Spring 2022

Cover Story

2022: A Space Emergency

Without international agreements, we are making the heavens dangerously crowded and potentially lethal

by Jeffrey Lewis

Articles

The Scar on the Hand

Writers and the early loss of parents

by Janna Malamud Smith

The Last Naturalist

A zoologist happiest in the fields and streams of Ohio wrote major works about the state’s birds and fishes

by Parker Bauer

American Mandarins

David Halberstam’s title The Best and the Brightest was steeped in irony. Did these presidential advisers earn it?

by Edward Tenner

Safer Than Childbirth

Abortion in the 19th century was widely accepted as a means of avoiding the risks of pregnancy

by Tamara Dean

Searching for Tommy and Rosie

What my mother’s diaries told me about her life and my own

by Mike Rose

Women’s Burden

We like to think the painful sacrifices our mothers made are in the past. But are they?

by Garry Wills

On Aging

Taking measure of a life well lived

by Edward Hoagland

Departments

Book Essay

The Birth of the Egghead Paperback

The Birth of the Egghead Paperback

How one very young man changed the course of publishing and intellectual life in America

Mark LaFlaur

Book Reviews

A Name Not Writ in Water

A Name Not Writ in Water

Revisiting an immortal 19th-century English poet

A. E. Stallings
Making the  List

Making the List

Finding the right page required centuries of experiment

Charles Trueheart
From Cold War to Y2K

From Cold War to Y2K

Looking back on a decade that was often dumb but never dull

Malcolm Jones
Wielders of the Knife

Wielders of the Knife

How doctors learned to keep patients alive on the operating table

Perri Klass
Surviving the Ebb and Flow

Surviving the Ebb and Flow

The curious creatures that inhabit the ocean’s edge

Miranda Weiss
Dollars Versus Degrees

Dollars Versus Degrees

Are business interests alone to blame for global warming?

Donald Worster
Where I End and We Begin

Where I End and We Begin

A writer reimagines her life by blending it with others

Sally Greene