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October 2011

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Features

Female jaguar walking

The Jaguar Freeway

Conservationists have teamed up with an entrepreneur to connect populations of the big cat from Mexico to Argentina. The bold plan could mean the animal's salvation

Francisco Ramírez Rojas

What Became of the Taíno?

The people who greeted Columbus are long believed to have died out. But a journalist's search for their descendants turns up surprising results

Willem de Kooning

Change Agent

Willem de Kooning redefined modern painting. Then he did it again. And again. A major new retrospective charts his seven-decade career

Madame Curie in Paris

The Passion of Madame Curie

Her profound dedication to science led to a new view of matter itself—and often made it difficult for outsiders to understand her

Restaurant in Nuuk

Cocktails in Greenland

The ice that covers 80 percent of the island is melting. Which makes the place a hot destination for the latest travel trend: climate-change tourism

Giant pumpkin

The Great Pumpkin

No one takes backyard produce more seriously than competitive vegetable growers, who are closing in on the Holy Grail of extreme gardening—the one-ton squash

Departments

From the Editor

Great Cats

And things of beauty

Letters

Letters

Indelible Images

Innocence Abroad

Ruth Orkin and Jinx Allen set out to produce a lighthearted photograph. The controversy would come later

This Month in History

October Anniversaries

Momentous or Merely Memorable

Wild Things: Wildcats, Pigeons and More...

Sea monster mamas, bat signals and opossum versus viper

Phenomena

Lucky Bird

High in the Tibetan plateau, a Buddhist monk is saving one of the world's rarest birds

The Civil War

Scattered Actions: October 1861

While the generals on both sides deliberated, troops in blue and gray fidgeted

From the Castle

Secretary Clough on Jefferson's Bible

The head of the Smithsonian Institution details the efforts American History Museum conservators took to repair the artifact

Around the Mall

Moving Images

"Whether it was TV or magazines, the world got changed one image at a time," says Maurice Berger, curator of a new exhibit at American History

The Object at Hand

Ready for Her Close-Up

Needing a new image, China's last empress dowager summoned a photographer

Around the Mall

Did Zoo Animals Anticipate the August East Coast Earthquake?

Did Zoo Animals Anticipate the August East Coast Earthquake?

Q&A

Q&A: Al Worden

The astronaut talks about his lunar mission, the scandal that followed and the future of space missions

What's Up

What's Up

Presence of Mind

Crossing the Color Line

Fifty years ago, Black Like Me gave readers an unflinching view of the Jim Crow South. How has the book held up?

The Last Page

Identity Crisis

What's my favorite dessert? Only my bank knows for sure