June 1978
In This Issue
Explore the June 1978 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
American Serfdom
The backward coal industry
The Dream of a Common Language
Fighter
Listening Woman
Europa
Biko
The Letters of Virginia Woolf
Look Who's Talking!
The Wolf Children
The Sea Peoples
Superpen
The Last Chronicles of Ballyfungus
Untitled
The Atlantic Puzzler
Railroads: Aboard the Ghost Trains
Long-distance rail travel in America will soon be changed completely, but a few of the old trains (often nearly empty) still roll across the prairies.
Travel Writing: It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Cot That Sting
Correction
Weaponry: The Folly of the Neutron Bomb
Its proponents call it “humane,” but they disregard the delayed effects of the enhanced radiation warhead, and the likelihood that this weapon would only increase the chances of nuclear war in Europe.
Delia
Praise
That the Soul May Wax Plump
“He who has reached the highest degree of emptiness will be secure in repose. ” —A Taoist saying
A Friendship: Remembering James Jones
Although in age they were fifteen years apart, they were united by a love of books, the South, drink, pranks, history, rural life, storytelling; by a sense of what counts and what doesn’t. Their friendship ended with James Jones’s death last summer, and here Willie Morris, his literary executor, recalls the last years of the novelist, a man who “knew character because he had character.”
The Golden Man
Deep in the Colombian jungles, according to popular legend, lived a tribe of Indians whose king wore a suit of gold. The tale intrigued a number of Spanish and English explorers, not many of whom survived their sad, rapacious efforts to find El Dorado.
Channel Crossing
The Food Chain
Opiates of the Mind: The Biggest Medical Discovery Since Penicillin
Certain substances produced by the human brain and pituitary gland may lead to new treatment for mitigating pain, curing drug addiction, and healing mental illness. In several laboratories in the United States and Europe, scientists are excitedly competing to duplicate the opiatelike material and apply it to a broad range of human ills.
Odd Balls
The Wishful Transcript
Women of the Silver Screen
The World According to Garp
Billy Phelan's Greatest Game
On Moral Fiction
The Seasons of a Man's Life
Max Perkins: Editor of Genius
The Seven Deadly Sins Today
