A few years ago, I was getting ready to go onstage at a college to do an interview with Dr. Oz. It was morning, and backstage there was a table with yogurt, blueberries and granola. I fixed myself a bowl, and Mehmet asked me how I was enjoying it. I told him it was delicious. "I brought it," he said. Ever since then, I've been interested not only in how Oz eats (he's always got a pocketful of almonds, and you can see his daily diet on page 55) but also in how he regards what the rest of us consume. For him, food is both fuel and medicine, and in his enlightening cover story, he separates fact from fiction when it comes to diet. While Oz talks about food in the macro sense, John Cloud turns himself into a vitamin guinea pig to see if the current nutraceutical craze is really worth it.
It's long been said that history is written by the victors. These days, however, people write history in order to be seen as the victor. From Dick Cheney's new book to recent ones by George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the goal is to shape the narrative. Bart Gellman's masterly piece takes a hard look at these first drafts of history. He's well positioned to scrutinize Cheney's legacy since he did that already in his book Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency.
With the dramatic collapse of Tripoli's defenses, TIME dispatched photojournalist Yuri Kozyrev to Libya along with our Cairo correspondent, Abigail Hauslohner. We also had reporter Steven Sotloff hop on a tugboat with rebel fighters as they headed to Muammar Gaddafi's former stronghold. In addition to touring the colonel's palaces and bunkers, Hauslohner got a look at the zoo and armory of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the fugitive leader's heir apparent. Kozyrev's powerful images document the disintegration of a criminal regime--mass killings, narcissistic excess, proof of the abuse of power.
In any given week, the most interesting and important stories can be as intimate as what you should eat and as epic as presidential history and revolutionary change.
Richard Stengel, MANAGING EDITOR