Keeping the customers ‘satisficed’

High-tax, high-cost Massachusetts is often portrayed as hostile to the entrepreneurial spirit. But in the new Small Business Survival Index, compiled by a Washington, DC-based advocacy group, the Bay State […]

Nancy Cianchetta is moving back and forth between adjoining lab rooms, where about a dozen fifth-to-seventh-graders seem oblivious to the made-to-order July weather outside. At benches, students chatter as they […]

One of the challenges in publishing a quarterly magazine is trying to anticipate what’s going to be on readers’ minds three to six months down the line. But the grim […]

The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American FamilyBy William J. BennettDoubleday, New York, 199 pagesWilliam Bennett, perhaps the leading conservative voice in American public life today, turns […]

Tocqueville coined the word “individualism” to define a new form of life he saw emerging in North America in the 1830s. Here as never before in history it became possible […]

Capitol Hill is generally considered a den of publicity hounds, free agents, and egomaniacs–folks who mean well, perhaps, but would get low marks in the “plays well with others” category […]

For more than three centuries, Freetown’s attitude toward land and development was pretty much described by its name. The 38-square-mile town next to New Bedford had no zoning restrictions at […]

Reused factories provide haunts for the ghosts of our industrial past In western Massachusetts, where I live, many rivers bear resonant names. A few conjure up attributes (the Swift, the […]

Last year about this time, Steve Crosby, the newly installed secretary for administration and finance, was shocked to discover a plethora of new laws attached to the state budget, which […]

In 1995, welfare reform was signed into law in Massachusetts with a strong work requirement at the cornerstone of the sweeping reforms. Adults who were able to work were required […]

A match between the area’s largest charity and the state’s leading fiscal watchdog may not qualify as a marriage of opposites, but it’s close. Boston Herald columnist Wayne Woodlief recently […]

To the thousands of drivers who crawl through the Sagamore Rotary on summer weekends–nerves fraying as carloads of cranky kids reach the breaking point–the state’s plan for re-engineering the gateway […]

Just as no one would plunk down money on the ponies without checking the odds in the Daily Racing Form, political junkies hunger for those first pre-election polls to see […]

After 27 years commuting from the Pioneer Valley, Bill Nagle left the State House and his position as House majority leader without a word, let alone the traditional farewell speech. […]

There’s been no shortage of talk about the new work skills needed to make it in the 21st century workplace. But who knew the proper care of crystal and stemware […]

Student activist Susan Misra was in a pickle. Thousands of anti-globalization protesters were about to converge on Quebec City to protest the trade agreement being ratified at the Summit of […]

With his White House days winding down, President Bill Clinton journeyed to upstate New York last year to deliver his swan song address to the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist […]

They are 45 of the roughest and toughest inmates at the Hampden County Jail and House of Correction just outside Springfield, the sullen slackers who sleep through the bells and […]

It’s just after 11 on a steamy spring morning and principal-in-training Benadette Manning races from a difficult meeting at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School to her office down the hall. […]

John AdamsBy David McCulloughSimon & Schuster, New York, 736 pagesAs the host of the PBS American Experience documentaries, David McCullough is the closest thing America has to a public historian. […]

The Connection Gap: Why Americans Feel So AloneBy Laura PappanoRutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 224 pagesIt’s as American as apple pie to fret over the state of the national […]