The Editor S Desk

Her plain speaking on the subject is reminiscent of Andrew Jackson (who loved to say, “I take the responsibility!” when he was under siege), Harry Truman (“The buck stops here”) and, in a way, of George W. Bush (who has referred to himself as “the decider”). As with so much else about Clinton, her views on decision making are likely to be interpreted differently depending on where one stands. Her admirers will detect conviction and maturity; her detractors may see her words as further evidence of her purported elitism and hunger for power.

The likeliest truth, our reporting suggests, is that Clinton is a first-rate American politician who, like many other first-rate American politicians, is a work in progress. Life would be much easier if we could clinically identify and neatly judge the elements of leadership, but we cannot. People change, circumstances shift, yesterday’s vice becomes tomorrow’s virtue. With reporting from Susannah Meadows, Eleanor Clift, Karen Breslau, Michael Hirsh, Kurt Soller, Jessica Ramirez and Katie Connolly, our piece explores Clinton’s journey from the inflexible (and thus defeated) health-care warrior of the first half of her husband’s first presidential term to her six years in the Senate learning that politics is about the possible, not the perfect.

Does Clinton have what it takes to win and then lead well? In an essay linking Robert Draper’s new book on Bush, “Dead Certain,” and Bill Clinton’s latest, “Giving,” Evan Thomas looks at how character always will out, from 43’s stubbornness to 42’s self-absorption. Looking ahead, then, what traits should voters assess in judging Hillary Clinton as a possible president? Her openness to compromise and to argument (in contrasting herself to the incumbent, she told us that she makes her decisions empirically, not ideologically) or her occasional tendency to see those who disagree with her as fatally flawed? Politicians do not like to admit they are wrong any more than the rest of us do—it can be painful to acknowledge error—but as we have seen anew in Iraq in recent years, a willingness to revisit decisions in the context of changing facts is essential. The best “deciders” take responsibility not only for the sweeping decisions but for the daily realities that follow; not only for going to war but for the course of battle.

When Clinton was asked about the biggest difference between the Clinton of 2007 and the Clinton of 1993, she said, “I am much more experienced in dealing with my own government and understanding both its potential and its limitations … My commitment and understanding of the process that has to be pursued in order to make change in America is just much greater than it would have been in the past.” Soon the voters will decide whether to give her a chance to put that newfound understanding to work.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-20” author: “Paula Dincher”

Both those qualities shine through Stirton’s powerful photographs, which we publish this week in our cover story on new threats to the world’s animal population. For better or for worse, such images of the brutality done to animals are often what draw our attention to human tragedies. In this case, as Johnson’s account of the killings makes clear, the gorillas are caught up in the same tribal tensions and bloody competition for resources that led to the deaths of more than 4 million people in Congo in the past decade. But as science writer Sharon Begley notes, their deaths are also part of a larger trend. After decades in which conservationists worried that development was destroying habitats around the world, they now say the major threat to many endangered species is outright hunting. In Virunga, a population of hippos that once numbered several hundred thousand has dwindled to as few as 350—killed mostly for their meat.

Here at home, Campaign ‘08 is moving into new territory. After squabbling at a recent debate over who had the experience to be president, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama took their spat on the road. Clinton called Obama “naive” for saying he’d be willing to meet with dictators like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Obama fired back by calling her “Bush-Cheney lite.” But as Richard Wolffe reports, the Democratic dustup was more than just the usual political tit for tat. It posed a larger question: what does “experience” really mean when selecting a president?

And this week we inaugurate a series of conversations in which NEWSWEEK International Editor Fareed Zakaria will quiz thinkers and executives on the future of energy. Zakaria interviews Amory Lovins, the Rocky Mountain Institute’s cofounder and chairman and an inveterate optimist about alternative energy sources.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Amy Velovic”

As Sharon Begley writes in this week’s cover, however, we are living in a very different time. On global cooling, there was never anything even remotely approaching the current scientific consensus that the world is growing warmer because of the emission of greenhouse gases inextricably linked to human activity (like, say, driving).

