Comment by William Finnegan. Comment on the vast increase in the U.S. prison population largely a result of mandatory sentencing in the "war on drugs." In the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and South Africa, incarceration rates have declined sharply following profound political change. The South African government has suspended executions indefinitely. In the...

The Talk of the Town Walt by Richard Preston. Talk story about a reading by American poets, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on the centennial evening of Walt Whitman's death. Whitman was and is our national poet --a better poet than we ever deserved or could have hoped for. Writer pictures Walt around the summer of...

The Talk of the Town Calumet by Bobbie Ann Mason. Talk story about the auction of Calumet Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, to Henryk deKwiatkowski. Tells about the grounds of the farm. The last horses were sold off in November...

Fiction Mousetrap by Jane Shapiro. The narrator, 38 is in Boston visiting her 67-year-old mother, who is mostly inconsolable since the death in the last year of her husband Stuart. Lolly, the mother, is about to have a neck lift, following the advice of her flamboyant friend Hilary, who is visiting from Newon...

Fiction Girl Games by Janet Kauffman. About Angelina and Darlene, friends who live three miles from each other, outside of Detroit. Angelina calls Darlene to borrow her car so she can visit her boyfriend, Albert, who has gone to Detroit to think about things. Darlene says she'll drive her. Angelina doesn't want to go until Albert...

Annals of Science I-A SILENT CHILDHOOD by Russ Rymer. ANNALS OF SCIENCE about a case of child abuse in which a child named Genie was kept isolated from the world, locked in a restraining harness in a silent bedroom in her parent's house in Temple City, California. She was either harnessed to an infant's potty chair, unable to move...

The Theatre ANTIC DANCE by Edith Oliver.

Concert Records / Popular Music by Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Letter from Japan by Patrick Smith. Tells about the Japanese entry into the race for the America's Cup. Before Nippon Challenge's sailors moved to San Diego, they trained for three years at the edge of Gamagori, a run-down port not far from the city of Nagoya, south of Tokyo. The Kiwi in charge of the...

Books by James Lardner.

Poetry A Cadenza by Amy Clampitt. Puccini in hog-butchering time...

Poetry Empty Room by David Woo. A faint pink-gray lamp, tincture of rose and iodine...

Poetry The Skeleton of a Trout in Shallow Water by Nicholas Christopher. wedged between two stones...