Cover Story:The cartoonist R. Kikuo Johnson lines up all the elements of a brief encounter between a poised passerby and the street venders who hawk imitations of the most coveted brands’ wares.Shop all our covers » In defense of breasts:When Sarah Thornton woke up from reconstructive surgery following her double mastectomy, she found herself with a pair of “unwieldy Ds,” which she named Bert and Ernie. The experience prompted her to pen “Tits Up,” a book about how boobs are put to work. As Lauren Michele Jackson writes inher review, “Liberated breasts can do and be so many things.” The inside story of forever chemicals:A chemist at the 3M Corporation told her boss that the same contaminant found in the bodies of their factory workers was showing up in the blood of the civilian population. “This changes everything,” he responded. But did it?Sharon Lerner reportson the scientist’s efforts to reveal the truth about the toxic compounds. What is liberalism?“Liberalism is, truly, the love that dare not speak its name,” Adam Gopnik writes inthis survey of authorswho have been considering the precarity of protecting an ideal (liberalism) that encourages the attack of ideas (such as liberalism). Believers in the concept carry “a knowledge that institutions of civic peace are much harder to build than to destroy, being immeasurably more fragile than their complacent inheritors imagine.” Plus:Kathryn Schulz onthe secrets of suspense, in literature as in life; Anthony Lane onthe app that abbreviates books; and more. | 
