Articles 2025
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The Truth About Beauty
It is the same in the eye of every beholder.
The Atlantic, March 2007
Cosmetics makers have always sold “hope in a jar”—creams and potions that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal, and even love for the women who use them. Over the last few years, the marketers at Dove have added some new-and-improved enticements. They’re now promising self-esteem and cultural transformation. Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty,” declares a press release, is “a global effort that is intended to serve as a starting point for societal change and act as a catalyst for widening the definition and discussion of beauty.” Along with its thigh-firming creams, self-tanners, and hair conditioners, Dove is peddling the crowd-pleasing notions that beauty is a media creation, that recognizing plural forms of beauty is the same as declaring every woman beautiful, and that self-esteem means ignoring imperfections.
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Grim Harvest
Review of Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs by Kieran Healy (193 pp. University of Chicago Press. Cloth, $50; paper, $20.)
The New York Times Book Review, January 27, 2007
Organ transplants are at once the most amazing and frustrating of medical miracles. A new kidney or heart can cure someone who would otherwise die or, even in less than ideal circumstances, extend life and improve well-being. The surgical skill and pharmaceutical innovation required to make transplantation work are wonders of human ingenuity. -
Up, Up, and Away
Today, air travel is just another form of mass transit. Is there any going back to the glamorous days of yore?
The Atlantic, January/February 2007
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From Shopping Centers to Lifestyle Centers
Shopping malls are finally fulfilling their original destiny: re-creating the essence of urban life.
Los Angeles Times, December 08, 2006
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As Plano Goes...
...so goes the nation? Commentators around the country have been debating that for months. If only they understood what the booming Dallas suburb is really like.
Texas Monthly, December 2006
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In Praise of Chain Stores
They aren't destroying local flavor--they're providing variety and comfort
The Atlantic, December 2006
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Dynamism or Stasis?
The hardest of all economic problems is what to make next. To grow beyond the frontier of imitation, an economy must foster a constant flow of economic experiments.
Forbes, November 25, 2006
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The Iconographer
In Julius Shulman's photographs, modern architecture became seductive, comfortable, and immortal
The Atlantic, November 2006
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The surgery was simple; the process is another story
USA Today, October 23, 2006
Most people think of "organ donors" as dead people. Public campaigns encourage this idea, urging Americans to sign donor cards and let their families know they want their organs to go to others when they die. In Dallas, there's a Texas Organ Donor Memorial Walkway, with bricks inscribed with donors' names. -
Superhero Worship
Once the province of Garbo and Astaire, movie glamour now comes from Superman, Spider-Man, and Storm.
The Atlantic, October 2006