September 1978
In This Issue
Explore the September 1978 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
Prague: Ten Years Later
A decade after the Russian invasion, the Czech spirit of independence is at last re-emerging, and the country’s citizens are searching for ways around a system they cannot confront head-on.
Loving and Hating New York
Skipping Through College: Reflections on the Decline of Liberal Arts Education
Educators are talking again about raising teaching standards, restructuring courses, and restoring educational values—as well they should be, says a professor who has studied and taught at half a dozen colleges and universities. Will it reverse the trend that has caused a prestigious foundation to describe contemporary general education as “a disaster area”? The professor hopes so, but he is skeptical.
The Editor's Page
Homage to Caldas d'Estrach
A visit to contemporary, post-Franco Spain brings back memories of an earlier time, when a five-year-old girl learned things she would always remember about friendship, grace under pressure, and human dignity.
Walking the Trestle
The Presence of Walker Evans
The Picnic
South Africa: The Siege Mentality
Small, poignant achievements in relations between the races cannot alleviate the nation’s despair about its future; meanwhile, its ruling white minority steels itself against criticism from abroad.
In Situ
Who's Afraid of Math, and Why?
The lion’s share of “math anxiety” belongs to women—but biology appears to play no part in this widespread phenomenon.
The New York Scene
You won’t find Tommy Dolan in the New York Social Register, nor will you run into Billie G. at the Monet show in the Metropolitan Museum, but they are more New Yorkish than those you read about in People magazine or the innumerable special supplements of the New York Times. Here are a few such characters and their various ways of life, as captured by a young and street-wise newspaper reporter.
The Nonviolent War Against Nuclear Power
A Biography in Seven Lives
The Wait
The Macho Pucci Look
Still at Home Abroad
Crazy Janie & Joe the Milkman: Notes on Class Attitudes Now
A Good School
Spoon
Cat on a Leash
Blood Secrets
Welfare: The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States
The Challenge of the Mahatmas
The Snow Leopard
The Country Cousin
Ruskin
The Illustrated Pepys
The Avebury Cycle
Silences
Selected Letters of John O'Hara
l'Amour Bleu
The Chinese Translations, Selected Poems and Light Verse and Satires
Congo Diary and Other Uncollected Pieces
Families
In Search of History: A Personal Adventure
Science, Sin and Scholarship
The Atlantic Puzzler
