King Robert Baratheon of Westeros enjoyed winning his crown more than he does wearing it. When he was young and strong, he overthrew the sadistic regime of Aerys Targaryen, “the Mad King.” Now he’s middle-aged and fat; married in a loveless political alliance to Queen Cersei , daughter of the wealthy, cunning Lannister family; and sitting on the Iron Throne, forged from the swords of vanquished foes and literally painful to occupy
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After Housing Bubble, the Dark Side of Homeowner Dreams
Homeownership has let us down. For generations, Americans believed that owning a home was an axiomatic good.
The Arab Spring: Is This the Syrian Regime’s Playbook?
A man in a white shirt lies motionless, apparently dead, on an otherwise empty road, his arms and legs splayed at awkward angles. Intense gunfire crackles as four black-clad anti-riot policemen in helmets and shields run up to the body, several beat it with their batons before dragging it along the asphalt by its feet
Show Business: I’ve Got to Get My life Back Again
After his labors, the mythmaker plans to rest and perhaps retire From his office window, George Lucas looks out over a pleasant little valley to a pleasant little mountain, Mount Tamalpais. Small as it is, this friendly peak has an important if unheralded role in his life: it blocks the summer fog that often rolls in from San Francisco, eleven miles to the south, and makes the side on which Lucas lives and works that much sunnier
Television: Act of Terror: Spike Lee recounts the Birmingham bombing
On Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb went off at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killing Denise McNair, 11, and Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14
The Nation: The Brothers and Angela
Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard Some of us are prisoners, the rest of us are guards Lord Lord, so they cut George Jackson down Lord Lord, they laid him in the ground.
The Comedian CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Every few weeks, outside the movie theater in virtually any American town in the late 1910s, stood the life-size cardboard figure of a small tramp–outfitted in tattered, baggy pants, a cutaway coat and vest, impossibly large, worn-out shoes and a battered derby hat–bearing the inscription I AM HERE TODAY.
Radiation: Fallout in Utah
The little town of St.
The Family-Friendly Version of The King’s Speech: No F-Words Allowed
Reader alert: This story quotes quite a few four-letter words, all of them spoken by a future King of England. Some readers may wish to skip the dialogue section after the next boldface advisory
’04 Campaign: When Credibility Becomes An Issue
Five years ago, when a President was fighting for his political life, his defenders struggled to keep his sins in perspective.