Megacommuters

The fall of communism has opened the entire planet to business travel. It can be exhausting

It is a typical school night, and Eileen Rudden is helping her 13-year-old son Joe with his homework. A seventh-grader, he has been asked to write a fictional paper about World War II. Joe comes up with a plot involving a Japanese kamikaze pilot who meets an American naval officer from Iowa. Rudden talks over the story with him, reading drafts and suggesting revisions. The back-and-forth exchange goes on for hours. Rudden values times like this with Joe and her two other sons, Sam, 17, and Charlie, 9. She wouldn't miss them for the world. Not even when she is half...

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