June 2001
In This Issue
James Fallows, “Freedom of the Skies”; Ellen Ruppel Shell, “New World Syndrome”; David Grann, “Giving 'The Devil' His Due”; Scott Stossel, “As American as Women's Soccer?”; Christopher Hitchens on Anthony Powell; and much more.
Articles
Façade
Maginot Mailbox
Bat-hoisting vandals, beware
Freedom of the Skies
Everyone knows about the horrors of modern air travel. What almost no one knows is how inventors, entrepreneurs, and government visionaries have teamed up to create new kinds of small planes that can take off from and land almost anywhere. "Escape From Airline Hell" the scenario might be called, and it's coming soon to an airport near you.
Giving "The Devil" His Due
For several years in the early 1990s U.S. intelligence maintained close ties with a Hatian named Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, the founder of a savage paramilitary group that has been held responsible for a prolonged wave of killings and other atrocities. Toto Constant today walks the streets of Queens, a free man. How did he come to find refuge in the United States? Who has been holding up his deportation?
An Omnivorous Curiosity
Anthony Powell, the author of A Dance to the Music of Time, also wrote one of the great literary memoirs of the twentieth century
Roman Africa
The economic and political fault lines that separated Carthage and Numidia are the ones that separate Tunisia and Algeria—and the Romans drew them
77 North Washington Street
Architecture for Art's Sake
Exciting new buildings can burnish art museums' reputations, and museums are commissioning lots of them.
Forget the Artificial Sniffer
The United States has pursued expensive high-tech solutions to the problem of land-mine clearance—but simpler methods may be in order.
Second Opinions
History winds up in the waiting room
New and Noteworthy
Elegant novels of ideas, sparkling summer reading, travels with Dame Agatha
The Real War
Stephen Ambrose's GIs are plaster saints engaged in a sanctified crusade
The Mistress of Gloom
Anita Brookner "has always been ready to strip her heroines of the illusion that they can actually get what they want"
New World Syndrome
Spam and turkey tails have turned Micronesians into Macronesians. A case study of how fatty Western plenty is taking a disastrous toll on people in developing countries
As American as Women’s Soccer?
Everything about the new professional women's soccer league is unorthodox—which is why it may succeed
The Caviar Thugs
Poverty, corruption, and crime are threatening to destroy a Russian institution
Rush to Judgment
There may be more—and less—behind the high-profile news account of a boy's setting himself on fire
Assisted Hiking
Purists regard using a helicopter to reach luscious mountain locales as somehow unfair. Let them.
Letters to the Editors
