The new volume includes sections on the economics of being a prostitute and how the mining of bank data can identify terrorists, and an interesting argument that car seats may not make older children safer than seat belts do. But more than a few parts of the book seem designed to distort reality rather than illuminate it, to elevate the provocative over the true.

"Suffer little children to come to me." So begins one of the most cited passages in the Bible. Yet, in cases involving the deaths of children in faith-healing families, the second half of Jesus's admonition from Luke 18:16 is at the heart of legal controversy: ". . . and forbid them not."

The Shiite pilgrims arrive in crowded buses and are dropped off just outside the shrine's gate. They walk down a narrow path patrolled by security guards and lined with tall cement walls to pray at the al-Askari mosque, the resting place of two of the most revered figures in Shiite Islam.

SUPERFREAKONOMICS Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

When swine flu erupted this spring in the southwestern United States and Mexico, it had been 40 years since the last flu pandemic. The outbreak has dispelled any illusion that pandemic influenza belonged to a bygone era, like smallpox, polio or scarlet fever. But we haven't seen how bad things mi...

A young woman enters a physician's office seeking help for diabetes. She assumes that the physician has been trained to understand, value and use the latest science related to her disorder. Down the hall, a young man enters a clinical psychologist's office seeking help for depression. He similarl...

Even as we wade through the wreckage of the housing collapse, Americans remain a staunchly house-proud people. And our government is apparently determined to encourage us: This month, President Obama signed into law an extension and expansion of the popular homebuyer tax credit, which had been...

If you're a progressive like me, and you're upset by the Stupak amendment, which bars federally subsidized insurance from covering abortions, consider this: What if we had a single-payer health-care system and someone like Jeb Bush or Sarah Palin were running the country?

When an American president travels abroad, you can count on three things: red carpets, long speeches and Washington think tank reports outlining the agenda for the trip.

My Prison, My Home One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran

Rankings reflect sales for the week ended Nov. 8, 2009. The charts may not be reproduced without permission from Nielsen BookScan. Copyright © 2009 by Nielsen BookScan. (The right-hand column of numbers represents weeks on this list, which premiered in Book World on Jan. 11, 2004. The bestseller...

16 MONDAY 7 P.M. Architectural photographer Mike Torrey discusses the new pictorial survey "Stone Offerings: Machu Picchu's Terraces of Enlightenment," a chronicle of visits to the Inca temple during the June and December solstices, as part of the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program, held at the...

The week's best travel bargains around the globe, by land, sea and air.

Want to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to Amelia Island, Fla.? Here's what you need to know for the weekend of Nov. 20-22.