Spring 2019

Cover Story

The First President To Be Impeached

Andrew Johnson beat the charges against him by a single vote, but what did the nation lose?

by Brenda Wineapple

Articles

Present-Day Thoughts on the Quality of Life (1969)

Jacques Barzun delivered this lecture half a century ago

by Jacques Barzun

The Hedgehog’s Great Escape

A young Frenchwoman who ran the Allies’ most persistent spy group was in the Gestapo’s grasp

by Lynne Olson

Orwell’s Last Neighborhood

While envisioning the darkest of futures and grappling with mortality, the English writer retreated to an idyllic Scottish isle to write Nineteen Eighty-Four

by David Brown

At Play in the Fields of the Bored

America’s newest city parks are chock-full of things to do—but what happened to the delights of idle time in a natural setting?

by John King

The Man Behind the Counter

A neighborhood grocer, inscrutable and gruff, lingers mysteriously in my memory

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Departments

Book Essay

Southern Cassandra

Southern Cassandra

Lillian Smith was a writer and a radical who called out her region’s lies about sex and race

Tracy Thompson

Book Reviews

Shrinking Success

Shrinking Success

Psychopharmacology has not lived up to its early promise

Scott Stossel
Continental Drift

Continental Drift

Westward expansion delayed a needed national reckoning

Jill Leovy
The Writer at Ground Zero

The Writer at Ground Zero

The chronicler of the first horror of the nuclear age

Phyllis Rose
How the South Rose Again

How the South Rose Again

Defeated in war, the Confederate states merely changed tactics

Louis P. Masur
Freedom of  Thought

Freedom of Thought

The philosophical currents that shaped our nation

John Kaag
Prophets of the Avant-Garde

Prophets of the Avant-Garde

How two power couples changed the world of art

Meryle Secrest
His Life Spoke Volumes

His Life Spoke Volumes

The man behind the great Enlightenment encyclopedia

Tom Chaffin