CURRENT ISSUE

December 2008

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Features

Sufi pilgrim dancing

Faith and Ecstasy

Pakistan's violent extremists may get most of the attention, but the nation's peaceful, life-affirming Sufis have numbers-and history-on their side

John White illustration of an Atlantic loggerhead

Brave New World

The watercolors that John White produced in 1585 gave England its first startling glimpse of America

Hagia Sophia

Fading Glory

In Istanbul, secularists and fundamentalists clash over restoring the nearly 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia

Audry Hepburn

Karsh Reality

The portraitist Yousuf Karsh took a singular approach to fame and the famous. As the centennial of his birth approaches, how do his photographs hold up?

Displaced Pygmies

The Pygmies' Plight

A correspondent who chronicled their lives in central African rain forests returns a decade later and is shocked by what he finds

U.S. Capitol

Capitol Fellow

In 1792, a self-taught architect from Tortola designed America's defining monument, where a new visitor center opens this month

Departments

Indelible Images

Moment of Reckoning

One of the three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964 was James Chaney. His younger brother, Ben, would never be the same

My Kind of Town

Splendor in the Bluegrass

Far from her Northern roots, the best-selling novelist discovers a new sense of home amid rolling hills and Thoroughbred farms

Phenomena

What's Killing the Aspen?

The signature tree of the Rockies is in trouble

From the Editor

Big Deals

Revelry and Architecture

Letters to the Editor

Letters

Readers Respond to the November Issue

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Chewing dinosaurs, climate change, self-sacrificing ants and black bears

This Month in History

December Anniversaries

Momentous or Merely Memorable

From the Castle

Channel Too

Around the Mall

The Past is Prologue

How a Film Helped Preserve a Native Culture

Around the Mall

Holiday Spirit

The Object at Hand

Beyond Words

Lincoln's timeless tribute endures as literature

Around the Mall

Stardust Memories

What's Up

What's Up

Presence of Mind

Woman, Interrupted

After 44 years, Mary Pinchot Meyer's death remains a mystery. But it's her life that holds more interest now

The Last Page

Amazon Warriors

Thanks to the Internet, everyone's a book critic