Summer 2006

Articles

The Ordinariness of AIDS

Can a disease that tells us so much about ourselves ever be anything but extraordinary?

by Philip Alcabes

The Sack of Baghdad

The U.S. invasion of Iraq has turned cultural icons into loot and archaeological sites into ruins

by Susannah Rutherglen

Miles from Nowhere

On a return trip to the wilderness of British Columbia, the author revisits a rough and exquisite landscape

by Edward Hoagland

Rum and Coca-Cola

The murky derivations of a sweet drink and a sassy World War II song

by Wayne Curtis

The Embarrassment of Riches

Do not pity me for having more money than anyone I know. Still, wealth does have its mild difficulties

by Pamela Haag

The Case for Love

Did the friendship of an early Supreme Court justice and the wife of a colleague ever cross the line of propriety?

by Natalie Wexler

Departments

Poetry

The Crux of the Matter

Langdon Hammer

Six Poems

Heather McHugh

For Vanessa Hayden

Stephen Burt

Fiction

What Do You Want to Know For?

Alice Munro

Dinners at Six

David Leavitt

Commonplace Book

Summer

Summer

André Bernard

Book Essay

Tiny Tomes

Tiny Tomes

Literature in miniature has a 500-year history, but what's the appeal of a volume too small to read?

Judith Pascoe

Book Reviews

The Mind-Brain Problem

Psychologist Jerome Kagan has always known that biology is only a partial solution

Jay Tolson

Worked Well with Others

Discovering the structure of DNA was not Francis Crick's only important collaboration

Priscilla Long

Half-Brother to the World

The United States has been more like other nations than we like to think

Eugen Weber

African Renaissance?

Finding hope on a continent where many people see only despair

David Chanoff

In Search of a Great Modernist

Do Proust's final days illuminate his novel?

Susan Rubin Suleiman