Elsa Lehrer

For a country that thinks about food constantly, Americans are remarkably bad at actually eating well. We invented the $20 superfood smoothie, fight about which dietary philosophy is the most effective, and have more nutrition information at our fingertips than any generation in history. And yet, with diet-related disease among the leading cause of death in the US and over 19 million people living in food deserts, we are one of the least healthy...

On a blustery Vienna night in December 1896, Felix Salten walks into Café Griensteidl. The novelist sees his friend Karl Kraus sitting across the room, walks over, and slaps the man twice across the face. The entire café falls silent. Then, one imagines, someone orders another coffee. Kraus, the Nobel-nominated satirical essayist, was then a sharp-faced, twenty--two-year-old who had spent the better part of the year publicly excoriating everyone in the room.