Download the PDF Millions of Africans die needlessly of disease each year. Can Bill Gates change that?
by Michael Specter
Each May, representatives from the hundred and ninety-two member nations of the World Health Organization travel to Geneva to set policies for the coming year. The assembly lasts a week, and the delegates often find themselves devoting as much of that time to politics as they do to matters of life or death. Read more »
Download the PDF In the court of Valentino.
by Michael Specter
June has never been an easy month for Valentino, the seventy-three-year-old Roman designer. But this spring was more frantic than usual. He introduced a new fragrance—V—and celebrated in New York at the end of May with a party that began at Bergdorf Goodman, continued at the Four Seasons, and ended, close to dawn, at Bungalow 8. Read more »
Download the PDF Is there any way to prevent a deadly avian-flu pandemic?
by Michael Specter
Early last September, an eleven-year-old girl from Kamphaeng Phet, a remote village in Thailand, developed a high fever, a severe cough, and a sore throat. She lived with her aunt and uncle in a one-room wooden house—not much more than a hut on stilts. The family had fifteen chickens, which wandered freely beneath the plank floor, where the young girl often played and slept. Then, at the end of August, the chickens died. Read more »
Download the PDF Is there any way to prevent a deadly avian-flu pandemic?
by Michael Specter
Early last September, an eleven-year-old girl from Kamphaeng Phet, a remote village in Thailand, developed a high fever, a severe cough, and a sore throat. She lived with her aunt and uncle in a one-room wooden house—not much more than a hut on stilts. The family had fifteen chickens, which wandered freely beneath the plank floor, where the young girl often played and slept. Then, at the end of August, the chickens died. Read more »
Download the PDF Larry Kramer delivered a long and fiery speech at Cooper Union last Sunday night. That, of course, was nothing new. Kramer, the playwright who founded the activist group ACTUP and was the signature voice of the age of AIDS, is famous for his fury: once, he and thousands of his supporters invaded St. Patrick's Cathedral during Mass; another time, they wrapped Jesse Helms's house in a giant yellow condom. Over the years, they hounded pharmaceutical companies and the government into developing and providing drugs and treatments. Read more »
Download the PDF Since 1965, life expectancy for Russian men has decreased by nearly six years. And now there is AIDS.
by Michael Specter
The first days of spring are electrifying in St. Petersburg. The winters are hard and dark and long, and when the light finally returns each year thousands of people pour onto Nevsky Prospekt and into the squares in front of the Winter Palace and St. Isaac's Cathedral. Read more »
Download the PDF Where everyone goes in Paris after the shows are over.
by Michael Specter
One evening not long ago, I wandered down the Rue de Richelieu on my way to a Chinese restaurant called Dave, which is recommended regularly by people in the fashion business. Like many popular restaurants in Paris, reservations are hard to get at Dave. So I wasn't surprised to find a Complet sign hanging over the lacquered red door. Inside, though, the place was practically empty—there was just one couple, sitting at a table near the window. A rumpled, unshaven Chinese man of indeterminate age emerged from the kitchen. Read more »
Download the PDF Miuccia Prada has a doctorate in political science. She calls herself a feminist. "I make clothes. It's silly. But it's my job." Read more »
Download the PDF Dietary supplements are unregulated, some are unsafe—and Americans can't get enough of them.
by Michael Specter
One day last September, as Britney Spears was about to board a flight to Los Angeles from London, a rectangular blue bottle fell out of her purse. She quickly stuffed it back in, but not before the paparazzi recorded the event. Neither Spears nor her spokesman was willing to comment on the contents of the bottle, but the next morning London's Daily Express published a page of pictures under the headline "exclusive: pop princess spotted at airport with pot of slimming tablets." Spears was apparently carrying Zantrex-3, one of the most popular weight-loss supplements currently sold in the United States. Read more »
Download the PDF How John Galliano reimagined fashion.
by Michael Specter
Last July, three hours before the first model–wearing a flamenco skirt flecked with purple polka dots and cut from more than a hundred and fifty metres of crinoline, organza, and georgette crepe–stepped onto the runway at the Christian Dior haute-couture show, held in the Hippodrome d'Auteuil, John Galliano, the House of Dior's forty-two-year-old design director, settled anxiously into a tiny, makeshift dressing room directly behind the stage. Read more »
Michael Specter has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998.
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