Articles
Putting Man Before Descartes
Human knowledge is personal and participant—placing us at the center of the universe
by John Lukacs
The Future of the American Frontier
Can one of our most enduring national myths, much in evidence in the recent presidential campaign, be reinvented yet again?
by John Tirman
Affirmative Action and After
Now is the time to reconsider a policy that must eventually change. But simply replacing race with class isn’t the solution.
by W. Ralph Eubanks
Spies Among Us
Military snooping on civilians, which escalated in the turbulent '60s, never entirely went away and is back again on a much larger scale
by Clay Risen
A Country for Old Men
Having reached the shores of seniority himself, the author finds a surprising contentment in the eyes of his fellow retirees
by Edward Hoagland
Collateral Damage
The Civil War only enhanced George Whitman's soldierly satisfaction; for his brother Walt, however, the horrors halted an outpouring of great poetry
by Robert Roper
My Bright Abyss
I never felt the pain of unbelief until I believed. But belief itself is hardly painless.
by Christian Wiman
The High Road to Narnia
C. S. Lewis and his friend J. R. R. Tolkien believed that truths are universal and that stories reveal them
by George Watson
Departments
Editor's Note
Letter From …
Point of Departure
Commonplace Book
Book Essay
Lunching on Olympus
My meals with W. H. Auden, E. M. Forster, Philip Larkin, and William Empson
Steven L. Isenberg
Book Reviews
Let Me Count the Ways
Are we getting more obsessive or more compulsive about diagnosing?
Richard Restak
Lucid Madness
A massacre of Apache women and children, and the difficulties of telling their story
William Howarth
Of Time and the Camera
An art critic and historian turns his attention to contemporary photography