Chicago circle nurtured him all the way to the top By Tom Hundley   Writer Toni Morrison famously dubbed Bill Clinton “the first black president”-a title he fervently embraced. Abner Mikva, the Chicago Democratic Party stalwart and former Clinton White House counsel, offers a variation on that theme. “If Clinton was our first black president, [...]

Post-feminist backlash – or new dawn for equal rights? By Rachel Cooke   Sometimes, you can’t see the wood for the trees. When I tell Georgina Baillie, the young woman at the centre of the scandal now known predictably as ‘Sachsgate’, that I think what happened to her was the result of good old-fashioned misogyny, [...]

Outrage over India’s handling of the Nariman House siege has given way to a colder calculation. By Kevin Peraino The smoke has finally cleared after last week’s botched hostage rescue at the Nariman House Jewish center in Mumbai, but in some Israeli security circles, the sniping has started anew. Defense Minister Ehud Barak complained last [...]

The Bin Ladens: The Story of a Family and Its Fortune by Steve Coll   By Robert Vitalis* Steve Coll’s book tells two stories: a big one about how the bin Laden family cashed in on the oil bonanza in Saudi Arabia, and a smaller one about Osama’s role in the family business before he [...]

By Cernig Friday There are a lot of conflicting reports coming out of the Indian subcontinent right now, and no-one seems to have told their right hand what their left hand is doing. For instance, The UK’s Telegraph reports Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of Mumbai, saying that two British citizens were among the terrorists [...]