CURRENT ISSUE
July/August 2012
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Features
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Britannia Rules the Games
Although it’s not well known, the modern Olympics owe their model and their success to England. As the Games return to London for the third time, let’s raise a toast to Dr. Penny Brookes, Lord Desborough and the glorious, and sometimes slapstick, history of the British Games
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Summer Olympics Look
Poet J. Allyn Rosser's new piece on watching the Olympic Games
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Heart and Solo
She holds the fate of the U.S. women’s soccer team in her hands, but as her controversial new memoir will show, Hope Solo has always defended her turf
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The Rings Cycle
A whimsical new opera celebrates the life and times of Albert White, Britain’s pioneering bicycle champ and the working-class hero of a hard-luck factory town that sure could use one
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The Science of Doping
Behind the scenes at the Games is a fierce competition between those top athletes who secretly use illicit substances to gain an edge and the scientists racing to catch them. This summer, the stakes are higher than ever
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The Future of Cheating
As technology advances, so will access to ingenious—and troubling—new techniques
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The All-American
100 years ago, Jim Thorpe became the greatest American Olympian of all time. So why has he still not been given his due?
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Let the Good Thames Roll
Float down England’s longest river, from its origin in the Cotswolds to its ramble through London, a journey across centuries of “liquid history” that leads right up to the razzle-dazzle of this summer’s Olympic Games
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Scull and Bones
England's Olympic rowers trace their achievements on the Thames back 300 years
Departments
The Latest and The Greatest
Objects from Muhammad Ali's headgear to Nat Turner's Bible sit in a holding facility in Maryland, ready to be put on display
The Mind
The famed author, livestock-management expert and advocate for people with autism argues for a smarter approach to thinking about thinking
Order in the Cortex
Scientists have discovered that the brain is even more beautifully organized than they had imagined
Speaking Truth to Power
Barbara Kruger has been refashioning our idioms into sharp-edged cultural critiques for three decades—and now she has a very special word for Washington, D.C.
We're Number 2!
The U.S. vice presidency has been filled by a rogues gallery of mediocrities, criminals and even corpses. They all have a home in Indiana, at Dan Quayle’s vice-presidential museum
Going for the Gold
Lured by the soaring price of the precious metal, prospectors are heading for the California hills like it's 1849 all over again