Mother Jones Magazine Cover : March + April 2014

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  • Cover Story
  • 780 Days of Solitude

    One minute we were three tourists hiking up a pretty mountain trail. The next we were hostages headed for two years in hell.

  • FOOD + HEALTH
  • Does Your Germophobia Breed Superbugs?

    Are Antibiotics Making Us Fat?

    If the superbugs don’t kill you, maybe the poundage will.

  • Let Them Eat Junk Food

    Let Them Eat Junk Food

    Should Uncle Sam tell food stamp recipients what to buy?

Contributors

After living in Zuccotti Park with Occupy Wall Street, 1 Laura Gottesdiener spent two years reporting on the mortgage crisis (“The Wolf of Your Street“).

2 Mariah Blake (“Are Any Plastics Safe?”) fondly remembers pushing her infant brother around in her pink plastic Barbie motor home; photographer Evan Kafka wrangled his three-year-old son for the image.

3 Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal‘s article (“780 Days of Solitude“) is excerpted from A Sliver of Light, their new memoir chronicling their imprisonment in Iran; Owen Freeman has illustrated for The New Yorker, GQ, and many other publications.

To tell the coming-of-age story of Louisiana’s governor (“The Agony of Bobby Jindal“), 4 Tim Murphy spent hours closely reading back issues of obscure Catholic journals.

5 Mustafah Abdulaziz shot photos of sociologist Kathryn Edin (“What If Everything You Knew About Poverty Was Wrong?“) during a cold snap so bad it cracked his camera.

While visiting the remnants of a marijuana farm busted by forest rangers, Josh Harkinson resisted the temptation to pluck the buds off a plant they’d missed (“This Is Your Wilderness on Drugs“); illustrator 6 Gina Triplett was raised in rural Minnesota, where most farmers grew corn—and, if they were feeling really wild, maybe some soy.

Laura Gottesdiener Mariah Blake
Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal
Tim Murphy Gina Triplett
Mustafah Abdulaziz