(AP Photo/Paul Sancya) Michigan governor Rick Snyder answers media questions after appointing Roy Roberts the emergency manager of the Detroit school district.
(AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Alex Morgan, center, is celebrated by teammates after scoring the opening goal during the final match between Japan and the United States.
The game isn't over.
The fierce match between Japan and the U.S. for the Women's World Cup ended Sunday with a win for Japan, but the women are still throwing up impressive numbers.
A sold-out crowd in Frankfurt watched Japan win 3-1 on penalty kicks after a 2-2 score in regulation, and about 13.46 million viewers watched on ESPN3, making it the second most viewed daytime telecast in cable history. It's also the highest-rated soccer telecast on ESPN ever, men's or women's. Excluding NFL games, the women's final was the fifth most-watched telecast of any sport on the sports channel, with only the 2011 college bowl games ahead of it. Online, 548,000 visitors to ESPN3.com streamed the game, which is the most ever for a women's sport.
Attorney General Eric Holder (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)
Our country's shoulder-shrugging acceptance of rape in prisons has made it to the U.S. Department of Justice. Last week, the public comment period on new federal standards to eliminate sexual assault in prisons closed. The standards, released by the Justice Department in February, fall far short of the tools needed to confront the pervasive problem.
Rarely are older women centered as protagonists in American fiction, a fact that mirrors their marginalized role in society. In If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, her new collection of stories, author Robin Black pushes back against this trend. Black's bright and nuanced tales make protagonists of those who, in life as well as in art, are more often caricatures. We meet a 70-year-old artist who grieves the end of a romance while painting a dying man's portrait, a woman in her mid-60s who makes an unexpected connection with a stranger in Italy, and another older woman who lies about her recent stroke while coming to terms with her daughter's marital infidelity.
"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." So said Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch priest born less than 20 years after the printing press was invented. This holiday season, publishers might like to see his ilk in bookshops. Traditionally, the book industry depends upon the December gift-giving season to buoy its entire year. Many publishers shape their catalog around the six-week window of intensified shopping that carries particular urgency in the depths of a recession.
But this "make or break" bookselling strategy is one holiday tradition that a handful of innovative publishers are eager to end.