When Sharon and I—along with Julia Baird and Debra Rosenberg, the editors on the project—began talking about what Sharon calls “the denial machine,” I was somewhat skeptical. Corporate America is calling for action and thinking green. California is curbing emissions. Al Gore is now an Oscar-winning PowerPoint presenter. If Gore, whom George H.W. Bush called “Ozone Man” in 1992, and ExxonMobil could agree on the gravity of the issue, then who, I wondered, wasn’t onboard?

Too many people, as it turns out. Sharon’s reporting illuminates how global-warming skeptics have long sown doubt about the science of climate change, doubts that have affected—and are still affecting—our response to a real and growing problem.

Our story is not a piece of lefty cant. Honest, well-meaning people can disagree about what we should do about climate change, but it is increasingly difficult to maintain that the problem simply does not exist, or is a minor threat.

We are not saying that it is time for all Americans to give up their cars and bike to work, or that Gore should be canonized or that the board of the Sierra Club should be given emergency powers to run the country. But Sharon is saying that to reflexively deny the scientific consensus does a disservice to the debate, which is shortchanged and circumscribed when Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners, as he did earlier this year, that “more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. It’s just all part of the hoax.”

Last week Idaho Sen. Larry Craig told our Eve Conant that there “is still a bit of a game out there—who has the better science? Political science and climate science are both just based on good guesses. But if you want to make trillion-dollar changes to the economy, you damn well better have it right.” Exactly so. The reality of global warming is no longer just a guess, however, and it is surely not a game.

In 2040, will the editor of NEWSWEEK hold up this week’s issue as an alarmist and discredited report in the tradition of 1975’s “global cooling” story? One can hope, for that would mean America and the rest of the world had reversed the effects of warming so quickly that climate change will seem as rare and remote as polio. But I fear our successors will find that our concerns were the right ones, and that we were on the safest of scientific ground this week. Denying reality does not make it go away. Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-04” author: “Janey Mclemore”

And how. In the ensuing 20 years, Pat and Barbara have worked together on hundreds of NEWSWEEK stories, including dozens of covers. Their first such outing, in 1986, was “No Baby on Board,” a cover story about the rise of married couples without children. Work, though, was not all Pat and Barbara would come to share.

At NEWSWEEK, as elsewhere, our professional lives are intertwined with our personal ones; we tend to become permanent parts of one another’s worlds. That happened with Pat and Barbara in 1988, when Barbara showed up at the intensive-care nursery of Georgetown University Medical Center, where Pat’s first son had struggled to survive after being born 16 weeks prematurely. (Thankfully, he did; Danny, now 19, is a college student who is training to be a paramedic.) The crisis ultimately led the two to a cover story on premature births, and to an epiphany: “We realized that many of the most important stories we would do would be inspired by our own lives as women, wives and mothers,” Pat says.

Which, along with their interest in health and medicine, brought them first to their NEWSWEEK.com column, Her Body, and now to the publication of their new book on menopause, “Is It Hot in Here? Or Is It Me?” which we excerpt this week as part of our Health for Life series. The package, edited by David Noonan and including offerings from our partners at Harvard Medical School , is an example of a kind of journalism that is central to our mission: bringing readers important stories not only about the life of the nation but about their own lives.

Elsewhere, Scott Johnson breaks news from Iraq, where, amid plans for a “surge” in troops and a shuffle in the high command, American officials are struggling to win the propaganda war. A document obtained by NEWSWEEK details American concerns about the consequences of getting the message wrong. Susannah Meadows sits down with Reade Seligmann, one of the lacrosse players embroiled in the rape scandal at Duke, to talk about life since that disastrous party last year.

There is much news, too, in the cover, which touches on the lives of roughly 37 million women in America. “Our hope is that, like us, readers will realize that midlife is about more than hormones,” Pat says. “It’s a crucial juncture. Making smart choices about how to deal with these changes can help you lead a longer, healthier life and allow you to be there for all the important people in your life”–which is, as Pat and Barbara’s own friendship shows, perhaps the most crucial thing of all.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-16” author: “Clara Lester”

Without hesitating, Ford scooted forward on the sofa, pulled his wallet from his pocket and took out a small card that read: Burdick v. the United States, a 1915 decision that held there was “a confession of guilt implicit in the acceptance of a pardon.” “The Supreme Court ruled that,” Ford said, and left the matter there, his gaze steady. His face projected sure and certain confidence in his decision; the fact that he carried a card around to justify it revealed a lingering anxiety about how history would view the Nixon pardon.

