The Current Cinema by Terrence Rafferty.

Comment by Mark Hertsgaard. Comment about atomic power plants, Chernobyl, and a conference last month at the University of California at Irvine on the environmental and health effects of nuclear weapons production. Glasnost notwithstanding, most senior Soviet officials have done their best to suppress the full truth about the accident. They have ordered that...

The Talk of the Town Correction by John Seabrook. Talk story about the removal of the head from the brontosaurus at the Museum of Natural History. The head was long an object of controversy among paleontologists, and the Museum is renovating its collection of dinosaurs. In 1898, Henry Fairfield Osborn found the Museum's brontosaurus at Bone Cabin Quarry, in...

The Talk of the Town Public Service by Mindy Aloff. Talk story about David Shiner, the starring clown at Le Girque du Soleil this season. According to the souvenir program, 85 per cent of this circus's audiences are adults, of whom 84 per cent are university grads. In his act, Mr. Shiner wears a black leather jacket and five-pocket...

The Talk of the Town Miracle Fibres by David Owen. Talk story about a publicity luncheon for 25-year-old German figure skater Katarina Witt, who was hired by Du Pont to be an adviser and spokesmodel for its new Sports Products Group. Tells about its new line of sports apparel which was represented by a long-sleeved pink leotard...

Fiction Falling Asleep Up North by John Updike. The narrator meditates upon the nature of insomnia, and recalls, from over twenty years ago, a spell of such sleepless nights ending. In 1967, he went with his wife and their many small children to Expo 67, a World's Fair in Canada. On the way to Montreal, they stayed at...

Fiction Easy Keeper by Mary Tannen. Foster Coleman, legally separated from his wife, joined by elaborate custody arrangements to his son Nicholas, flies to Priest Creek to spend a week alone with a woman named Lily, on her sheep farm. Lily is a friend of Foster's coworker, Meg, who was to have joined them, but backed...

Annals of Government SERVING THE PRESIDENT I-THE VIETNAM YEARS by Clark Clifford. ANNALS OF GOVERNMENT about the writer serving as adviser to Pres. Johnson during the Vietnam years. In the debate about Vietnam during the spring & summer of 1965, writer argued as forcefully as he could against the huge escalation of our involvement which was being proposed by Sec. of Defense...

The Theatre BACK THEN by Edith Oliver.

On Photography by Ingrid Sischy.

Letter from Washington by Elizabeth Drew. Tells about the political maneuvering surrounding the Kurdish rebellion/refugee crisis in Iraq. Having now, belatedly, taken major responsibility for easing the desperate condition of the Kurdish refugees, it has backed itself into a situation it had hoped to avoid--and, for the moment, can see no way out of...

Books by Naomi Bliven.

Poetry For All Those Who Wait for Time to Pass by Lars Gustafsson. Six black herons flew northward...

Poetry The Sea of Serenity by Jean Valentine. The Sea of Serenity...