Smithsonian Magazine: December 2010
Features
Mission Orangutan
After devoting her life to saving the primates in the wilds of Borneo, the anthropologist Birute Mary Galdikas faces her biggest challenge yet
By Bill Brubaker
Searching for Buddha
In the remote Afghanistan valley where in 2001 the Taliban destroyed two colossal 1,500-year-old statues, archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi is determined to find a reclining third Buddha
By Joshua Hammer
Dinosaurs' Living Descendants
China's spectacular feathered fossils have finally answered the century-old questions about the ancestors of today's birds
By Richard Stone
The Gift
One Christmastime in the Great Depression, an anonymous Ohio businessman offered to send small sums to needy families. Seventy-five years later, the author discovered just how much his grandfather's generosity had meant
By Ted Gup
Marvel Arch
A photographer couldn't resist the charms of the astonishing new bridge that bypasses the Hoover Dam
By T.A. Frail
Under the Spell of San Miguel de Allende
In 1937, a young American named Stirling Dickinson first visited a Mexican town that he would almost single-handedly transform into an international art center
By Jonathan Kandell
Picturing Tomorrow
There's trouble ahead in Alexis Rockman's strangely compelling paintings
By Cathleen McGuigan
Departments
Indelible Images
All Shook Up
Forty years ago, an Oval Office photograph captured the bizarre encounter between the king of rock and roll and the president
By Peter Carlson
Wild Things
Wild Things: Life as We Know It
Drought crises, Florida panthers, humpback whales and more...
By T. A. Frail, Jesse Rhodes, Jessica Righthand, Brandon Springer and Sarah Zielinski
Digs
Fate of the Cave Bear
The lumbering beasts coexisted with the first humans for tens of thousands of years and then died off. Why?
By Andrew Curry
Around the Mall
How to Crochet a Coral Reef
A ball of yarn could go a long way toward saving endangered sea life
By Jess Righthand
The Object at Hand
Deck the Halls
All the trimmings—in miniature—wreathe a Victorian-style dollhouse in Christmas cheer
By Owen Edwards
Presence of Mind
Rehabilitating Cleopatra
Egypt's ruler was more than the sum of the seductions that loom so large in history—and in Hollywood
By Stacy Schiff
The Last Page
Daughter Knows Best
Kids have discovered a diabolical new use for science rebutting their parents
By Joe Queenan
