The best known picture magazine in Europe, France's L'Illustration, is famed for its handsome four-color reproductions of Old Masters. Readers flipping through an issue two months ago came upon what at first glance looked like a splendid reproduction of Raphael's famed La Belle Jardiniere, now in the Louvre. A second glance shot eyebrows high. The Virgin Mary was feeding the infant Jesus from a modern nursing bottle, while at her knee the infant St. John looked on hungrily. The whole ...

CLARIFICATION APPENDED Written last month, this straightforward account of life in Iraq by a Marine officer was initially sent just to a small group of family and friends. His honest but wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon spin masters and fierce critics. Perhaps inevitably, the "Letter from Iraq" moved quickly beyond the small group of acquantainaces and hit the ...

Chefs of the Future! This is the third of a three-part series examining how restaurants may work in the years to come. Ludo Lefebvre has plenty of admirers. Jonathan Gold, the country's most respected restaurant critic, is a fan. So are millions of Top Chef: Masters devotees, who find the tattooed young French chef either downright dreamy or totally insufferable — or both. He has won Mobile 5-Star awards at two previous restaurants. And his current eatery, Ludo ...

Down Mobile way, darkies croon to the night on soft spring evenings, grin, tip hats, as they shuffle past white "gemmen," still their noble lords if not their masters. Fortnight ago, Clarence Darrow, keen-witted, sharp-tongued Northern lawyer, stopped in Mobile, Ala., made speeches to wide-mouthed black men attacking Negro lynchings. On street corners hot-blooded white men gathered, muttered curses on Mr. Darrow, "damned Yankee" agitator. At Negro schools, able Lawyer Darrow repeated his speeches to the "new Negro." Klan circulars ...

All sports are competitive, but they are competitive in very different ways. Team sports pitch two groups of players against each other in direct combat. Racket and fighting sports involve individuals going at it against each other. In racing—whether power-assisted or not—each individual competes against the field. But some sports—target sports such as archery and shooting, ice-skating, bowling, classic ski racing—are different. An individual competitor in these sports can't directly affect how a rival does; he ...

Will Tiger catch Jack? As this year's Masters teed off on Thursday morning, what was once an easy question — of course Tiger Woods will break Jack Nicklaus' record for most wins at major tournaments, 18 — seems harder than ever to answer. Since Woods won the 2008 U.S. Open in superhero fashion, playing on a broken leg to beat Rocco Mediate in a playoff, he has failed to win a major. A torn anterior cruciate ...

This weekend, college basketball will whittle its postseason tournament down to the Final Four. The NFL's owners and players are still fighting, so there may be no football come fall. The NBA playoff push is on. Baseball's opening day, and the Masters, is just around the corner. Oh, and by the way, baseball's home-run king is currently on trial for perjury. I'll place a healthy bet on which story you care about the least. ...

Nikolay Davydenko avenged last year's Tennis Masters Cup final defeat by Novak Djokovic to upset the world No. 3 in the semifinals of the Shanghai Masters on Saturday. The Russian sixth seed triumphed 4-6 6-4 7-6 (7-1) in a three-hour epic to earn a showdown with world No. 2 Rafael Nadal, who had an easier passage into the final when Feliciano Lopez became the tournament's ninth injury victim. Davydenko, beaten by Djokovic when the Chinese city held the season-ending finale ...

Padraig Harrington's bid to win a third successive British Open title was left in tatters after the Irishman carded a six-over-par 76 in his third round at Turnberry on Saturday. The 37-year-old slumped to nine-over 219, leaving him tied for 65th place and 14 shots behind halfway leaders Tom Watson and Steve Marino, who had yet to even begin their third rounds by the time he had finished his. The clubhouse lead at that stage saw American Bryce Molder on ...

Veteran American golfer, Kenny Perry, has told CNN he is focused on winning this year's U.S. Open at Bethpage Black because time is running out on his career. The 48-year-old who played his first professional tournament at the Doral-Eastern Open in 1984, said he wanted to win a major before ending his career next year. "My time is running out, I'll play all four [majors] next year but that will be that after so long on the tour. ...