The Week USA – August 31, 2019

ARTS

22 Books

P.T. Barnum, America’s

showman and con man

23 Author of the Week

Javier Marías’ fi ght

against fascism

24 Art & Podcasts

The disturbing beauty

of Hyman

Bloom’s

cadavers

25 Film

A British-

Pakistani

discovers

Springsteen

NEWS

4 Main stories

Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent

suicide; Hong Kong

protesters face off against

Beijing; a means test for

immigrants

6 Controversy of the week

Are Democrats bullying

private citizens by

naming and shaming

Trump donors?

7 The U.S. at a glance

Stopping right-wing

terrorism; Trump loses

The Mooch; a grisly

prison break fails

8 The world at a glance

Argentine markets crash

as Left makes a comeback;

the Kremlin covers up a

nuclear accident

10 People

Candace Bushnell looks

back on Sex and the City;

Nicolas Cage’s dino skull

11 Briefi ng

America’s fast-graying

population

12 Best U.S. columns

Banning “hyperlethal”

bullets; how electable is

gaffe-prone Joe Biden?

14 Best European

columns

Is Germany paying its

fair share for defense?

16 Talking points

Trump’s incendiary

immigration rhetoric;

ICE workplace raids;

canceling The Hunt

LEISURE

27 Food & Drink

Fish tacos worthy of a

special holiday meal

28 Travel

A dragon leads a parade of

surprises in Singapore

29 Consumer

Stylish essentials to outfi t a

college dorm room

BUSINESS

32 News at a glance

Trump postpones tariffs;

CBS and Viacom fi nally

get hitched

33 Making money

Which colleges are really

worth the cost?

34 Best columns

An impressively vast loss

for Uber; how Android

made the modern world

China escalates crackdown as protests shut Hong Kong airport. (p.5)

Candace
Bushnell
(p.10)
AP,

Ge

tty

The United Nations made a polite request to the Western world

last week: Could you please stop scarfing so much meat? If we

could all just cut back a bit on the burgers and lamb chops, a

U.N. panel of climate experts explained, millions of square miles

of grazing land could be reforested. Those trees would then suck

carbon from the atmosphere, effectively reducing CO 2 emissions

by up to 9 billion tons a year. As an added bonus, by shrinking

herds of cows and sheep we’d also shrink the amount of planet-

warming methane these ungulates belch into the atmosphere. To

counter climate change, says Timothy Searchinger of the World

Resources Institute, big meat consumers such as the U.S. “need to

eat less.” To which I can only say: Good luck with that.

This country has had a long love affair with meat. Early Euro-

pean settlers salivated at the sheer abundance of game that was

waiting to be eaten: deer, ducks, wild turkeys, hares, and the ap-

parently delicious (and now almost certainly extinct) Eskimo cur-

lew. As the U.S. expanded westward, vast ranches allowed cattle

to be farmed on a scale unimaginable in the Old World. Rich and

poor alike came to expect beef at every meal by the late 19th cen-

tury. Infants, says food journalist Nina Teicholz, would gnaw beef

even before their first teeth came in. While visiting the U.S., an

astounded Charles Dickens wrote that an American “breakfast

would have been no breakfast” without a T-bone steak “swim-

ming in hot butter.” That hunger for meat is still going strong

today: A typical American eats the equivalent of about 50 chick-

ens or half a cow every year. If health warnings from scientists

about red and white meat—both of which raise the risk of heart

disease—won’t stop us from eating this tasty stuff, it’s doubtful

we’ll give up steaks to prevent the planet from overheating. Per-

haps our only hope lies with the researchers who are now work-

ing to make lab-grown meat a palatable possi-

bility. So, who’s up for a petri-dish Whopper?

Editor’s letter

Contents 3

Theunis Bates

Managing editor

Visit us at TheWeek.com.

For customer service go to www

.TheWeek.com/service or phone us

at 1-877-245-8151.

Renew a subscription at www

.RenewTheWeek.com or give a gift

at http://www.GiveTheWeek.com.

Editor-in-chief: William Falk

Managing editors: Theunis Bates,

Mark Gimein

Deputy editor/International: Susan Caskie

Deputy editor/Arts: Chris Mitchell

Senior editors: Alex Dalenberg,

Danny Funt, Michael Jaccarino, Dale Obbie,

Zach Schonbrun, Hallie Stiller

Art director: Dan Josephs

Photo editor: Loren Talbot

Copy editors: Jane A. Halsey, Jay Wilkins

Researchers: Joyce Chu, Alisa Partlan

Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin,

Bruno Maddox

Chief sales and marketing officer:

Adam Dub

SVP, marketing: Lisa Boyars

Executive account director: Sara Schiano

Senior account director: Dana Matesich

Midwest director: Lauren Ross

Southeast director: Jana Robinson

West Coast executive director: Tony Imperato

Marketing director: Kelly Dyer

Integrated marketing manager:

Lindsay LaMoore

Research and insights manager: Joan Cheung

Programmatic revenue and ad operations

director: Isaiah Ward

Digital planner: Maria Sarno

Chief executive officer: Sara O’Connor

Chief operating & financial officer:

Kevin E. Morgan

Director of financial reporting:

Arielle Starkman

Consumer marketing director:

Leslie Guarnieri

HR manager: Joy Hart

Operations manager: Cassandra Mondonedo

Chairman: Jack Griffin

Dennis Group CEO: James Tye

U.K. founding editor: Jolyon Connell

Company founder: Felix Dennis