Gary Gygax, a pioneer of the imagination who transported a fantasy realm of wizards, goblins and elves onto millions of kitchen tables around the world through the game he helped create, Dungeons & Dragons, died Tuesday at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis. He was 69.

Gary Gygax, Game Pioneer, Dies at 69

Chuck Klosterman:

What's the difference between a road movie and a movie that just happens to have roads in it?

The Believer - On the Road

Apropos of "campaign" finance reform ...

The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.

You might recall the latest CAP report, which finds that "Iraq is no closer to a sustainable security framework than it was at the start of 2007."

Have you seen No End in Sight?

The $2 Trillion Nightmare

The United States is trading the long-term health of U.S. research and education for the appearance of short-term security.

A Disturbing Mosaic

There is now an emerging consensus that the United States has entered a recession. In a technical sense, this may or may not be true. Whether the economy will contract for two successive quarters or be considered a recession by some other technical measure, clearly the U.S. economy has shifted its behavior from the relatively strong expansion it has enjoyed for the past six years.

But whether there is a recession now is not the question. Rather, the question should be whether what we are experiencing is a cyclical downturn on the order of 1991 or 2001 — which were passing events — or whether the economy is entering a different pattern of performance, a shift that could last decades. The dread of hidden catastrophe is one thing. Quite another thing is whether the economic expansion that began in 1982 and has lasted more than a quarter-century is at an end.

"Soy! Soy! Soy! Soy! Soy!"

The US Economy and the Next ‘Big One’

Atlanta is just as hosed as Munich, but Richard Florida has a new book.

From the best-selling author of The Rise of the Creative Class, a brilliant new book on the surprising importance of place, with advice on how to find the right place for you.

It's a mantra of the age of globalization that where we live doesn't matter. We can innovate just as easily from a ski chalet in Aspen or a beachhouse in Provence as in the office of a Silicon Valley startup.

According to Richard Florida, this is wrong. Globalization is not flattening the world; in fact, place is increasingly relevant to the global economy and our individual lives. Where we live determines the jobs and careers we have access to, the people we meet, and the "mating markets" in which we participate. And everything we think we know about cities and their economic roles is up for grabs.

Who's Your City? offers the first available city rankings by life-stage, rating the best places for singles, families, and empty-nesters to reside. Florida's insights and data provide an essential guide for the more than 40 million Americans who move each year, illuminating everything from what those choices mean for our everyday lives to how we should go about making them.

Who's Your City?

For the past two decades, Kay E. Holekamp has been chronicling the lives of spotted hyenas on the savannas of southern Kenya. She has watched cubs emerge from their dens and take their place in the hyena hierarchy; she has seen alliances form and collapse. She has observed clan wars, in which dozens of hyenas have joined together to defend their hunting grounds against invaders.

“It’s like following a soap opera,” said Dr. Holekamp, a professor at Michigan State University.

Sociable and Smart

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

The Gaza Bombshell

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

Worshippers of Death

The United Nations has declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato.

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