Smithsonian Magazine: December 2008
Features
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
By Nicholas Schmidle
Brave New World
The watercolors that John White produced in 1585 gave England its first startling glimpse of America
By Abigail Tucker
Fading Glory
In Istanbul, secularists and fundamentalists clash over restoring the nearly 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia
By Fergus M. Bordewich
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?
By Matthew Gurewitsch
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
By Paul Raffaele
Capitol Fellow
In 1792, a self-taught architect from Tortola designed America's defining monument, where a new visitor center opens this month
By Fergus M. Bordewich
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
By Hank Klibanoff
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
By Kim Edwards
Phenomena
What's Killing the Aspen?
The signature tree of the Rockies is in trouble
By Michelle Nijhuis
Wild Things
Wild Things:
Life as We Know It
Chewing dinosaurs, climate change, self-sacrificing ants and black bears
By Amanda Bensen, T.A. Frail, Megan Gambino, Anika Gupta and Sarah Zielinski
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
By Lance Morrow
