Christmas Specials
LATIN AMERICAN GAYS
Living la vida loca
Latin America has imported the notion of “gay pride” from the United States, just as it has imported fashions and fast-food chains. But it is still a region where men are macho, women are long-suffering, Catholicism dominates, and the family reigns supreme. Our reporter embarked on a personal odyssey to discover what this complex cultural mix means for Latin American gays
Sui genocide
The human species might yet fulfill its evolutionary potential, if it would only go away
ASK DR TATIANA
Sex is war!
In her inaugural column, The Economist’s sex adviser explains to puzzled lovers why the battle of the sexes is much more than a metaphor
BY INVITATION: FAVOURITE HOTELS
Somewhere special to stay
Tired of ho-hum hosts and boring bedrooms, we asked Caroline Raphael—editor and co-owner of “The Good Hotel Guide”*—to tell us her likes and dislikes about European hotels, and to reveal some of her favourites
1897 AND 1997
The century the earth stood still
True, we have aeroplanes, medicines and microchips. But is today’s world really so very different from the world of 100 years ago?
MODERN ROYALISTS
Monarchs and mountebanks
Snobbery, sentiment, or the scent of power? What makes claimants to royal thrones, and their supporters, pursue their unlikely cause?
THE DIAMOND BUSINESS
Glass with attitude
The preciousness of the diamond is perhaps the world’s most sophisticated illusion—a feat of marketing more dazzling than the gem itself
FUN WITH FUNGI
Those magical mushrooms
What grows in the dark forests of Anglo-Saxon paranoia? Fungus, of course. Yet even Anglos are discovering the delights of wild mushrooms, and about time too
GOLFONOMICS
Asia in the rough
Many explanations have been advanced as to what went wrong with the East Asian miracle. Most of them can be summed up in one four-letter word: golf
BANANAS
Expelled from Eden
After decades of cosy protection, the banana growers of the Caribbean must reinvent themselves for a world market that has left them behind. Protectionism is never so cruel as when it ends
FUN WITH FUNGI