CURRENT ISSUE
October 2012
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Features
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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
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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
“Midafternoon Midsummer”
A new poem by Coleman Barks
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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.
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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
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National Treasure: The Ellsberg Files
A 1971 burglary unleashed a chain of events that altered American history
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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
“Black Hands”
A new poem by Amit Majmudar
Departments
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
Game of Thrones
The view from the world’s seats of power
How Music Works
The Talking Head explains how our brains process music—and why he sometimes prefers hearing nothing
Secrets of the Swift
Nesting behind waterfalls and in caves, the rarely seen black swift is only beginning to shed its mystery
Books
A new book about infectious diseases ponders the NBO—the Next Big One. Plus: marginal men, iconic Indians and the Dust Bowl
Design Rebel
Evan Roth's award-winning work puts the action in interaction
Fast Forward
Set to be christened in 2013, this new naval warship will amaze, leaving almost no wake in the open seas