November 1997

Articles

• The Half-Skinned Steer

  He said he would be at the funeral. No point talking about flights and meeting him at the airport. He intended to drive. Of course he knew how far it was. He had a damn fine car, never had an accident in his life, knock on wood

  E. Annie Proulx

• The Atlantic's Founding

  The Editors

• The New World

  Philip Levine

• The Disappearing Alphabet

  Richard Wilbur

• The Atlantic Monthly Looks Ahead to the 21st Century

  Anonymous

• Typewriter Man

  The need for a new letter on an old manual machine leads the author to the shop of Martin Tytell, now in his seventh decade as repairman, historian, and high priest of typewriters.

  Ian Frazier

• Our Real China Problem

  The price of China's surging economy is a vast degradation of the environment, with planetary implications. Although the Chinese government knows the environment needs protection, writes the author, who spent six weeks inside China investigating the growing environmental crisis, it fears that doing the right thing could be political suicide

  Mark Hertsgaard

• The Reading Wars

  An old disagreement over how to teach children to read -- whole-language versus phonics -- has re-emerged in California, in a new form. Previously confined largely to education, the dispute is now a full-fledged political issue there, and is likely to become one in other states.

  Nicholas Lemann

• Word Court

  Barbara Wallraff

• Redeeming the Rake

  Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress is purposely hard to love -- which is why it so amply rewards those who stay for the glorious third act.

  David Schiff

• DNA Fatigue

  Worn out by a nucleotidal wave

  Cullen Murphy

• A Democrat Who Admits It

  Richard Gephardt is unafraid to say that the government should spend money on big public programs -- things that other Democrats said before they echoed Republicans

  James Fallows

• A Memory of the Nineteen-Nineties

  Being a faithful account of the events of the designated day, when the man who had disappeared was expected briefly to return

• Thin Walls, Bad Neighbors

  In the new Russia making yourself at home is still no easy task

  Jeffrey Tayler

• Vista

  Guy Billout

• A Taste of Asia

  Learning to cook Thai food can be a highlight of a trip to Thailand

• The Conservative Line on Race

  In a book uniting social science with ideological argument, the authors contend that African-Americans should rejoice in the progress they have made since the 1960s, stop playing "the race card," and renounce the other articles of racial liberalism

  Glenn C. Loury

• All Ireland's Bard

  Tied by birth to unionism, memorialist of the executed Nationalist rebels of 1916, W. B. Yeats mirrored Ireland's divisions in his self-divisions -- yet saw the island as a single cultural entity sprung from common roots in common myths

  Seamus Heaney

• Feminism's Unfinished Business

  Katha Pollitt

• 77 North Washington Street

• Letters

• The November 1997 Almanac

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