February 1999

Articles

• Tibet Through Chinese Eyes

  Many Chinese working in Tibet regard themselves as idealistic missionaries of progress, rejecting the Western idea of them as agents of cultural imperialism. In truth, they are inescapably both

  Peter Hessler

• A New Germ Theory

  The dictates of evolution virtually demand that the causes of some of humanity's chronic and most baffling "noninfectious" illnesses will turn out to be pathogens -- that is the radical view of a prominent evolutionary biologist

  Judith Hooper

• Who Owns Intelligence?

  Three unresolved issues will dominate the discussion of intelligence: whether intelligence is one thing or many things; whether intelligence is inherited; and whether any of its elements can accurately be measured. The debate, a prominent psychologist argues, is really over proprietary rights to a fundamental concept of our age

  Howard Gardner

• The Penumbra of Pedigree

  A revived reference book offers a fanfare for the common aristo

  Geoffrey Wheatcroft

• The Man With the Lapdog

  He heard his wife lifting herself from the bath water, and he knew that when she came out she'd get into bed beside him, damp in a way he'd once found so erotic that it nearly choked him

  Beth Lordan

• Exiled Beyond Kilometer 101

  Life in the Russian countryside makes life in Moscow -- even during times of economic crisis -- look pretty good.

  Jeffrey Tayler

• A Mecca for Modernists

  The Netherlands is studded with twentieth-century architectural marvels

  Francine Russo

• Black and White Intertwined

  A groundbreaking new history documents the rich collaboration between black and white players in the early decades of jazz

  William H. Youngren

• This Hawaii Is Not for Tourists

  Poverty, squalor, and violence mark the "anything but paradise" created by Lois-Ann Yamanaka, an award-winning writer whose blistering work is politically controversial

  Jamie James

• America's Heart

  Timothy J. Gilfoyle

• Satan's Biographers

  Lawrence L. Langer

• 77 North Washington Street

• Letters

• The February Almanac

• Word Improvisation

  Investigations of slang by the editor of the Random House Dictionary of American Slang.

  J. E. Lighter

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