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Atlantic Unbound
The Atlantic's online journal
SAGE, INK
Can This Marriage Be Saved?
Picky Eater
Cartoons by Sage Stossel.

INTERVIEWS
Jeffrey Rosen: The Softer Side of Ashcroft
Jeffrey Rosen argues that it is not social conservatism but a quest for popular approval that drives John Ashcroft's public life.

INTERVIEWS
The Thoughtful Soldier: An Interview With Douglas Brinkley
Douglas Brinkley, the author of Tour of Duty, on John Kerry's conflicted but heroic service in Vietnam.

WRITING CONTEST
Rewrite Shakespeare
Read the winning entries, selected by the Princeton Review. A sidebar to "Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore?" in the March issue.

FLASHBACKS
Money Into the Void
Is the exorbitant expense of space exploration worth it? Articles from 1895 to the present consider the merits.

INTERVIEWS
Debra Dickerson:
Getting Over Race

Debra Dickerson, the author of The End of Blackness, on why she thinks the African-American community needs to "grow up."

POLITICS & PROSE
Free Trade vs. Good Jobs
What led America's early leaders to break the law of free trade? Should we break it again? By Jack Beatty.

INTERVIEWS
Caitlin Flanagan: The Mother's Dilemma
Caitlin Flanagan on parenting, home life, and the morally troubling nature of the mother-nanny relationship.

INTERVIEWS
Christopher Browning: An Insidious Evil
Christopher Browning, the author of The Origins of the Final Solution, explains how ordinary Germans came to accept as inevitable the extermination of the Jews.

INTERVIEWS
Matthew Miller: Let's Make a Deal
Matthew Miller, the author of The Two Percent Solution, talks about the promise of the political center and the life we might find there.

INTERVIEWS
Tracy Kidder: Something Special in the World
Tracy Kidder, the author of Mountains Beyond Mountains, on Paul Farmer, a doctor who set out to make a difference

POLITICS & PROSE
The Real Real Deal
While John Kerry suffers from "terminal Senatitis," John Edwards exudes life and optimism. By Jack Beatty.

POLITICS
State of the Union Address
James Fallows, an Atlantic national correspondent and a former presidential speech writer, annotates the President's address.

SOUNDINGS
William Blake, "London"
"My romance with William Blake (1757-1827), was primarily a response to his audacity," Alicia Ostriker writes. David Barber and Philip Levine join Ostriker in reading Blake's poem of protest.

INTERVIEWS
Kenneth M. Pollack: Weapons of Misperception
Kenneth M. Pollack, the author of "Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong," explains how the road to war with Iraq was paved with misleading and manipulated intelligence.

INTERVIEWS
Thomas Mallon: Jazz, Flappers, and Magazines
Thomas Mallon talks about his new novel, Bandbox—a madcap caper through the zany publishing world of 1920s New York.

POLITICS & PROSE
President Coolidge's Burden
A recent biography places Coolidge's failed presidency in the context of the deep depression he fell into after the death of his son. By Jack Beatty.

FLASHBACKS
"Almost as Japanese as Haiku"
A collection of articles by Lafcadio Hearn, who, at the end of the nineteenth century, set off for Japan, never to return.

FLASHBACKS
The Sage and the Magazine
A collection of writings by and about Ralph Waldo Emerson, two hundred years after his birth.

ATLANTIC BOOKSHELF
Books of the Year
Suggestions for giving and getting.

CORBY'S TABLE
Two for the Table
This year's must-have books on food. By Corby Kummer.

FLASHBACKS
A Century of Flight
A collection of articles—including letters from the Wright brothers—reflects the evolution of air travel and how we perceive it.

INTERVIEWS
Andrew Meier: Scenes From Russian Life
Andrew Meier, who spent most of the past decade in Russia, talks about his travels through a country both damaged and vital.

INTERVIEWS
Scott Turow: Life or Death Decision
In his latest book, Scott Turow talks about how he came to believe that the country's experiment with capital punishment has "failed miserably."

INTERVIEWS
Samantha Power: Life in Mugabe-Ville
Samantha Power, the author of "How to Kill a Country," describes Zimbabwe's descent into chaos.

FLASHBACKS
Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Atlantic Monthly
Writings by and about Nathaniel Hawthorne offer insight into his life and work.

POLITICS & PROSE
Who Can Beat George W. Bush?
The pundits are whispering that either Dean or Gephardt is likely to be the Democratic nominee. Which one of them can win? By Jack Beatty.

FLASHBACKS
'Til Death Do Us Part?
Atlantic articles throughout the twentieth century show how society has reshaped and refined our hopes for happily ever after.

INTERVIEWS
P. J. O'Rourke: Man on the Street
P. J. O'Rourke on Iraq, Michael Kelly, and taking a country's measure by just "hanging out."

