The Least We Can Do
Things haven’t quite worked out as planned for the Baby Boomers: near the end of their watch, America is widely reviled, prosperity seems like a mirage, and things are generally going to hell. What could they do to make amends?
October 2010
In This Issue
What the Baby Boomers owe America, a Doonesbury retrospective, autism's first child, Joe Biden's unexpected career, and more
Features
The Story of a Generation
Forty years after the comic strip began, its commune-dwelling characters—Mike, Zonker, B.D., Joanie, and the rest—have moved on to Boomer adulthood. Their evolution offers a telling chronicle of the past four decades, and what it felt like to live through them.
Autism’s First Child
In 1943, 10-year-old Donald Triplett was diagnosed with a mysterious disorder unlike anything reported before. Now 77, he is showing the world what autism can look like in adulthood—and what challenges lie ahead for the nation’s tens of thousands of autistic children.
The Salesman
Joe Biden really, truly did not want to be vice president. But almost two years in, he’s found his stride. And his unique life trajectory— by turns tragic, comic, and triumphant—may have made him the perfect man for a highly imperfect job.
Get the digital edition of this issue.
Subscribers can access PDF versions of every issue in The Atlantic archive. When you subscribe, you’ll not only enjoy all of The Atlantic’s writing, past and present; you’ll also be supporting a bright future for our journalism.Dispatches
Judgment Day
How Arnold Schwarzenegger might just have saved California
Peter Savodnik Tyranny’s Got Talent
At the next Junior Eurovision contest, Europe’s most repressive regime will go pop.
Don Fogg Design Within Reach
A blind architect relearns his craft.
Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini All War Is Local
For one close-knit National Guard Unit from Arkansas, Afghanistan hits home.
Michael Byers/Levy Creative Fertility Rites
Chimp sperm may unlock one of the riddles of human conception. But first you have to collect it.
French Connections
Gallic ingenuity has turned failing farms and rundown châteaux into hidden tourist gems.
Kimberly Wright/Reuters/Corbis School for Hackers
The do-it-yourself movement revives learning by doing.
Books
Carter Smith/Art + Commerce Prep Is Dead, Long Live Prep
How a subculture gained the world and lost its soul
George Bates Smaller Than Life
Jonathan Franzen’s juvenile prose creates a world in which nothing important can happen.
Nadav Kander/Contour by Getty Images Almost Noble
Tony Blair’s memoir reveals him to be neither a cynic nor an innocent, but a man of some principle.
Columns
Jonathan Hanson The Bright Side
Some small businesses are struggling to get credit, but that’s the least of their problems. Those that survive the recession will be stronger for it and lead the economy’s recovery.
Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection The Jackass Effect
As Johnny Knoxville and friends release their newest film, has everyone finally wearied of their absurdist, violent, and sublime daredevilry? Or is it now in our cultural DNA?
Also in this issue
Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images 
Seth What’s Your Problem?
Resist the soul patch, and other advice
