December 2008 Issue
The Enlightened Patient
We’ve packed this year’s Top Doctors story with ideas from local doctors, hospital execs, insurance experts, and consumer watchdogs for finding first-rate healthcare resources (including our annual Top Doctors list), along with tips on making the most of them.
Feature
The Scientist … and the Monster
MIT’s Bob Rines has risked his reputation on a three-decade quest to solve one of the world’s great mysteries.
A Crash Course in Crisis Economics*
*Starring (to the extent, for good or for ill, that any of this can come down to one person, which as we’ll see is only so much) Barney Frank.
The Bling Job
How Alpha Omega founder Raman Handa hid the seamier side of his watch business hidden for so long.
Department
Let Them Eat Chicken
When Chris Kimball founded Cook’s Illustrated, he broke all the industry rules. Now he’s beating the glossies at their own game. Has his scrappy, undeniably geeky enterprise in Brookline Village come up with a new recipe for successful magazines?
Invasion of the Policy Snatchers
It may be a long time before Massachusetts matters again to presidential candidates, but the blitz of out-of-town cash that hit our state this election season showed there’s another way for us to be relevant: as guinea pigs for crackpot causes.
City Journal
The Schwartz Factor: Donny Marshall
The new C’s color man educates Jason Schwartz on the difference between Tommy Points and the Marshall Plan.
Restaurants
Turkish Delight
Ana Sortun’s new Middle Eastern bakery and café Sofra specializes in morsels of a certain variety. (The kind that’s impossible to stop shoveling into your mouth.)