Judge Thurgood Marshall (left) in discussion with President Lyndon Baines Johnson, following Marshall's appointment as a member of the Supreme Court, the first African-American to hold the post.
Robert Caro is the recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes in biography, a National Book Award and two National Book Critics Circle awards, among other honors. He stands in front of the outline of his next book.
Robert Caro writes obsessively about power. Fittingly, it's Lyndon Johnson — catapulted suddenly into the presidency "in the crack of a gunshot" — who consumes him.
The Passage of Power, the fourth volume of Caro's massive biography of Lyndon Johnson, is released this week. Caro has dedicated decades to meticulously researching Johnson's life, and the previous books in the series have been almost universally hailed as a significant achievement in American letters.
A fad that has been sweeping through middle-class India might look familiar to some Americans — it's a craze for fancy gym equipment. But when commentator Sandip Roy visited India's first Mr. Universe (who is known as the "Pocket Hercules") he found that the body builder has little patience for the new trend.
On a recent Friday night, 30 men and 30 women gathered at a hotel restaurant in Washington, D.C. Their goal was love, or maybe sex, or maybe some combination of the two. They were there for speed dating.
The women sat at separate numbered tables while the men moved down the line, and for two solid hours they did a rotation, making small talk with people they did not know, one after another, in three-minute increments.
A man gathering firewood to sell cuts down mangrove trees in the coastal area of Medan city on Indonesia's Sumatra island on Jan. 31. The country, which has one-quarter of the world's mangroves, is losing them at a rate of 6 percent a year. The coastal forests play important ecological and environmental roles.
Rignolda Jamaluddin, a local marine scientist, stands in front of the mangrove forests of North Sulawesi that he has worked to rebuild over the past two decades. Part of his strategy included educating villagers on ways they would benefit from not cutting down the trees, such as making alcohol, sugar and furniture from the trees.
A rising tide submerges mangrove trees and lifts local boats in Tiwoho Village in Indonesia's North Sulawesi province. Two decades ago, locals began efforts to revitalize the area's mangroves.
The rising tide laps at the feet of local children and fishermen and submerges all but the tops of the mangrove trees of Tiwoho village in Indonesia's North Sulawesi province. At one degree of latitude north of the equator, the climate here is about the same all year round: hot, wet and perfect for the forests of salt-tolerant trees that grow along sheltered coastlines.
Every presidential nominee going back to 2000 has revealed the names of influential supporters known as "bundlers" because of the way they persuade others to give money to a candidate. Every nominee, that is, until Mitt Romney.
The most anyone can give directly to any presidential campaign is $5,000, and everyone who gives that much is listed in the Romney campaign's monthly disclosures.
When it comes to the bundlers, though, the campaign chooses to keep those names secret.
As high school seniors wrestle with big decisions before Tuesday's deadline about which college they want to go to, some of the nation's top liberal arts colleges are dealing with big decisions of their own. Many of the most elite private schools are trying to figure out how they may have to adapt at a time when they're seen as a more expensive — and less direct — path to landing a job.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks during a reception at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on Sunday. Noda meets with President Obama at the White House on Monday.
President Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda are meeting at the White House on Monday — the first such meeting between U.S. and Japanese leaders in three years.
Political turmoil in Japan has led to a constant turnover in leadership: There have been six prime ministers in as many years.
Originally published on Sun April 29, 2012 2:48 pm
Twenty years later, first-person accounts of the Los Angeles riots from Angelenos Titus Murphy, Ted Soqui and Rhonda Mitchell, who first told their stories to L.A. Magazine.
Sudan has declared a state of emergency as tensions mount along the disputed border it shares with its new neighbor, South Sudan.
As the AP reports, declaring a state of emergency gives the government expanded powers of arrest. On Saturday, Sudanese officials claimed they had arrested four people, including three foreigners.
