May 2000
In This Issue
Christina Hoff Sommers, “The War Against Boys”; Douglas L. Wilson, “Keeping Lincoln's Secrets”; Alexandra Robbins, “George W., Knight of Eulogia”; Sheldon M. Stern, “What JFK Really Said”; and much more.
Articles
The War Against Boys
This we think we know: American schools favor boys and grind down girls. The truth is the very opposite. By virtually every measure, girls are thriving in school; it is boys who are the second sex
George W., Knight of Eulogia
A rare look inside Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society and sometime haunt of the presumptive Republican nominee for President
The Unlikely Father of Miami Crime Fiction
Although his detectives do precious little detecting, Charles Willeford sparked the modern South Florida mystery craze
Out of the Jungle
Colombia's capital, Bogotá, long seemed exempt from the lawlessness and violence of that country's chronic civil war. Not anymore.
What JFK Really Said
The author checked the Cuban-missile-crisis transcript in The Kennedy Tapes against the recorded words. He discovered "errors that undermine its reliability for historians, teachers, and general readers
Keeping Lincoln's Secrets
William H. Herndon, Abraham Lincoln's law partner and biographer, made a record of "secret and privatethings" about Lincoln in two memorandum books that long ago disappeared. Now diary entries have materialized, written by a woman who saw the memorandum books in 1866, and who recorded her shocked reactions to accounts of "profligacy" and "debauchery." A distinguished Lincoln scholar describes the discovery, and considers anew the collision of privacy and history
Does Civilization Cause Asthma?
Asthma is growing at an alarming and puzzling rate in industrialized countries, and the answers to the mystery of its origins may lie in our very attempts to prevent childhood disease
Girl, Seeming to Disappear
Francesca Woodman's work presents femaleness without satire or an agenda
I'm from Ballymullet
This is my parish, the priest said, and my people must be warned of what dangers from beyond the borders of Ireland now travel in their midst
The Transmission of Hope
A portrait of a grandfather and his generation-connecting stories
A Link to the Living
In the silence of an anatomy lab more than the mysteries of the body is revealed
Sky Scraper
Faint of Heart in the Heart of Darkness
A worrywart ventures forth on a deluxe safari -- very, very reluctantly
Someone There Is Who Loves a Wall
Tighter, neater, faster -- Steven Allen may be the best wall builder in the world
Brief Reviews
77 North Washington Street
The Almanac
The Manure Menace
Word Watch
