August 1984
In This Issue
Explore the August 1984 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
The Airplane That Doesn’t Cost Enough
A reliable and relatively cheap fighter is being ignored by the Air Force, because the Air Force didn’t design it.
Boxer With a Future
Loose Talk About Nuclear Power
An Obscure Life
The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka
Magnificence and Misery
The Witches of Eastwick
Pastels: From the 16th to the 20th Century
George Bancroft
Landscapes of the Night
The Only Problem
The Origins of English Words
The Annotated Casey at the Bat
The Atlantic Puzzler
Notes: Comma
Notes: 1884
Alaska: Nigeria of the North
The state’s peculiar socialism for rugged individualists may have to yield to fiscal realities
Washington: A Bipartisan Foreign Policy
An argument that the Constitution invites “struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy”
Brazil: A New Giant in the Arms Industry
Exporting arms has proven the key to trade surpluses and growing political power
Museums, No
Understanding Television
The “most effective purveyor of language, image, and narrative in American culture” is still more reviled and laughed at than seriously examined
Afternoon
The Storm
Fire Blight
A FTER DADDY DIED, MAMA JOINED UP WITH THE FAITH Evangelical Choir of the Daughters of Zion Pentecostal Church. She practiced her hymns around the house the way other ladies hummed “My Blue Heaven.” Elsie Stitt, the first soprano, worked at the Lodge, and she told Mama she could get her a job there too, but first Mama had to be trained. We still had the house, but the orchard was up for sale, and Mama needed a way to earn us money. For weeks Elsie would come home with Mama from their choir practice and give her lessons on massage. This was after I’d been put to bed, but one night I couldn’t sleep and padded into the parlor from my room upstairs. Mama was lying on the braided rug with nothing on but a towel over her privates, and Elsie was rubbing oil into Mama’s legs. I said from the doorway, “If my daddy were here, you wouldn’t do this.”
How the Universe Works
The ultimate goal of physics is a theory that explains all matter and energy. Today physicists may be close to achieving that goal, in large part because of the efforts of Sheldon L. Glashow
The Windowsill Over the Sink
The Loss of Count Basie
Summer Ices
