Smithsonian Magazine: October 2012
Features
Master of Monticello
A new portrait of Thomas Jefferson—decided from evidence recently unearthed or long suppressed—reveals the secrets of the world he created on his Virginia mountaintop
By Henry Wiencek
The Adventures of the Real Tom Sawyer
In which tall-tale-telling newspaperman Mark Twain prowls the rough-andtumble streets of 1860s San Francisco with a hard-drinking, larger-than-life fireman, Tom Sawyer. And whereby Sawyer’s exploits have languished, untold and unremarked—until now
By Robert Graysmith
The Great New England Vampire Panic
Two hundred years after the Salem witch trials, farm communities became convinced that their dearly departed relatives were returning from the grave to feed on the living.
By Abigail Tucker
The Photographs That Prevented World War III
On the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, recently unearthed aerial reconnaissance photographs offer a new view of the world’s most dangerous nuclear confrontation
By Michael Dobbs
National Treasure: The Ellsberg Files
A 1971 burglary unleashed a chain of events that altered American history
By Owen Edwards
The Code Thief
Douglas Groat circled the world as one of the CIA’s top burglars. He thought he understood the risks of his job—until he took on his own employer
By David Wise
Departments
From the Castle
From the Castle
From Tibet to the Arabian Peninsula, the gallery has been exploring the beauty of the world for a quarter of a decade
By G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
World Chompion
T. rex had the strongest bite of any land animal— even harder than we thought
By Brian Switek
Strong, Silent Type
A leading manufacturer of electric trucks aims to recharge America’s streets.
By Jerry Adler
Running Man
In a previously unpublished transcript of a private party, JFK talks politics and power
By Ted Widmer
Culture
How Music Works
The Talking Head explains how our brains process music—and why he sometimes prefers hearing nothing
By David Byrne
Science
Secrets of the Swift
Nesting behind waterfalls and in caves, the rarely seen black swift is only beginning to shed its mystery
By Michelle Nijhuis
Books
Books
A new book about infectious diseases ponders the NBO—the Next Big One. Plus: marginal men, iconic Indians and the Dust Bowl
By Chloë Schama
Around the Mall
Design Rebel
Evan Roth's award-winning work puts the action in interaction
By Leah Binkovitz
Fast Forward
Fast Forward
Set to be christened in 2013, this new naval warship will amaze, leaving almost no wake in the open seas
By Mark Strauss
