March 2003
In This Issue
James Fallows, “Post-President for Life”; P. J. O'Rourke, “The Bill Show”; David Hajdu, “Wynton's Blues”; David Brooks, “Kicking the Secularist Habit”; Gertrude Himmelfarb, “The Victorian Achievement”; Christopher Hitchens, “The Perils of Partition”; Jonathan Rauch, “Caring for Your Introvert”; fiction by Kimberly Elkins; and much more.
Articles
Flash Flood
An E-mail Exchange With Tony Blair About Bill Clinton
Kicking the Secularist Habit
A six-step program
Storming the Home Front
Directors of today's war movies, with their insistence on graphic bloodletting and happy endings, should look at the original World War II movies, which were subtly subversive
What Is Visible
A Short Story
Post-President For Life
The post-presidency of Bill Clinton will, like the Clinton Administration, be noisy and attention-getting. Will it accomplish anything—or turn out to be limbo in overdrive? Clinton is the youngest ex-President since Teddy Roosevelt—and he is still the most skillful politician in the Democratic Party. What he does with the rest of his life will set a precedent for the growing number of vigorous and long-lived ex-Presidents to come
Wynton's Blues
For two decades Wynton Marsalis ruled the jazz universe, enjoying virtually unqualified admiration as a musician and unsurpassed influence as the music's leading promoter and definer. But after a series of sour notes—he parted from his record label, has been caught up in controversy at Jazz at Lincoln Center; and has been drawing increasing fire from critics and fellow musicians alike for his narrow neotraditionalism—perhaps the biggest name in jazz faces an uncertain future. Just like jazz itself
The Victorian Achievement
A usually sophisticated writer indulges in simple-minded animus against Victorian England—which deserves better
The Perils of Partition
Our author examines the political—and literary—legacy of Britain's policy of "divide and quit"
What Now?
Developments, encouraging and otherwise
Letters to the editor
Need to Know
Updating an elementary lexicon
New & Noteworthy
What to read this month
The Bill Show
There are selves too big for one person to contain. You cannot call them selfish. There is nothing -ish about such selves. They are the self, as it were, itself
Other Reviews
Caring for Your Introvert
The habits and needs of a little-understood group
Back to Bork?
A new strategy of demanding nominees' views on judicial issues ensures that the next Supreme Court nomination battle will be ugly.
