‘Kluge’: New Book Explores Our Haphazard Minds | Newsweek Books

PSYCHOLOGY
Bubble and Bust
Mary Carmichael 4/14/2008 12:00:00 AM
It's been a long time since the dot-com days of "irrational exuberance," but John Coates remembers them well: he lived them. As a Wall Street trader, he watched as his co-workers drove stock prices into the stratosphere and themselves into a frenzy. "They were acting like they were on a drug," he says.
PSYCHOLOGY
The Political Psyche
4/14/2008 12:00:00 AM
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's prostitute problem is just the latest reminder: there's a troubling question about politicians that never quite seems to go away. When it comes to mental health, emotional stability and social adjustment, are they, well, a little crazier than the rest of us, a little saner—or not much different from the average person at all?
LETTERS
Europe’s Farmers

Our March 24 report on European farmers' embrace of globalization elicited mixed reader responses. One reader agreed: "There's a new wave of entrepreneurial spirit among farmers." Another objected to José Bové on the cover: "He does not belong." A third wrote, "The topic is out of scope now."
BUSINESS
Murdoch, Ink.
Johnnie L. Roberts
Two of the publishing world's most influential editors approached the tower at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan with apprehension. Headquarters of News Corp., the limestone-clad tower houses the company's pugnacious New York Post and Fox News Channel, favorites of the boss, Rupert Murdoch. When he's not hopscotching the seven continents, Murdoch rules his empire from his eighth-floor office here, which is decorated with a backlit, floor-to-ceiling map of the world—the better to pinpoint his hundreds of media properties, from Los Angeles-based Fox Broadcasting and the Silicon Valley headquarters of MySpace to the United Kingdom's BSkyB satellite-TV company. The dining suite where Murdoch hosts his guests has three separate rooms, each themed to one of the media Murdoch controls: newspapers, movies and television. The place whispers discretion, so the powerful who call on Murdoch needn't fret about surfacing the next day in the tittle-tattle of the New York Post's Page Six. Given the nature of their visit, discretion was important to the guests on a late spring day three years ago, the then Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine and his deputy John Huey. The two men had come seeking support from the one media mogul whom other moguls most fear and respect.
Liar, Liar, Parents on Fire
Kathleen Deveny
When my daughter asked me why it was embarrassing that former New York governor Eliot Spitzer was involved with a cowgirl ring, I didn't hesitate. "Bad lariat tricks," I explained. She looked a little confused, but let it drop. I know that I'm not supposed to lie to my kid, but I didn't feel like explaining prostitution to a 7-year-old. But it is hardly the first whopper I've told my child, and it got me thinking about how I really feel about honesty as a policy. Over the years, I have concocted elaborate tales of how the Easter Bunny finds us even when we're on vacation in Florida. I have artfully dodged questions about where babies come from and proclaimed my child's half-hearted scribblings works of genius. I have promised her that I would be home at 6:30, even though I knew in my heart I would never make it in time. I have implied that if I don't do some work while we're on vacation that we could someday end up homeless. I'm not proud, but I also know I'm not alone. "Don't feel bad," says Alan Hilfer, director of psychology at Maimonides Medical Center in New York. "We all tend to lie to our children on a regular basis."
POLITICS
Girls Will Be Girls. Or Not.
Julia Baird
Catherine the Great was a woman with an extravagant, exacting sexual appetite. During the 34 years of her reign, she had a host of young, well-trained lovers—many of them soldiers—who were paid handsomely for sating her, and were often rewarded with plum positions on her court, or gifts of property or serfs. Her libido was so legendary that when she died of a stroke in 1796, rumor spread quickly that she had been crushed under the weight of a stallion she was attempting to have sex with. It's a myth that has endured, and serves as a reminder of our fascination with powerful, sexual women: will they stop at nothing?