I did a presentation for a group of Senate staffers yesterday on the Hill, and as usual with these things, the best part (for me) was at the end—when people came up to tell me their own stories. I keep waiting to give one speech in which this does not happen—or in which the things people tell me are not surprising and compelling and new in some way. But it hasn’t happened.
Anyway, one woman told me that when she was in a major earthquake years ago, time had “slowed down” for her—as it does for so many people…
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For years, the feds have been using your tax dollars to promote marriage (see Kate Boo’s award-winning 2003 New Yorker Story, “The Marriage Cure”). These campaigns seem to be continuing under Obama, although there is little evidence to show that they work.
What does lead people to marry? And what leads them to divorce? Will the recession raise or lower the divorce rate?
According to MSNBC, British lawyers have warned that divorce rates in their country could rise as the economic recession puts pressure on marriage. And that’s saying something.…
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The other day, I did a book event at Politics & Prose, a fabulous book store in DC. You can listen to it on NPR, and if you speed through the not-so-thrilling part where I am yapping (to about minute 16), you start to hear the questions. People’s comments were smart, thoughtful and sometimes a little weird—in a good way.
I couldn’t believe how fun it was, to tell you the truth. There was even a seismologist there, along with one of the foremost experts on building safety in…
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The Unthinkable will hit stores in Brazil in June 2008, just after the US release. The publisher is Globo.
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I have a great job. I parachute into people’s lives and ask them questions. I cover risk and homeland security for Time Magazine, but I get to define the beat broadly—so broadly that I often write things that have nothing to do with anything at all.
This week, for example, I’m writing a story for dead-tree Time about the intimate details of the life of Barack Obama’s mother. I asked the man questions that are just none of my business, and he answered them. I met his sister under a palm tree in…
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If you’d rather hear the book than read it, the CD is available starting June 10.
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The Unthinkable will be published in Sweden by Forum in the spring of 2009.
One of the survivors profiled in the book is Kent Härstedt, a member of Sweden’s parliament who survived the worst sea disaster in modern European history. The MV Estonia ferry sunk in the Baltic Sea on the night of September 28, 1994. Härstedt patiently shared with me the detailed story of his own unlikely survival. He also talked about what he saw other people do on the ship that night, from a man who smoked a cigarette on the deck as the ship…
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My new book, The Unthinkable, goes on sale on June 10—nine days after the start of hurricane season, appropriately enough. But if you just can’t wait (or you are my mom), you can pre-order now.
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