One project that will receive a boost from Sarah Palin's plan to step down as the governor of Alaska is her much-touted autobiography, for which it will provide a hotly anticipated chapter. In May, HarperCollins announced that it had signed Palin to write a tell-all memoir. Unusual for a high-powered celebrity autobiography, there was no auction or bidding on the book; Palin negotiated only with HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the same media company ...

At the dawn of the 21st century America is, if nothing else, the land of the bargain. Big box stores like Wal-Mart dominate the retail landscape, peddling middling goods at rock-bottom prices. Higher-end stores put their merchandise on sale like clockwork; if you wait a little longer, you can get it even cheaper at a factory outlet. Afterwards, you can fill up on all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster for $15 — truly, the American dream. But Boston University ...

As he began finding success as a cartoonist, marketer and Web pundit Hugh MacLeod posted a list of 40 "keys to creativity" onto his popular blog, gapingvoid.com. His breezy advice for aspiring artists — wisdom such as "Dying young is overrated" and "Selling out is harder than it looks" — found a hungry audience and was downloaded more than a million times. Macleod has assembled his observations into a book, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity, and ...

If there was any doubt as to the character of the state that threatens to emerge in Somalia should Islamist rebels overthrow the embattled government, it was dispelled on June 22, when a militia court sentenced four men accused of stealing three mobile phones and two AK-47s to the amputation of their right hands and left legs. The sentence, whose execution was postponed after the al-Shabaab court decided the hot weather might cause the four men to ...

Interstate 980 cuts through a gritty section of West Oakland, California, bisecting a neighborhood blighted by abandoned homes and open drug-dealing. It's also home to a bustling farm that's been feeding writer Novella Carpenter and her neighbors for six years. An energetic advocate of sustainable, do-it-yourself living, Carpenter has raised chickens, ducks, geese, goats and even pigs in what was formerly a garbage-strewn lot next to her home. She recently published a memoir, Farm City: The Education of ...

The man charged with killing a security officer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is expected to survive his subsequent shooting by other security officers, the FBI said in a statement released Saturday. The statement was based on a Thursday court session in which a public defender was appointed for James von Brunn, charged with first-degree murder in the death of Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, a security officer who police say opened a museum door Wednesday for the 88-year-old reputed ...

Richard Land, the head of the gigantic Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and its most influential political operative, has dived headlong into what has become a favorite Baptist parlor game: What exactly is a Mormon? It's a question that has special significance right now, since it relates to how religious conservatives regard the Mormon candidate Mitt Romney. On Wednesday, the EthicsDaily.com newswire, which is written by and for Baptists with views more liberal than the ...

When Muammar Gaddafi comes to town, the first questions facing his hosts is where to pitch his tent. Having watched the stir caused in Paris and Moscow last year by the Libyan leader pitching a Bedouin-style portable chateau in the heart of each capital, the authorities in Rome were well prepared for the four-day visit of the Colonel and his retinue of 300. He was provided with a breezy campsite in the sprawling hillside Villa Doria ...

In May 2005, when the corporate world's enthusiasm for China was at its peak, I spent a few days in Beijing in the company of a bunch of top business executives from the U.S. and Europe. The occasion was a conference sponsored by my then employer, Fortune, and as I sat through the speeches and panels and dinners, I was repeatedly struck by the almost puppy-like devotion to the Middle Kingdom voiced by Western CEOs. This can't possibly ...

Sebastian Junger found him crouched on a battlefield in Afghanistan, fighting to stay alive. The Taliban had the man cornered and outnumbered. A sniper's bullet came so close to the man that it plucked dirt between his feet. But Junger watched him coolly orchestrate a cunning counterattack by his soldiers -- all while discussing his favorite poetry and international news. "He had tremendous magnetism," says Junger, a noted journalist and author who has written bestsellers like "The Perfect Storm," and ...