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77 North Washington Street by Michael Kelly

In This Issue

Letters to the Editor

INNOCENT BYSTANDER: The Scrapbook
by Cullen Murphy



Order in the Family by Jack Beatty
New York City: A New Mask by David Carr
Washington, D.C.: What Auden Didn't Know by P. J. O'Rourke
Port Elizabeth: South Africans Only by Rob Nixon
Amarillo, Texas: No Room at the Inn by Wayne Curtis
Bantry, Ireland: Reverberations of the Irish Boom by Peter Davison
Cicero, Illinois: What's Past is Present by Alex Kotlowitz



The Crash of EgyptAir 990
The author, given unprecedented access to flight data, reconstructs the final minutes—and rules out all explanations for the crash except deliberate suicide and mass murder by the Egyptian co-pilot
by William Langewiesche

Culture Crash: A Web-only Interview With William Langewiesche
William Langewiesche on the cultural reverberations of a seemingly straightforward airplane crash

Zion's Vital Signs
The immediate consequences of terrorism are always obvious. The experience of Israel points up a less obvious but important fact: terrorism rarely accomplishes its objective—to destroy the fabric of everyday life
by P.J. O'Rourke

Centerpiece: The Curse of the Sevso Silver
A trove of ancient Roman treasure, discovered in the late 1970s under mysterious circumstances, has produced two decades of intrigue and mayhem, and tarnished almost everything it has touched
by Peter Landesman

The Life and Death of The American Spectator
How a fine political magazine became possessed by a self-destructive brand of obsession with Bill Clinton—and destroyed itself
by Byron York

John 6:17 A poem by Stanley Plumly [with audio]

The Warp and the Weft A short story by Edward J. Delaney

The Other World A poem by Robert Wrigley [with audio]




DESIGN: Looking Alive by Thomas Hine
PALATE AT LARGE: Restaurant Vila Lisa by Corby Kummer
MANNERS: Penny-Wise by Mary Killen



A Bit of Bunting
Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, by David Cannadine, reviewed by Benjamin Schwarz

The New Counterculture
Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement, by Mitchell L. Stevens, reviewed by Margaret Talbot

New and Noteworthy
A gritty, dark, and comic novel of the Other America; Naipaul's sunny vision; four tales by a master of American prose

A Head Full of Swirling Dreams
On Robert Louis Stevenson, by Brian Doyle

The Puzzler by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

Word Court by Barbara Wallraff