My favorite contemporary writer, Tobias Wolff, has a short story titled The Benefit of the Doubt in this week's New Yorker, and it's posted for free online for a short while. He also has a novel titled Old School which is available for pre-order and coming out this fall.
The short story is a personal exploration of the state of U.S. foreign relations.
This week's New Yorker also has an article on Bill James work for the Boston Red Sox, though it doesn't contain much new info for baseball geeks.