Word: gist
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...Gist Ryan Schreiber was barely out of high school in 1995 when he began publishing reviews of obscure independent music on this newfangled thing called the Internet. His creation, Pitchfork Media, has been instructing indie geeks about what to like ever since. Pitchfork's overwritten-to-the-point-of-meaninglessness reviews make the online publication an easy target (Music blog Idolator used to run a regular "Pick of the Fork" feature in which readers guessed which lines came from a real Pitchfork review and which didn't; "for every bold crescendo, an incongruous tangent can disrupt the music's linearity...
...Gist: Latin America hasn't been a top foreign policy priority for the Bush Administration. Two wars, tattered Israeli-Palestinian relations and the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea have conspired to consign the region to the political backburner. But this Brookings report - issued by a cadre of decorated policy-makers, led by former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo and former U.S. Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering - issues a pointed message to incoming President Barack Obama. Emphasizing Latin American relations isn't just essential for the region, they say, but also for America's own peace and prosperity. Tackling...
...Gist: In the predawn hours of April 30, 1871, a group of attackers ambushed an encampment of Apaches in Aravaipa Canyon, outside the town of Tuscon. 144 people - overwhelmingly women and children - were slaughtered. This much we know at the outset of Shadows at Dawn, by Brown University historian Karl Jacoby. We also know who these attackers were, for the most part: an unlikely alliance of white settlers, Spanish-speaking landholders known as vecinos and members of an opposing tribe, the Tohono O'odham. But rather than tie these four groups' tales together into a standard history of what became...
...Gist: It's difficult to think of a simpler concept for a book than one about walking. It's one of the most pedestrian (saw that one coming, huh?) topics around. As author Nicholson writes, "Looked at a certain way, walking is the most ordinary, natural, ubiquitous activity. What could be more commonplace or lacking in eccentricity than the act of walking?" Nothing, right? False, as Nicholson demonstrates over a few hundred pages. In song, in literature, in wacky walking wagers, he breezily explores every possible cultural manifestation of perambulating...
...Gist: If you don't want your kid to join the military, have them read the latest report on the health of Gulf War veterans, released by a congressionally mandated panel earlier this week. The 465-page study details how the U.S. military mistakenly poisoned its own soldiers with two chemicals during Operation Desert Storm, leading to a number of debilitating symptoms - from chronic muscle pain and digestive problems to memory loss and persistent skin lesions - now collectively known as Gulf War illness (GWI). Worse still, the panel found that millions of dollars in funding for GWI research had been...