Issue


Featured Articles

A Short History Of Heart Surgery

Author: William A. Nolen

“A wound in the heart is mortal,” Hippocrates said two thousand years ago. Until very recently he was right.

Age Of The Octagon

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A HERITAGE PRESERVED
The brief mid-nineteenth-century popularity of eight-sided houses has left us a strange and delightful architectural legacy

The Gun The Army Can’t Kill

Author: Peter Andrews

“I don’t want this thing often,” one soldier said of his .45 automatic pistol, “but when I do, I want it damned bad.”

Digging Up The U.S.

Author: Robert Friedman

In the underpinnings of our cities, in desolate swampland, beneath coastal waters—wherever the early settlers left traces of their lives—a new generation of archaeologists is uncovering a lost world

“Explaining What You Are After Is The Secret Of Diplomacy”

Author: Robert Bendiner

This century’s most powerful Secretary of State talks about the strengths and weaknesses of the Foreign Service, the role of the CIA, the rights of journalists, the contrast between meddlers and statesmen—and about the continuing struggle for a coherent foreign policy

R. G. Fiege, Circus Painter

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Using the same bold colors that drew the rubes in to see the Giant Rat of Sumatra and the Three-Headed Calf, he painted a fanciful record of his world

The Witch & We, The People

Author: Edmund S. Morgan

Did the fifty-five statesmen meeting in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention know that a witch-hunt was taking place while they deliberated? Did they care?

Hobo Nickels

Author: Delma K. Romines

One of America’s least-known and most curious folk arts

Our Town, 1900

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A recently discovered collection of glass-plate negatives offers a remarkable look at our grandparents

How To Be First Lady

Author: Beatrice K. Hofstadter

The ground rules have changed drastically since 1789. Abigail Adams, stifled in her time, would have loved being First Lady today.