INTERVIEWS
Tobias Wolff: The Writing Obsession
Tobias Wolff on his new novel, Old School, an examination of literary ambition gone awry.

INTERVIEWS
Robert Gildea:
"Neither Heroes nor Villains"

Robert Gildea, the author of Marianne in Chains, talks about his efforts to demystify the French experience under Nazi occupation.

POLITICS & PROSE
The Friedman Principle
The influential New York Times columnist's vision of spreading democracy through the Arab world is this era's domino theory—and it is just as misguided. By Jack Beatty.

For more from The Atlantic's online journal, see the Atlantic Unbound archive.
For the Record
March 20, 2004
"The Administration conflated the dangers posed by terrorists with those posed by tyrants, and said that the same sort of pre-emptive measures must be applied to both. This is a dubious argument, and one that must be rigorously examined rather than continually asserted." —Benjamin Schwarz, in "Clearer Than the Truth," in the April Atlantic.
Michael Kelly Award
New journalism prize
The Atlantic Media Company has announced a new annual $25,000 journalism award in honor of Michael Kelly, who died last April covering the war in Iraq. Kelly was editor of The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal during his tenure with the company. Click here for more information.
War in Iraq
Atlantic articles in the news
Blind Into Baghdad
by James Fallows
The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored.

Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong
by Kenneth M. Pollack
A detailed account of why we were so far off in our estimates of Saddam's weapons programs.

The Fifty-first State?
by James Fallows
Are we ready for a long-term relationship with Iraq?
E-mail Newsletters
Weekly and monthly
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Enter your e-mail address below to get The Atlantic Preview, our monthly look at what's coming up in the next issue of The Atlantic. [Click here to see a sample.]

Post & Riposte
The Atlantic Forum
The Case Against Perfection
Is it ethical to use science to perfect the human species? Join the discussion on Michael J. Sandel's April cover story

Domesticated Goddess
Should the way Sylvia Plath lived (and ended) her life affect our interpretation of the poetry itself? Share your thoughts on Cristina Nehring's article in the April issue.

A More Perfect Union
Should the gay marriage question be handled on a state-by-state basis? Or would a decisive federal ruling be preferable? Weigh in on Jonathan Rauch's article in the April issue.

See the complete forum index.
U.N. Notebook
A column from U.N. Wire
Afghanistan Prepares to Choose a Government
"The creation of a democratic culture and democratic institutions is the hard part. The ubiquitous international election monitors almost always arrive too late to see the confusion and intimidation that has preceded the opening of polling booths." By Barbara Crossette.
D.C. Dispatch
from National Journal
Legal Affairs: Bush Has The Wrong Remedy to Court-Imposed Gay Marriage
There are ways to get the courts out of the gay-marriage business without tying the hands of future voting majorities who may see gay marriage as good for us all. By Stuart Taylor Jr.

Media: Be Not Wicked
Wickedness used to be a core value of American journalism and great newspapers. But not any more. By William Powers.

Political Pulse: The Search for a Winning Combo
A running mate can help in three ways: geography, demography, and message. By William Schneider.

Wealth of Nations: The Jobless Recovery: A Cause for Concern, Not Alarm
It's fair to ask whether the Bush administration has done as much as it could to cushion workers from the economy's growing pains. And the answer is no. By Clive Crook.

Social Studies: On Same-Sex Marriage, Bush Failed the Public and Himself
President Bush's support of a constitutional ban on gay marriage amounts to a failure of moral and political vision, and of empathy and imagination. By Jonathan Rauch.

Legal Affairs: Should Foreign Law Be Used to Interpret Our Constitution?
Conservatives are not alone in worrying about the dangers to our democracy of importing laws and constitutional principles crafted by intellectual elites abroad. By Stuart Taylor Jr.

Political Pulse: The Nader Calculation
Ralph Nader draws a different lesson from 2000 than most others do. He thinks the election gave him clout. By William Schneider.

Media: A Controversial Primer
There's a method to controversies—identifiable patterns, behaviors, and tendencies. By William Powers.

More from National Journal.
The Magazine
April 2004 | Digital Edition
A More Perfect Union
How the Founding Fathers would have handled gay marriage. By Jonathan Rauch.

Plus: Joshua Green on Ralph Reed's comeback; a short story by Christopher Buckley; and more, in the April issue.

Browse back issues that have appeared on the Web.

Get a great rate, with no risk. Subscribe to The Atlantic today.
The Archive
More than a century of The Atlantic
From the Civil War to the war on terrorism, search more than a century of The Atlantic—and retrieve up to five articles for only $5.95. Click here to begin.
The Archive
Flashbacks
Highlights from The Atlantic's history
20 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
Saint Marie (March 1984)
"Sometimes I wanted her heart in love and admiration. Sometimes. And sometimes I wanted her heart to roast on a black stick." From 1984, a short story by Louise Erdrich.

