Profits ahead of patients, the crisis in Afghanistan, Joe DiMaggio's streak

Weekend reading on nybooks.com: Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband on our sick health care system, Stephen Jay Gould on Joe DiMaggio and probability, and Brian Urquhart on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights on this day in 1948. On the NYR Daily, Ahmed Rashid looks at the US recipe for failure in Afghanistan, Riccardo Manzotti and Tim Parks continue their dialogue on consciousness, and Colin Thubron follows a doomed Danish expedition to Arabia Felix. Sponsored by [Seagull Books]( [Putting Profits Ahead of Patients]( Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband What is a feasible step to begin to remedy our costly and chaotic health care system? [The Streak of Streaks]( Stephen Jay Gould DiMaggio’s streak is the most extraordinary thing that ever happened in American sports. He sits on the shoulders of two bearers—mythology and science. (1988) [Mrs. Roosevelt’s Revolution]( Brian Urquhart Without the leadership and vision of Eleanor Roosevelt it is unlikely that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could have been completed and accepted by all but a few governments. (2001) Coming in the July 13 issue: Elaine Blair on Louis C.K., Tim Page on Van Cliburn, Bryan Stevenson on the presumption of guilt, Mary Beard on Roman topography, Christopher de Bellaigue on Iran’s elections, Sue Halpern on Julian Assange, and more NYR Daily [Afghanistan: It’s Too Late]( Ahmed Rashid Prospects for any sort of positive outcome are as remote as they have been in this sixteen-year war [Consciousness: Who’s at the Wheel?]( Riccardo Manzotti and Tim Parks When we choose to do something, could we in fact have done otherwise? [Lost in Arabia]( Colin Thubron The Danish expedition of 1761 seems to have been doomed from the start. Calendar [‘This Is Hunger’ ]( (through July 18) [‘Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms’ ](through July 23) [‘The Jazz Age: American Style’]( (through August 20) [English Country Opera]((ongoing) The New York Review of Books 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](