October 2008
October 2008 Cover

Features

The Wars of John McCain

Is there any war McCain thinks can’t be won?

How the West Was Wired

Two idealistic Taiwanese businessmen happened into the most rural part of China and thought: Let’s bring it from the 15th century to the 21st. [Web-only: Slideshow: China's Wild West narrated by James Fallows]

HUMOR

Innocence and Experience

Casanova’s first orgasm, Hitler’s famous mustache, Bob Hope’s last jokes: for every thing, there is a season. Herewith a compilation of great moments in precocity, endurance, and procrastination, organized instructively by age

Distant Replay

How the greatest game in football history looks 50 years later, through the eyes of a modern NFL head coach

Web-only

INTERVIEWS:

Football's Founding Fathers

Mark Bowden discusses the legendary Giants-Colts game of 1958 and reflects on how the sport and its players have changed in the past half century.

Is Pornography Adultery?

It may be closer than you think.

Web-only

INTERVIEWS:

Virtual Adultery

Ross Douthat discusses pornography, prostitution, the pixel-versus-flesh binary, and the strange moral dynamics of a national addiction.

The Atlantic's 2008 Presidential Election Campaign Supplement

An Atlantic chronicle of the campaign so far, with commentary by Joshua Green, Marc Ambinder, Ross Douthat, Matthew Yglesias, and others.

Web-only

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Elections Past

Writings from 1860 to the present on campaigns, candidates, and presidential elections, with contributions by James Russell Lowell, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., P.J. O'Rourke, and others.

POETRY

Royal Harp

POETRY

Searching

The Agenda

COMMENT

The Petraeus Doctrine

Iraq-style counterinsurgency is fast becoming the U.S. Army’s organizing principle. Is our military preparing to fight the next war, or the last one?

Calendar

What to watch for in the weeks ahead

Primary Sources

Why we love celebrities; sleepless soldiers; Pakistan's policing problems

THE NATION IN NUMBERS

Blowback

Is wind the new ethanol?

REPORT

Planting the Rightroots

Can Republicans find a way to compete on the Web?

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

All Counterinsurgency Is Local

Prosecuting the war in Afghanistan from provincial capitals has been disastrous; we need to turn our military strategy inside out.

The Critics

Intolerant Chic

Editor’s Choice: The new “white people” are bigoted, but not the way you think—or they’ll admit.

The Man Who Remade the Met

Unlike most modern museum directors, Philippe de Montebello trusted the public to embrace his high standards—and it did.

Nasty, Brutish, and Short

The narrator of Roth’s Indignation may die off early and horribly—but it’s the reader of this adolescent work who ought to feel the most outraged.

Cover to Cover

A guide to additional releases

TRAVELS

Land of Green Gables

[Web-only: Slideshow: Anne's Land narrated by Wayne Curtis]

FOOD

Half a Loaf

When bakers break up, who gets custody of the recipes?

Web-only

THE PUZZLER:

Tools of the Trade

Word Fugitives

 

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