Martin Schneider writes:
A new issue of The New Yorker comes out tomorrow. A preview of its contents, adapted from the magazine’s press release:
In “With the Marchers,” a resident of Tehran reflects on the recent demonstrations and the situation on the ground after the country’s controversial Presidential election. The resident, who decided to write this piece without a byline because of the Iranian authorities’ attempts to curtail the actions of the Western media, writes, “On the afternoon of June 15th, I bumped into my old friend Reza at the huge demonstration on Azadi Street—the march nobody will ever forget.”
In Comment, Laura Secor looks at the difficult situation that Iran finds itself in now that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has demanded an end to the street protests mounted in favor of the reformist Presidential candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
In “Angelo’s Ashes,” Connie Bruck offers a behind-the-scenes look at the rise and fall of Countrywide Financial Corporation, once the largest home-mortgage provider in the United States, and chronicles the ambitions of Angelo Mozilo, its “self-regarding chairman and C.E.O.”
In “The Catastrophist,” Elizabeth Kolbert profiles James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who is sometimes called “the father of global warming,” and examines his recent efforts to warn the public about the increasing threats to our climate.
Rebecca Mead examines the recently discovered early letters from Edith Wharton to her governess.
Alex Ross visits Marlboro Music, the famed summer institute for aspiring and established musicians.
James Wood reads Censoring an Iranian Love Story, by Shahriar Mandanipour.
Jill Lepore looks at the parenting-advice industry.
Peter Schjeldahl attends the Judith Leyster exhibit at the National Gallery.
David Denby reviews The Hurt Locker and Food, Inc.
Hilton Als reviews David Adjmi’s Stunning.
There is a short story by Stephen O’Connor.

Martin Schneider writes:
A new issue of The New Yorker comes out tomorrow. A preview of its contents, adapted from the magazine’s press release:
In “The Secret History,” Jane Mayer speaks with Leon Panetta, the C.I.A.’s new director, in an exclusive interview about the agency’s legacy of torture, and examines the Obama Administration’s “attempts to restore the rule of law in America’s fight against terrorism without sacrificing safety or losing the support of conservative Democratic and independent voters.”
In “Don’t Shoot,” John Seabrook looks at the innovative strategies that David Kennedy, a professor in the anthropology department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in New York City, has developed to reduce gang-related violent crimes. Employed to great success in Cincinnati, Providence, and several other communities in the U.S., Kennedy’s program, widely known as Ceasefire, imparts a moral component to crime deterrence.
Hendrik Hertzberg, in Comment, examines the impact of President Obama’s recent speech in Cairo on elections in the Middle East.
In the Financial Page, James Surowiecki looks at the effects of rising gas prices on consumer confidence.
In Shouts & Murmurs, Paul Rudnick describes a Utah Mormon’s experience with same-sex marriage on a family trip to Massachusetts.
Jon Lee Anderson explores Spain’s efforts to confront its civil-war past, including a pending exhumation of poet Federico García Lorca’s remains.
Lauren Collins profiles romance writer Nora Roberts.
Sasha Frere-Jones listens to Sonic Youth’s latest release, The Eternal.
Kelefa Sanneh examines the recent movement away from the corporate work world and back to small business.
Hilton Als reviews the musical Coraline.
Anthony Lane reviews The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and Whatever Works.
There is a short story by Tim Gautreaux.

Martin Schneider writes:
In 2007 I reviewed Atul Gawande’s book Better for Publishers Weekly. I ended the review with this sentence: “Indeed, one suspects that once we cure the ills of the health care system, we’ll look back and see that Gawande’s writings were part of the story.”
How quickly predictions come to pass. It turns out Gawande does have a well-positioned fan in the White House. According to The New York Times:

President Obama recently summoned aides to the Oval Office to discuss a magazine article investigating why the border town of McAllen, Tex., was the country’s most expensive place for health care. The article became required reading in the White House, with Mr. Obama even citing it at a meeting last week with two dozen Democratic senators.
“He came into the meeting with that article having affected his thinking dramatically,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “He, in effect, took that article and put it in front of a big group of senators and said, ‘This is what we’ve got to fix.'”

Furthermore, America’s hippest health care wonk, Ezra Klein, called Gawande’s piece possibly “the best article on health care you’ll ever read,” which is even more impressive.
Update: Enjoy Gawande’s University of Chicago commencement speech, delivered this morning.

Martin Schneider writes:
I was tickled by Steve Johnson’s post at the Chicago Tribune‘s website on Larry Wood, who has now won the New Yorker Caption Contest for the third time.
Here are Wood’s previous two victories. (Hat tip to David Marc Fischer’s indispensable Blog About Town.)
Reading between the lines, it seems that economical wording is key to the Chicago attorney’s success. Johnson quotes Caption Contest honcho Robert Mankoff that “Wood’s was clearly the best worded of several submissions that went after the same basic joke.”
Also noteworthy is the news that every week, Farley Katz, who administers the contest, “culls through the submissions, catagorizes [sic] them by type of joke.” It hadn’t really occurred to me that so many people would coincide on their jokes every week, but it does make sense.
Even readers with exceptional eidetic memory will probably need reminding that Wood is an Emdashes reader. Congratulations, Lawrence—or may I call you Larry?