Winter 2018

Cover Story

Here’s the Beef with Chicken from China

The Trump USDA favored a powerful lobby over American food safety

by James McWilliams

Articles

What Is Freedom of Conscience?

Its long history in Europe and England prepared the American Revolution. Where has this trait gone?

by Marilynne Robinson

Tuskegee Truth Teller

Peter Buxtun, like many medical whistleblowers, got little thanks for exposing a notorious scandal

by Carl Elliott

The Chief of Entertainers

Trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie was a jazz prophet, a musical genius, and a scatterbrained whirlwind

by David Grogan

Tales of War and Redemption

Even in the face of the ultimate human failing, we must be responsive to suffering and attuned to joy

by Phil Klay

“We’ll Do Everything We Can”

Sometimes, to save a patient, doctors must move beyond textbooks and embrace the ineffable

by Patrick Tripp

Departments

Book Reviews

Why We Need Art

Why We Need Art

Can evolutionary biology explain the human impulse to create?

Natalie Angier
The Wanderer 

The Wanderer 

How a Victorian novelist’s life and times inform our own

Michela Wrong
Bungle in the Jungle

Bungle in the Jungle

A new biography considers what might have been in Indochina

Charles Trueheart
The Colonial Melting Pot

The Colonial Melting Pot

Six very different people in a war of liberation

T. H. Breen
Paranoia Strikes Deep

Paranoia Strikes Deep

What are we hiding from in our policed and gated communities?

Jill Leovy