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In This Issue

Letters to the Editor

INNOCENT BYSTANDER: Delete, Baby, Delete
by Cullen Murphy



Slow Squeeze by Michael Kelly
The Merits of Meritocracy by David Brooks
The Marrying Kind by Jonathan Rauch
Governing From his Biography by Jack Beatty
The Mother of Reinvention by Walter Kirn
The Case for Vote Control by P. J. O'Rourke
Gag Order by Stephen Glain



Tales of the Tyrant
What does Saddam Hussein see in himself that no one else in the world seems to see? The answer is perhaps best revealed by the intimate details of the Iraqi leader's daily life
by Mark Bowden

It's Not Easy Being Mean: Mark Bowden, the author of The Atlantic's May cover story, talks about the strange life of Saddam Hussein and why his downfall is inevitable. [Web only]

Lawyers and Lizard-Heads
The prison letters of James Earl Ray, the man who once confessed to killing Martin Luther King Jr.
by Douglas Brinkley and Anne Brinkley

The Royal We
The mathematical study of genealogy indicates that everyone in the world is descended from Nefertiti and Confucius, and that everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne
by Steve Olson

The Childhood of Hercules A drawing by Guy Billout

New England Primer A short story by Donald Hall

Literary Lives Norman Mailer
A drawing by Edward Sorel

Who the Meek Are Not A poem by Mary Karr
August Walk A poem by Rosanna Warren [with audio]




TRAVEL: Lost in the Magic Kingdom by Richard Todd
DESIGN: Spring Cars by Thomas Hine
SPORT: Tennis on the Green by Marshall Jon Fisher
MANNERS: Well Met by Mary Killen
PALATE AT LARGE: Colvin Run Tavern by Corby Kummer



Dickens Our Contemporary
On the new biography by Jane Smiley
by David Lodge

The Public and Private Worlds of Charles Dickens: Personal recollections, essays, and reviews by Edmund Wilson, David Lodge, and others, shed light on the life and career of Charles Dickens. [Web only]