On a Winter day five years ago, Doug Lemov realized he had a problem. After a successful career as a teacher, a principal and a charter-school founder, he was working as a consultant, hired by troubled schools eager — desperate, in some cases — for Lemov to tell them what to do to get better.

Clint Eastwood’s shifting landscape.

Rabbits are supposed to be easy to kill. The French dispatch them with a sharp knife to the throat. A farmer in upstate New York swears that a swift smack with the side of the hand works. Others prefer a quick twist of the neck. It didn’t seem so easy at the rabbit-killing seminar held in a parking lot behind Roberta’s restaurant in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in November.

You think it’s so great being Rahm Emanuel?

As with any other species, human populations are shaped by the usual forces of natural selection, like famine, disease or climate. A new force is now coming into focus. It is one with a surprising implication — that for the last 20,000 years or so, people have inadvertently been shaping their own evolution.

Government’s proper role in the market

The unlikely life and sudden death of The Exile, Russia’s angriest newspaper.

Stepped-up surveillance technology may be tipping the scales in the cat-and-mouse game between spies and their targets. Robert Baer on the current state of spycraft.

Even before 48 Hours Mystery producer Joe Halderman allegedly caught David Letterman kissing his girlfriend, Late Show staffer Stephanie Birkitt, the cash-strapped veteran newsman and the multi-millionaire entertainment star were on a collision course. In the wake of Letterman’s stunning on-air confession of sex with employees, andas Halderman prepares to stand trial for attempted grand larceny, the author tracks the converging emotional sides of the explosive triangle—Birkitt’s ambition, Halderman’s bitterness, and Letterman’s self-loathing—that rocked CBS.

The crash of Air France flight 447 from Rio to Paris last year is one of the most mysterious accidents in the history of aviation. After months of investigation, a clear picture has emerged of what went wrong. The reconstruction of the horrific final four minutes reveal continuing safety problems in civil aviation.