Planetary Politics
"It was on a staircase of mistakes, hubris, and hype that Pluto was elevated to planethood." In 1998 David H. Freedman explained why some scientists think Pluto should be demoted from its status as a planet.

65 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
What Makes an American (March 1939)
"Nothing is more assuredly un-American than to entertain any doubt concerning the fact that somehow or another this country will come out all right." In 1939, Raoul de Roussy de Sales explored the unique ethos at the core of American nationalism.

90 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
Newspaper Morals (March 1914)
"The chief appeal of a newspaper is not at all to the educated and reflective minority of citizens, but to the ignorant and unreflective majority." In 1914, H.L. Mencken argued that successful journalism must inflame the sensibilities of the everyman.

Haiti's "Devil"
"Faceless bodies began to appear in the streets.... By the middle of 1994 thousands of Haitians had been slaughtered." In 2001 David Grann profiled "Toto" Constant, the CIA-affiliated leader of a paramilitary group that terrorized Haiti after the 1991 overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

40 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
Is There a New Germany? (February 1964)
"Until Germans really believe that each man is responsible for his acts and his conscience, and that orders are not their own justification, Germany merely changes its leaders, not its character." In 1964, Martha Gellhorn inveighed against Germany's post-war generation.

65 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
Robert Moses: An Atlantic Portrait (February 1939)
Cleveland Rodgers draws an early sketch of New York's urban czar, "the man who, in less than five years, has remade or refurbished a considerable portion of the metropolis."

20 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
Freud and the Seduction Theory (February 1984)
"Freud's announcement of his new discoveries in the 1896 address on the etiology of hysteria met with no reasoned refutation or scientific discussion, only disgust and disavowal." In 1984 Jeffrey M. Masson unearthed the melodrama behind Freud's renunciation of his controversial seduction theory.

135 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
Proud Music of the Sea Storm (February 1869)
"What thou has heard, O Soul, was not the sound of winds, Nor dream of stormy waves ... [But] Poems, vaguely wafted in night air, uncaught, unwritten, Which, let us go forth in the bold day, and write." For Walt Whitman, the music of a storm evokes a new poetic "rhythmus."

100 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
The Scab (January 1904)
"Capitalist and labor groups are locked together in desperate battle, and neither side is swayed by moral considerations more than skin-deep." In 1904 the novelist Jack London examined how scab labor came to be an integral part of the American economy.

5 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
What Is the Koran? (January 1999)
"If Christ is the Word of God made flesh, the Koran is the Word of God made text, and questioning its sanctity or authority is thus considered an outright attack on Islam." In 1999, Toby Lester explored 20th-century research into Islamic history and the Koran.

50 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
New England and the South (January 1954)
"When other areas, in Latin America and Asia, are industrially developed, the South will suffer the same pangs of aging now suffered by New England." In 1954 Senator John F. Kennedy proposed solutions to unfair wage and tax practices driving job migration within the U.S.

Ten Years of NAFTA
"NAFTA is a belated monument to Reaganism." This week marks the tenth anniversary of NAFTA. In 1992 Jonathan Schlefer analyzed the pros and cons of the concept, and argued against its implementation.

A Space in Time
"In the evenings, when my particular piece of Earth has turned away from the Sun, and is exposed instead to the rest of the cosmos, I sit in front of a keyboard, log on, and seek out the windows that look down at the planets and out at the stars." In 2002, Michael Benson described exploring space via the images on his computer screen.

Homeland Insecurity
In September 2002, Charles C. Mann warned that most technological screening devices, such as iris and fingerprint scanners, can be tricked into uselessness by terrorists, and that much simpler and more effective security measures are being given short shrift by the U.S. government.

10 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
Not Fanatics, and Not Friends (December 1993)
"If word went out in the streets of southern Tehran that everyone could choose either a prayer at Khomeini's tomb and imminent paradise or a U.S. immigrant visa and Los Angeles, we would once again see the U.S. embassy besieged." In 1993, Edward G. Shirley examined the U.S.'s relationship with Iran.

Could Mad-Cow Disease Happen Here?
"Given current agricultural practices, avoiding an American outbreak of this disease may be only a matter of chance." In 1998 Ellen Ruppel Shell argued that the U.S. government hadn't done enough to prevent an outbreak of mad-cow disease.

105 YEARS AGO IN THE ATLANTIC
The Wholesome Revival of Byron (December 1898)
"I hardly know where in English literature, outside of Shakespeare, one is to find the great passions of men set forth so directly and powerfully as in Byron, and on this must rest his final claim to serious consideration." In 1898, Paul Elmer More reconsidered Byron.

More Flashbacks from The Atlantic.

Browse back issues and highlights from The Atlantic's history.

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