Table of Contents

JOHN McPHEE Preface v DAVID K. SHIPLER Beauty f0r Ashes 3 JONATHAN SCHELL A View of Mountains 9 HAYNES JOHNSON The Boat 11 JANE KRAMER Josephine Guezou 18 ROBERT DONOVAN Twentieth-Century Odyssey 22 DON OBERDORFER A Farewell to Hue 29 LESLIE COCKBURN Looking for Trouble 36 KARL E. MEYER The Forthright Estate: Iri Praise Of the Newspaper Column 41 ROGER MUDD Code of Ethics 46 PAUL TAYLOR Father of His Country 51 STUART S. TAYLOR JR. Workplace Discrimination 59 Harassment by Kids: Are More Lawsuits the Answer? 62 LARRY L. KING Driver's Education 66 IRVING DILLIARD People and Character 72 VICTOR NAVASKY Saving The Nation 75 RICHARD GILMAN Faith, Sex, Mystery 87 RICHARD STENGEL My Own Vox Pop 94 Stardom? They'd Rather Pass 95 Space Invaders 97 CHARLOTTE GRIMES The Country Is at Crisis Point 99 Memo to Conservatives: Family Ties Are the Strongest Values of All 104 BARBARA CROSSETTE All Sentient Beings 107 RONALD STEEL When Worlds Collide 114 ISABEL WILKERSON First Born, Fast Grown: The Manful Life of Nicholas, 10 117 NANCY GIBBS Massacre at Columbine High School 123 DEBORAH TANNEN Gender in the Classroom 126 JONATHAN ALTER Cop-Out on Class: Why Private Schools Are Today's Draft Deferments 131 It's a Wonderful Legacy 133 The Era of Bad Feeling 134 JIM HOAGLAND Two of a Kind 137 Truly a Nation ... 139 A Little Homer at the Beach 140 LAWRENCE WESCHLER Why I Can't Write Fiction 143 BLAIR CLARK On Robert Lowell 147 ALICE STEINBACH The Miss Dennis School of Writing 151 MILTON VIORST Meeting Mahfouz 156 RICHARD EDER Critic's Notebooh 163 TERRENCE RAFFERTY IrAtalante 166 JEREMY BERNSTEIN Annie of Corsica 170 JOHN DARNTON Two Deaths-One Then, One Now: On Losing a Father, a Newspaperman 176 GEOFFREY WOLFF Heavy Lifting 179 CHRISTOPHER WREN Lenin Peah 193 JONATHAN WEINER From So Simple a Beginning 198 JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Pioneer 10 Pushes Beyond Goals, Into the Unhnown 204 Get Set to Say Hi to the Neighbors 207 MALCOLM W. BROWNE Left the Light On, But Nobody Came 209 The Invisible Flying Cat 210 At Least the Monsters Survive 212 Beauty, as Scientists Behold It 213 JAMES GLEICK Manual Labor 216 Maintenance Not Included 218 GINA KOLATA At Last, Shout of "Eureka!" in Age-Old Math Mystery 221 Scientist Reports First Cloning Ever of Adult Mammal 223 WALTER SULLIVAN What If We Succeed? 225 HARRISON E. SALISBURY Deus Conservat Omnia 234 JEAN STROUSE Introduction to Morgan, American Financier 242 ROBERT K. MASSIE DOWn Twenty-Three Steps 249 DAVID REMNICK The Forest Coup 252 JONATHAN SANDERS Pictures from the Rubble Patch 259 SERGE SCHMEMANN A Corner of Russia 264 GLORIA EMERSON Goodbye to Rafah 268 WILLIAM GREIDER MOCK Democracy 272 LANDON Y. JONES JR. The Big Barbecue 281 SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN The Rope Line 289 FRANCINE Du PLESSIX GRAY Nixonland 298 WALTER GUZZARDI Consultants: The Men Who Came to Dinner 306 JEREMY TREGLOWN Class ACt 316 JOHN HERBERS The New American Heartland 321 CHARLES KAISER The 1950s 325 NATHEN TOFF Jazz: Music Beyond Time and Nations 330 LUCINDA FRANKS Miracle Kid 335 JOHN McPHEE Travels of the Roch 351 Achnowledgments 369 Author Index 373

Promotional Information

This book is a delight for the general reader as well as an excellent resource for undergraduate or graduate students of journalism. It represents many of the finest nonfiction writers of the past several decades. There are many treasures here--and some real surprises. This is compelling stuff, wide ranging and beautifully balanced. -- Evan Cornog, School of Journalism, Columbia University The range, care, and thoughtfulness with which this volume has been edited is hugely impressive. It is an extraordinary work whose greatest strength lies in the selections themselves. It will be exceptionally useful as a supplemental text for undergraduate instruction and is very likely to find a receptive audience among the public as well. -- David Abrahamson, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University

About the Author

John McPhee is the author of twenty-five books, including The Control of Nature, Irons in the Fire, and Annals of the Former World, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. Carol Rigolot is the Executive Director of the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. She is a faculty member in the Romance Languages department, specializing in twentieth-century French literature.

Reviews

"[An] eclectic collection of more than four dozen pieces of literary journalism ... the end product is a volume meant for browsing rather than reading--not necessarily a bad thing. Far from it, with contributors as distinguished as Victor Navasky, Geoffrey Wolff, Harrison Salisbury, and Francine du Plessix Gray, not to mention McPhee himself."--Publisher's Weekly "This is a significant collection of first-rate factual writing, and a valuable contribution to the literary scene."--The Virginia Quarterly