Summer 2014

Cover Story

The Fear Factor

Long-held predictions of economic chaos as baby boomers grow old are based on formulas that are just plain wrong

by Lincoln Caplan

Articles

4 Popes, 4 Saints, One New Guy

Perhaps you’ve heard the news from Rome. But what does it really have to do with the man from Assisi?

by Ingrid D. Rowland

Keep Smiling

An agnostic sermon

by Jan Morris

On Visitors

When the Bachelor Girl and the Red Death come calling, are they mirrors for our eccentricities?

by Ann Beattie

Proust Goes to the Country Club

At a largely forgettable class reunion, remembrances of things past

by Willard Spiegelman

A Prophet Without Honor

There’s no authoritative biography yet for Joseph Smith, the notorious founding figure in Mormonism

by Alex Beam

Departments

Book Essay

The Autobiography of Biography

In which I tell how I was drawn again and again to the lives of African-American figures, and found in them the story of our times

David Levering Lewis

Book Reviews

Man of the World

Man of the World

Well-traveled and erudite, John Quincy Adams sometimes had trouble appealing to his countrymen

Annette Gordon-Reed
The Skeptic

The Skeptic

A critic’s cranky charm

Steve Lagerfeld
Numbers Game

Numbers Game

The problems of solutions

Owen Gingerich
Dangerous Liaison

Dangerous Liaison

A CIA officer’s many faces

Steven Simon
We, Not Me

We, Not Me

A writer feels our pain

Gary Greenberg
Beyond the Colonies

Beyond the Colonies

What else happened during the year of independence?

Andrew Graybill