper or a wurst or a Game Boy in the German city of Regensburg and your server will probably welcome you with a brisk “grüss’ Gott,” shorthand for “God greet you.” It’s the local … Continue reading →
2006
- Contra-Contraception (cover story) , New York Times Magazine
  May 7, 2006
  The English writer Daniel Defoe is best remembered today for creating the ultimate escapist fantasy, “Robinson Crusoe,” but in 1727 he sent the British public into a scandalous fit with the publication of a nonfiction work called “Conjugal Lewdness: or, … Continue reading →
- “Slavery in New York” (book review) March 19, 2006
  HISTORICAL amnesia has always been with us: we just keep forgetting we have it. How is it that societies can block out or deny whole chunks of their past for which there may be cartloads’, libraries’, mass graves’ worth of … Continue reading →

- This Very, Very Old House , The New York Times Magazine
  March 5, 2006
  In 1625, a carpenter named Pieter Fransz built a house on the outskirts of Amsterdam. He was young, ambitious and lucky enough to belong to one of history’s greatest generations: his life spanned the course of his country’s golden age, … Continue reading →
2005
- All Political Ideas Are Local , New York Times Magazine
  October 2, 2005
  In January 1861, as Southern states were in the process of seceding from the union, Fernando Wood, the mayor of New York, made a modest proposal to his city council. New Yorkers – whose city profited from the shipping of … Continue reading →
- What’s Their Real Problem With Gay Marriage? (cover story) , New York Times Magazine
  June 19, 2005
  The small but grandiose building at the corner of Eighth and G Streets NW in Washington, tucked directly behind the National Portrait Gallery, holds its own in a city packed with monumental architecture. You step into the lobby and automatically … Continue reading →
- Shangri-La-Di-Da , GQ
  May 1, 2005
  Appropriately enough for one of the most intense countries on earth, the experience of the kingdom of Bhutan begins before you get there: Hanging in 10,000 feet of blue sky, you see the rippling knuckles of the Himalayas arrayed below … Continue reading →
2004
- Faith at Work (cover story) , New York Times Magazine
  October 21, 2004
  Across the Judean desert, over the opal waves of the Mediterranean, along stone-paved roads that scored the plains of Syria and Asia Minor and carried into the heart of Rome, the Word spread 20 centuries ago. And as it did, … Continue reading →
- The Industry Standard , The New York Times Magazine
  October 3, 2004
  A story about music could do worse than to begin at Carnegie Hall. We’re here for a little night music — or rather, more than a little. The plan is to see three performers this evening, and the complication that … Continue reading →
- The Future of the Past , The New York Times
  September 12, 2004
  “To take no sides in history would be as false as to take no sides in life,” the historian Barbara W. Tuchman once wrote. If that applies to the written word, it is just as true for the presentation of … Continue reading →
- Al Franken, Seriously (cover story) , New York Times Magazine
  March 21, 2004
  I’m in a rental car with Al Franken, and we’re driving across New Hampshire on the Sunday before the nation’s first primary, heading to a John Edwards rally. The Democrats are in a kooky mood following the sudden collapse of … Continue reading →
- My Life on Darts , GQ
  March 1, 2004
  I am not a warrior by nature. Except, of course, on Friday nights. Then, with the dusky odor of adrenaline in the air, I can be spotted arching forward, taut but loose, fingertips gripping hard steel, the world reduced to … Continue reading →
- The Streets Where History Lives , The New York Times, Op-Ed
  February 9, 2004
  Acre for acre, Lower Manhattan may be the most historic piece of real estate in America. Here the Sons of Liberty plotted revolution, the Stamp Act Congress met to defy taxation without representation, colonists exchanged fire with British ships in … Continue reading →
- A Short-Order Revolutionary , New York Times Magazine
  January 11, 2004
  It starts — just as your mother told you it should — with a good breakfast. Two fried eggs, yolks bouncing brightly. Burly strips of bacon with alternating strata of red meat and glowing fat. The potatoes are nubby and … Continue reading →
2003
- The Un-Pilgrims , The New York Times, Op-Ed
  November 27, 2003
  PUTNAM VALLEY, N.Y. — Three hundred and eighty years ago, a huddled band of Europeans set out across the Atlantic to seek a new life in wilderness America. They survived hardship, gave thanks, ate turkeys and eventually flourished. And every … Continue reading →
2002
- McLaughlin? Is That a Jewish Name? , The New York Times Magazine
  March 24, 2002
  It is a mild december evening in Georgia, and in the community room of their synagogue in the town of Marietta, Felton and Deborah McLaughlin talk with typical parental pride about their elder daughter’s bat mitzvah, which took place earlier … Continue reading →

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