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77 North Washington Street by Michael Kelly

In This Issue

Letters to the Editor

INNOCENT BYSTANDER: Customized Quarantine
by Cullen Murphy



Paris: A French Fourth by Charles Trueheart
Bloomington, Indiana: Fouled Out by Eyal Press
Peshawar: The Counterterrorist Myth by Reuel Marc Gerecht
Singapore: Love, Singaporean Style by Joshua Kurlantzick
Tybee Island, Georgia: The Colonel and the Bomb by Bill Donahue



Mark Twain Returns
Who was that exotic stranger in the benighted town of Deer Lick, Missouri? And by what means had he arrived? The answers are in "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage," a story written for The Atlantic by Mark Twain 125 years ago. [At the request of the Twain archive at the Buffalo Library, this article is unavailable on the Web.]

In his foreword ("Mark Twain's 'Skeleton Novelette'") and afterword ("Mark Twain's Reconstruction"), Roy Blount Jr. describes the peculiar genesis of the story—and explains how it reflects an important turning point in Twain's career.

Mark Twain in The Atlantic Monthly: Mark Twain on slavery, ethics, travel, and telephones. A Web-only sampling of his writing in The Atlantic Monthly.

Graham Greene's Vatican Dossier
Newly revealed documents portray the Pope's censors as literary critics
by Peter Godman

The Mad Poets Society
Plath, Lowell, and Sexton, and the mental institution they shared
by Alex Beam

A Reader's Manifesto
An impassioned attack on the pretentiousness of American literary prose
by B. R. Myers

Biker A poem by Ted Kooser [with audio]
Lily and Bronze A poem by Mark Doty [with audio]
World A poem by Talvikki Ansel [with audio]
Show-and-Tell A short story by George Singleton

Literary Lives A drawing by Edward Sorel
[At the artist's request, this drawing is unavailable on the Web.]




TRAVEL: Real Places by Emily Hiestand
GARDENS: Liquid Refreshment by Stephen Budiansky
SPORT: Field of Tin by William Zinsser
FOOD: Sausages, Souse, and Shandybookers by Corby Kummer



Two—Make That Three—Cheers for the Chain Bookstores
by Brooke Allen

A Harrowing Mirror of Loneliness
The Collected Stories of Richard Yates, reviewed by Stephen Amidon

The Tabloid Habit
I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby! by Bill Sloan, reviewed by Caitlin Flanagan

NEW & NOTEWORTHY
David Uhlin on Veeck—As in Wreck by Bill Veeck
Stewart O'Nan on The Hunters by Claire Messud
Brooke Allen on Noblesse Oblige edited by Nancy Mitford
Elizabeth Judd on Simone Weil by Francine du Plessix Gray
Allen Buster on The Geometry of Love by Margaret Visser
Juliet Barker on The Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardam
David Uhlin on Babe in Paradise by Marisa Silver
Barbara Wallraff on A Theory of Relativity by Jacqueline Mitchard
Christina Schwarz on The Dog Who Spoke With Gods by Diane Jessup
Christina Schwarz on The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy
Christopher Hitchens on Fairness by Ferdinand Mount

Wharton's Sharp Eye
Edith Wharton: Collected Stories, reviewed by Margaret Drabble

MUSIC: In Glass's House by David Schiff

The Puzzler by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

Word Fugitives by Barbara Wallraff