Lady Gaga has never shied away from a daring style moment. Each phase of her career has signaled a new look. From her days wearing meat dresses at awards shows to her pink cowboy hat for Joanne and every sequin in between, she’s an expert at leaving everyone guessing with her fearless sartorial choices. In…
Across Europe on Thursday, Americans scrambled to make sense of conflicting messages from Washington about if and when they would be allowed to return to the United States. They awoke to the news that President Trump had announced a 30-day suspension of most travel from Europe in a bid to stem the spread of the…
This article is part of our latest special report on Design, which is about getting personal with customization. The Brooklyn Navy Yard once echoed with the sounds of hammering and welding as workers built battleships and aircraft carriers on the 300-acre campus bordering the East River. Today, the Navy and its single-minded mission are long…
As the spread of the coronavirus leads to more school closings, many parents are finding themselves faced with the prospect of what amounts to home-schooling their children. Ideally, teachers will provide lessons, whether online or on paper, to help meet children’s academic needs, but school also fills physical and social needs. Answering the following questions…
“Alarming levels of inaction.” That is what the World Health Organization said Wednesday about the global response to coronavirus. It is a familiar refrain to anyone who works on climate change, and it is why global efforts to slow down warming offer a cautionary tale for the effort to slow down the pandemic. “Both demand…
This article is part of our latest special report on Design, which is about getting personal with customization. My light-switch plates, which had long been banal, now make me feel empowered. In the last few weeks, I have commissioned half a dozen of them in custom shapes, colors and patterns. It turns out that nearly…
This month we’re going to try something different. Ordinarily for Wine School, I select a particular sort of wine and recommend a few bottles to drink. Instead, I’m going to assign a food, roast chicken. Your job is pick the wines to drink with it. More specifically, choose one, two or three different wines to…
The first question many people will ask about a wine is, “What does it taste like?” Rarely does anybody ask, “How does it feel?” Yet body, density, weight and texture, often combined in the inelegant term ”mouthfeel,” are essential parts of the wine-drinking experience, though often ignored in discussions about it. I have long been…
This article is part of our latest special report on Design, which is about getting personal with customization. A little respite from geopolitical and health crises can perhaps be found in five new design books, which demonstrate our ability to transform humble materials into enduring refuges. ImageCredit… In “The Art of Earth Architecture: Past, Present,…
When your phone rings at 2:15 a.m., it’s a safe bet the news isn’t good. Turns out the odds are even better when you’re an American traveling overseas amid the coronavirus pandemic. The voice on the other end was our daughter, wanting to make sure my wife and I had heard that “President Trump just…