February 2002
In This Issue
Toby Lester, “Oh, Gods!”; Gary Cohen, “The Keystone Kommandos”; Joshua Wolf Shenk, “Being Abe Lincoln”; Ron Rosenbaum, “Degrees of Evil”; Jeffrey Tayler, “The Next Threat to NATO”; Joseph Epstein, “Early Riser”; fiction by Beth Lordan; Geoffrey Wheatcroft on V. S. Naipaul; and much more.
Articles
Do as We Say, Not as We Do
Globalization might actually be good for poor countries, if only rich countries played by the rules
A Modest Little War
An exit strategy isn't a foreign policy
Losing the Code War
The great age of code breaking is over—and with it much of our ability to track the communications of our enemies
The Keystone Kommandos
Just months after Pearl Harbor the Third Reich secretly sent two small teams of would-be saboteurs to the United States. Their mission: cripple U.S. industry. But things went badly wrong. What happened is a story of confusion, low comedy, and betrayal—and the creation of a precedent for the military tribunals being proposed by the Bush Administration today.
Early Riser
The joy of getting out of bed and down to work
Councils of War
Military spinoffs have transformed civilian life. The momentum right now may be running in the other direction
Getting Hip to Squareness
We want our virginity back
The Heartland of Darkness
Anthrax and hermits and gun shows, oh my!
Moore's Stone Crab
Restaurants worth building a trip around
Oh, Gods!
Religion didn't begin to wither away during the twentieth century, as some academic experts had prophesied. Far from it. And the new century will probably see religion explode—in both intensity and variety. New religions are springing up everywhere. Old ones are mutating with Darwinian restlessness. And the big "problem religion" of the twenty-first century may not be the one you think
Penumbra
A short story
William Kennedy's Greatest Game
Roscoe has a lyricism and a gusto rarely achieved in serious American novels about politics
Lifosuction
Even on a résumé, less can be more
New & Noteworthy
The Iliad anew; Ved Mehta on the couch; Andrea Barrett blends exactitude and compassion
After the Quagmire
Coping with closure; enduring the New Seriousness
The Professors Profess
Ordinary people can say stupid things. Brilliant people do it brilliantly
Sheer Data
Sinclair Lewis's great accomplishment was, as E. M. Forster marveled, "to lodge a piece of a continent in our imagination"
Keeping Up Appearances
Our most enigmatic songwriter has become so thoroughly documented that one book won't hold him anymore
Being Abe Lincoln
Lincoln's features and clothing are stamped on the American imagination—and imitated by "Lincoln presenters" nationwide
The Next Threat to NATO
The Baltics are knocking at NATO's door. Don't let them in
Word Fugitives
A Secret Caribbean
Marie Galante and Les Saintes are islands that the French have been keeping for themselves
A Terrifying Honesty
V. S. Naipaul is certainly no liberal—and herein lies his importance
Letters to the Editors
Degrees of Evil
Some thoughts on Hitler, bin Laden, and the hierarchy of wickedness
