Magazine

It’s pretty remarkable if a new book about American foreign policy that barely mentions terrorism, much less Osama bin Laden, can stand up after September 11. This one does, brilliantly. Walter Russell Mead, a prolific and engaging writer, has produced a history of American foreign policy turning upon American ideas and practices since the days […]

Over the past several months, Nancy Reagan has quietly been alerting friends and family that the health of her husband Ronald Reagan, the nation’s 40th president, is failing rapidly due to Alzheimer’s. Reagan will turn 92 on Feb. 6, and the signs seem to suggest that he won’t be with us for very much longer. […]

A test of their good faith now confronts Republican congressional leaders. Will they repeal, as they promised Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) they would, the three special-interest provisions that mysteriously crept into the homeland security bill at the last minute? One of the provisions exempts Eli Lilly from lawsuits arising from a […]

Amanda Smith was enjoying a weekend of fishing and camping with her extended family along the banks of the Pecos River in New Mexico on Aug. 19, 2000. Early that morning, a few family members had set out to catch some fish, taking their lanterns with them to the river. But instead of waking to […]

Of course, with the White House provoking waves of anxiety abroad, it does make sense to be especially concerned right now about how the world perceives us. And Jedediah Purdy is among the worried. In Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World, he sets out to trace our influence into every nook […]

For the past two years, the U.S. Department of State has been warning tourists to avoid traveling to the Arab nation of Yemen. Sixteen tourists, including two Americans, were kidnapped there in 1998 by a terrorist group, and four were ultimately killed. After one of the kidnappers was executed, the terrorist group promised further attacks […]

For Mann, it was axiomatic that in order for public schools to serve their function of preparing productive workers, enlightened citizens, and loyal Americans, those schools had to be common schools in which “the children of all classes, rich and poor, should partake as equally as possible in the privileges” of the enterprise. In terms […]

There is no doubt in my mind that Al Gore won this election and that everyone in the media who has been part of the rush to make Gore concede will be shamed by history. Charlie Peters is the editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly.

We need to understand why impact litigation has come to play so central a role in our public life, and also why Americans of all ideological stripes should be wary of it. Reformers, I believe, expect too much from impact litigation, and even its critics often aim at the wrong target. Like war, impact litigation […]

Six years later, when Serbian forces cut loose in Kosovo, Clinton threw Powell’s doctrine out the window. Obviously unclear about his goals, the president alienated Republican and Democratic traditionalists alike. The United States certainly didn’t use decisive force, nor did we pursue a clear objective: Were we trying to force Milosevic from power, or just […]