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January/February 2019

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Features

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America at War

The nation's epic, expanding fight against terrorism overseas

Manuel Jimenez

A Warrior Comes Home

Corporal Jimenez was on patrol in southern Afghanistan when the mine exploded

Casteel's dog tags

The Priest of Abu Ghraib

Inside Iraq's most notorious prison, an Army interrogator came fact to face with a shocking truth about the war—and himself

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This Map Shows Where in the World the U.S. Military Is Combatting Terrorism

The infographic reveals for the first time that the U.S. is now operating in 40 percent of the world's nations

Xiao Meng Sun

Fighting to Be American

For centuries immigrants who served in the military could become American citizens. But are the women and men pictured here among the last?

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The Legacy of Black Hawk Down

25 years after the disastrous battle chronicled in the best-selling book, the author argues that we've learned the wrong lessons about fighting terrorism overseas

Army Reserve members raise hands

Military Intelligence

In a new Smithsonian poll, troops and veterans take aim at conventional wisdom

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War Dog

I brought a seasoned veteran of combat in Afghanistan into my home—and then things got wild

Operating Base Tillman

What We Leave Behind

The once-fortified outposts that protected U.S. troops are relics of our ambitions in Iraq and Afghanistan

Aaron Wixson

Name Rank and Gender

The service of transgender troops has become the military's most controversial issue

Dog tags

War and Remembrance

Americans have erected countless monuments to wars gone by. But how do we pay tribute to the fallen in a conflict that might never end?

Departments

Discussion

Readers respond to our November and December 2018 issues

Prologue

The Imp of the Perverse

Two centuries after his birth, Edgar Allan Poe has become our era's premier storyteller

Michael Capuzzo
Prologue

The New Philadelphia Story

Twenty-five years after the breakthrough movie about the AIDS crisis, the city faces another epidemic

Prologue

The Last First on Earth?

The “Pole of Inaccessibility” has eluded adventurers for more than a century

Prologue

The Color of History

An artists shows us that the past was not black-and-white

Dan Jones
Prologue

Let It Snow

This New Year a blizzard of creative works lose their copyrights—including a beloved Robert Frost poem

Glenn Fleishman
Prologue

Great Ball of Fire

Decades after a flaming meteorite plunged to Earth, scientists still mine its fragments for clues to the cosmos

Prologue

The Rest of the USA

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr explores America far beyond the borders of the lower 48

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