CURRENT ISSUE

February 2009

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine image Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine mobile image

Features

Lincoln Memorial

Lincoln's Contested Legacy

Great Emancipator or unreconstructed racist? Defender of civil liberties or subverter of the Constitution? Each generation evokes a different Lincoln. But who was he?

Charles Darwin

What Darwin Didn't Know

Today's scientists marvel that the 19th-century naturalist's grand vision of evolution is still the key to life

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin

Twin Peaks

Their shared birth date is an intriguing coincidence, but what truly unites Darwin and Lincoln is how they shaped the modern world

Blue devils at Carnival

Up Close at Carnival

What's really behind the raucous pre-lenten rite? An intrepid scholar hits the streets of Trinidad to find out

Bar pilots risk their life to guide ships

Running the Bar

Braving storms with 20-foot seas, an elite group of ship pilots steers through one of the world's most treacherous waterways—the mouth of the Columbia River

Mob attacks bus

The Freedom Riders

Fighting racial segregation at bus depots in the south nearly half a century ago, they were insulted, beaten and arrested. A new book catches up with them down the road

Gray Wolf in Yellowstone

Howling Success

Wolves are flourishing again in the northern Rockies. Yet even as they're helping restore the balance of nature, they're also killing livestock—and reigniting a fierce controversy

Departments

Indelible Images

Special Delivery

It took three generations to produce Wayne F. Miller's photograph of his newborn son

Digs

Bodies of Evidence

Excavations at a cemetery in Thailand reveal a 4,000-year-old indigenous culture

My Kind of Town

Washed Ashore

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author delights in the island town's off-season

From the Editor

Evolution and Equality

What did Darwin, Lincoln and the Freedom Riders have in common?

Letters to the Editor

Letters

Readers Respond to the December Issue

This Month in History

February Anniversaries

Momentous or Merely Memorable

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Honeyeater birds, sea slugs, tree frogs, and more

From the Castle

Thinking Ahead

In 1925, 10-year-old Orrin Nash gave all he could to help the Smithsonian

Around the Mall

Joint Effort

Evidence surfaces of an unlikely partnership in North America

Around the Mall

A Child Shall Lead Them

What's Up

What's Up

The Last Page

Requiem for the Redhead

The next great extinction—Carrot Tops