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December 2018

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Features

Scott Bolton portrait

Unlocking the Solar System

A visionary NASA mission to Jupiter takes on a giant mystery to understand our own planet’s origins

March for Our Lives student activists

Fighting for Their Lives

After the violence at a Florida high school, brave students showed us how to find meaning in tragedy

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Learning to Speak Latino

An uproariously inventive new one-man show puts the story of a neglected culture center stage

Jean Bennett and Albert Maguire portrait

Seeing the Light

A wife-and-husband research team cracks the code on gene therapy with a new treatment for blindness

Janelle Monae

The Soul of the New Machine

A musical virtuoso leaves her old persona behind and emerges as America’s most revolutionary artist

John Krasinski portrait

Shhhhh Genius at Work

An actor turned director creates a genre-busting horror movie with a terrifying twist—silence

Tracy K. Smith portrait

Poetry to the People

Our most intrepid poet travels cross-country to ignite the American imagination, for better and for verse

Co-founders of the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and members of Líderes Campesinas

The New Women Warriors

How the leaders of a farmworkers’ alliance reached across a cultural divide to spark the new Time’s Up initiative

John Krafcik and Dmitri Dolgov portrait

Takin' It to the Streets

Hop in. Your driverless car is already here, thanks to the visionary engineers behind a bold experiment

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The Costs of the Confederacy

In the last decade alone, American taxpayers have spent at least $40 million on Confederate monuments and groups that distort U.S. history and perpetuate racist ideology

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The Salvation of Atlanta

One of the Civil War's greatest battles was fought again and again on a spectacular canvas nearly 400 feet long. After more than a century of efforts to repaint history, the original truth is finally being unveiled

Departments

Discussion

Readers respond to our November 2018 Issue

Prologue

Flake News

How the holiday letter became the snow season tradition we love to hate

Prologue

The Other O'Keeffe

The painter who toiled in the shadow of her celebrated sister

Prologue

Hitting the Panic Buttons

Long before parents freaked over Fortnite, they flipped out over another newfangled game

Prologue

Pipe Dream

Plans for the first e-cigarette went up in smoke 50 years ago

Prologue

Street Wise

Jazz, race and an unlikely friendship inspire Green Book, a new movie about navigating Jim Crow America

Prologue

Wright and Wrong

A new book advances a controversial theory about the singular contribution that went into the brothers’ first flight

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