Fiction Near Fort Blanco by Sarah Gaddis. Mia and her husband, Paul, return to Paul's native Texas when they receive word that his paternal grandmother is dying. Paul's brother, Brian, also comes home, but doesn't arrive until after the grandmother dies. Mia had been looking forward to seeing her sister-in-law, Nancy, but Brian and Nancy...

A Reporter at Large SHOCK by Lawrence Weschler. REPORTER AT LARGE about Poland. Writer visited this past October to observe the country's one-year experience of democracy. It is one year since Lech Walesa installed his longtime adviser Tadeusz Mazowiecki, his personal choice to serve as Prime Minister at the head of a Solidarity-dominated govt. Solidarity has...

Comment by Mark Danner. Comment about the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, and the American response... Though there are trappings of a domestic debate--thus far they have seemed insubstantial when set against the reality of President Bush's military buildup. From the beginning, Bush's policy in the Gulf--recently described by Brent Scowcroft, the...

Profiles GETTING THINGS DONE by A. H. Raskin. A PROFILE of labor leader Dennis Rivera... As a Local 1199 executive vice-president, he contrived to establish a highly improbable but decidedly effective partnership between John Cardinal O'Connor and the Reverend Jesse Jackson--a partnership that helped win a 51% increase in wages and benefits for fifty thousand home...

The Talk of the Town Ecclesiastica by Mary Norris. Talk story about Ronald Rainey and his collection of eclesiastical autographs. Rainey, 39, spent a year in divinity school at Seton Hall University, and though he is no longer practicing, he considers himself "culturally Catholic"; he got his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University; he is now an associate director...

The Talk of the Town Hunter by Bryan Di Salvatore. Talk story about a hunting trip seven men took by canoe, 40-odd miles down the Missouri River in five days, written in transcript form. Except for a few other hunting parties, everything alive was below writer on the food chain. Tells about an encounter with a rattlesnake. Writer tells...

The Talk of the Town Underground by Barry Paris. Talk story about an arts festival held in the Totalitarian Zone, a series of underground vaults under what used to be the Stalin Monument, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The monument itself was blown up when Stalin fell from grace in the sixties; it overlooked the Vltava River. The festival, also called...

Fiction The Birds for Christmas by Mark Richard. The story is set in a children's hospital ward at Christmastime; the narrator is a patient. He and his friend, a black child named Michael Christian, hope to watch Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds" of TV. It's to be on the "Late Show" after Lights Out on the night before...

Books by George Steiner.

The Theatre OVERCAST by Edith Oliver.

Poetry Stub of a Red Pencil by Charles Simic. You were sharpened to a fine point...

Poetry And to See the City Again by Patrizia Cavalli. And to see the city again and to see it again...

Poetry Nor Am I Who I Was Then by Susan Elizabeth Howe. Far north in the county...