New Yorker

I got to teach Episcopal Sunday school last week, a rare privilege, and it was in a New York church so the kids had plenty to say. Teenagers, and if you expect them to sit in rapt silence as you tick off points of theology, you're in the wrong place. They made plenty of noise, and not much of it about religion. Some of them seemed to be on a faith journey that was heading away from the Nicene Creed toward something cooler and jokier, some form of animism perhaps, the worship of cougars and badgers.

The havoc on Wall Street following the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market boils down to a simple truth: For years, lots of very smart people took lots of very foolish risks. But behind that simple truth is a more surprising one: The financial whizzes made bad decisions in part because that's what they were paid to do. - James Surowiecki, The New Yorker

WHO WOULD benefit [from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's run for the presidency]? "New York, for starters. Or, at least, the glittering constellation of news and entertainment companies, Wall Street firms, political consultants, civic boosters, paid gossips, columnists, pundits and publicists ... who feed ... the impression that unless something happens in New York, it doesn't happen." So says the New Yorker. Women's world Depressing but fascinating story in Newsweek about female stars.

MAJZOUB AL-KHALIFA, 55 Majzoub al-Khalifa, a top Sudanese presidential adviser who played a key role in Darfur peace negotiations, has died in a car accident. Mr. al-Khalifa was driving to his home village of Khawad with his brother when their car flipped over early yesterday, said Sudan's presidential spokesman Majzoub Faidul. The brothers died of their injuries. Mr. al-Khalifa was one of the most senior aides to Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir. They hailed from the same dominant Arab tribe, the Jaaly, and Mr. al-Khalifa was a top member of the ruling National Congress Party.

As tickets to the best-sellers list go, it's not quite like getting picked for Oprah's book club. But close. The New Yorker does one long book review each issue. Out of the zillion or so authors who get published each year, only 47 can claim the honor of a feature review in the highbrow near-weekly magazine. Last week, that distinction went to David A. Bell, a Hopkins history professor and author of The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare As We Know It. And the review was generally positive, to boot.

About Alice Calvin Trillin Random House / 82 pages / $14.95 When Alice Trillin died in 2001, the headline over the obituary in The New York Times identified her as "Educator, Author and Muse." Of the three roles, she is best known for the last one - Alice was the inspiration for the work of author, columnist and veteran New Yorker contributor Calvin Trillin. "When I wrote in the dedication of a book `For Alice,' I meant it literally," he affirms in About Alice, which is a kind of belated obit of his own. At a scant 82 pages, About Alice is a short and sweet elegy, a slightly expanded version of a piece that ran in The New Yorker earlier this year.

"Our own successful three-week war, but their failed three-year peace." Such a self-serving disclaimer might best sum up the change of heart of several neoconservative former supporters of the Iraq war - at least according to interviews that appear in the current issues of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker . Some of these pundits and policy gurus now having second and third thoughts had called for the U.S. to oust Saddam Hussein as early as 1998. These days, apparently in hindsight, they question whether the present, plagued occupation even justified the effective three-week war of 2003.

NEW YORK -- New Yorkers had a few choice words yesterday for the Department of Homeland Security, after news that the city's anti-terrorism funding is being sharply reduced. "A knife in the back" and "declaring war on New York," politicians here called it. A congressman said the department "doesn't know its rear end from its elbow." Using a new risk-based allotment, Homeland Security officials increased the number of cities eligible for anti-terrorism grants this year and bolstered funding for such cities as Charlotte, N.C.; Omaha, Neb.; and Louisville, Ky. The grants to New York and Washington - the targets on Sept.

Let Me Finish Roger Angell Harcourt / 320 pages / $25 Roger Angell writes about his own life even better than he writes about baseball, and that's saying something. His new book, Let Me Finish, is a collection of snapshots from a full life, especially his magical childhood spent in New York. It's hard not to feel envious of his good fortune - the summers in Maine, the glamorous magazine jobs and the fact that his stepfather was the graceful author and essayist E.B. White - but Angell is such a gentleman, you hardly mind.

HELLERTOWN, Pa. -- By the time Stephanie Fiscella dropped off her husband, Lou, at the park-and-ride lot here near Allentown at 6:15 on an icy Wednesday morning, all 100 parking spaces were filled. Several cars sat in unmarked slots or stopped on a snow bank. Some commuters left handbags and briefcases on the curb to mark their places on the bus line while they huddled inside their cars. Fiscella has been making the two-hour commute to Manhattan for the three years since his family moved from Staten Island to the Lehigh Valley.