December 19, 2014 Issue

Americans help the needy but would rather spend on their pets.

A jewel of neoclassical architecture, the new mayor is determined to change the most visited city on earth

Libya is awash in weapons, and its disintegration could reignite the region.

America's race problems are front-page news from London to Baghdad, and trumpeted to the remotest mountaintops via Arab-language radio and TV.

The Western media's obsession with the women fighting ISIS ignores their real struggle – for equal rights

In Silicon Valley's Game of Thrones, it's winner-take-all.

At the 2014 U.N. Climate Summit, high tech comes to save the rain forest.

A skeptic goes behind the scenes of The Voice, NBC's smash singing show.

From Body Heat to Red Hot Patriot, Kathleen Turner is still cool.

Sexual inuendo, dreadful puns, absurd costumes - for many British families it would not be Christmas without panto

Coming soon to a radio near you: a soap set in a refugee camp in Jordan.

Though far from exhaustive, this twenty-book list is a small glimpse at the books we read and loved in 2014.