December 1993
In This Issue
Explore the December 1993 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
The True Cost of Coal
Coal accounts for more than half of America's electricity because it is so cheap—and it remains cheap because no one pays the very large hidden costs of its mining and burning
Not Fanatics and Not Friends
The leaders of post-revolutionary Iran may claim to be keeping the faith—but they know how badly they need the West. What should we do when they say it's time to let bygones be bygones?
In Search of Monster
In a chilling autobiography a former gang member portrays himself as the inevitable product of a hellish environment. The truth is more interesting.
How the World Works
Americans persist in thinking that Adam Smith's rules for free trade are the only legitimate ones. But today's fastest-growing economies are using a very different set of rules. Once, we knew them—knew them so well that we played by them, and won. Now we seem to have forgotten
Global Aphasia
A poem
The Geography of Endangermen
The Turn
At the very heart of winged flight lies the banked turn, a procedure that by now seems so routine and familiar that airline passengers appreciate neither its elegance and mystery nor its dangerously delusive character. The author, a pilot, takes us up into the subject
The Bitter End: Acquiring a Taste for Amari, the Italian Coda to a Meal
America in the 1790s: In a Book Twenty-Five Years in the Making, Two Historians Examine the High Politics and Great Person Ages of Our Nation's First Decade
The Robber Bride
Oak Island Gold
Judith Leyster
Bomber's Law
Dreams of Exile
Camille Pissarro
The Phantom Empire
Journey
The Puzzler
Word Watch
A selection of terms that have newly been coined, that have recently acquired new currency, or that have taken on new meanings, compiled by the executive editor of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition.
The December Almanac
Survivors: Still in Evidence, but a Shadow of Their Former Selves
745 Boylston Street
Contributors
Jazz in the Box
Definitive Funk
Mesmerizing Gloom
Leading Women: On the Screen and Behind the Camera
Serendipitous From the Studios
British Invasion
A Coming Out for Verdi's Orphans
Yuletide Alternative
Cleveland Celebrates Its Diamond Jubilee
So the Music Endures
Beyond Santa Fe
An Apache-owned ski resort and other surprises in a part of New Mexico few visitors ever see
Heart
Every Good Boy Deserves Favor
