April 1998

In This Issue
Edward O. Wilson, “The Biological Basis of Morality”; Wendy Kaminer, “The Trouble With Single-Sex Schools”; David Owen, “Children and Money”; Chitra B. Divakaruni, “Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter”; and much more.
Articles
The Trouble With Single-Sex Schools
All-female schools are "models of equivocation," the author, a Smith graduate, writes. They "reinforce regressive notions of sex difference" while at the same time helping women into the professions
The Horror
Should the Japanese atrocities in Nanking be equated with the Nazi Holocaust?
Children and Money
Turning childish greed into grown-up capitalism
The Biological Basis of Morality
Do we invent our moral absolutes in order to make society workable? Or are these enduring principles expressed to us by some transcendent or Godlike authority? Efforts to resolve this conundrum have perplexed, sometimes inflamed, our best minds for centuries, but the natural sciences are telling us more and more about the choices we make and our reasons for making them
Introduction to 'The New Yorker's Mr. Shawn'
The mystery of William Shawn's origins -- a source of considerable curiosity in the literary world throughout Shawn's long career -- is finally solved by one of his writers
Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter
When Mrs. Dutta decided to give up her home of forty-five years to go to America, her relatives were less surprised than she had expected. Everyone knows, they said, that a wife's place is with her husband, and a widow's is with her son
An Eye for Anomaly
A photographer finds her subjects among things that are "not quite right"
Three New Revelations About LBJ
The author of an about-to-be-published biography of Lyndon Johnson shares some of what he has learned
Dazzling White Nights
The prices are low and the standards high at St. Petersburg's summer music festival
America Right and Left
Political intellectuals of both parties call for something more bracing than Bill Clinton's flabby syncretism—and think we want it too.
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Letters
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