He was right to worry, but, as Michael Beschloss writes for us this week, the world ultimately came to see things his way. Our late editor Maynard Parker asked Michael to conduct an interview with President Ford on the condition that his remarks would not be published until after his death. The former president had some tough words for his party and for other presidents–remarks that affirm Evan Thomas ’s thesis that Ford was a much more complicated figure than his “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” image suggests. Politicians are like that: their virtues and vices are often outsize, and even the most straightforward of public figures have hidden emotional depths. Ford was no exception. The product of a turbulent family, he learned to keep secrets and mastered the great game of Washington survival. His was a long life in the arena, and George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney and Nancy Reagan shared their recollections of him with us.

On Thursday night Baghdad time, our Michael Hastings took a call from a source inside the U.S. military in Iraq. The message: Mike “should keep his cell phone on” Saturday morning. It was good counsel, for that indeed turned out to be the time of Saddam Hussein’s death by hanging. In our package on the tyrant’s execution, Chris Dickey draws on his decades of covering the region to sum up Saddam–and to look beyond the gallows.

Even before news came of Saddam’s execution, there was debate at the magazine about whether Ford’s death merited a cover story; some dismissed him as a “transitional” president. I felt differently. There is much to learn from Ford’s legacy–one that we explain and explore in detail–and his brief, 29-month presidency shapes us still. This is not to say that Saddam is an unimportant historical figure: we have twice gone to war against him, and many American soldiers have died fighting him and his regime. But his death in 2006 matters less than his removal in 2003 does. America faces a terrible predicament in Iraq, and that predicament is the same today as it was on the day before Saddam was hanged.

There could be no greater contrast than that between Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein, and word of Saddam’s death illuminated Ford’s grace and generosity even more. In a conversation with Ford at his house in Rancho Mirage, Calif., a few years ago, I asked him what he made of the growing popular sense that Ronald Reagan deserved credit for the fall of the Soviet Union. Leaning forward intently, Ford replied: “The American people won the cold war–no one president, no one party. It was the work of many years and many administrations. The credit belongs to the people.” Gracious words from a gracious man.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Doris Ogaldez”

As Christian Caryl reports in this week’s cover, Ali is part of a generation of Iraqi children who, seared by war and terror, may well become the violent jihadists of tomorrow. These are young people shaped by daily bloodshed, rising sectarian passions and a largely failed U.S. occupation.

Our package, which includes pieces from Christopher Dickey, Fareed Zakaria, Evan Thomas and Howard Fineman, raises the depressing question of whether we have lost not one but two wars since 2003. The first, the war for the present, is the one President Bush was talking about when he told a skeptical country that he was sending roughly 20,000 more troops to Iraq. The second, the war for the future, is more amorphous but no less crucial. Well over a million Iraqi youths are being forged by the fires of the war with America and the resulting civil strife. “The consequences of failure are clear,” the president said from the White House library. “Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits.” But our reporting suggests that what President Bush put in speculative terms in his speech has already taken root, and may well dangerously flourish.

We have been here before. “Perhaps the closest analogy to what might happen in modern-day Iraq (even though they are very different countries) is the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan,” Christian says. “The Taliban are often orphans of war, young people whose own families were stripped away from them by conflict and for whom the Taliban organization, offering the additional glue of a shared powerful belief in Islam, becomes a powerful new source of belonging. I see something very similar happening in Iraq.”

Elsewhere, Mark Miller, who has covered the O. J. Simpson case since the 1994 murders, offers an exclusive piece of reporting: his impressions from reading “The Night in Question” chapter of Simpson’s proposed book, “If I Did It.” The project was abandoned by News Corp. and by the publisher Judith Regan after critics (including NEWSWEEK) were outraged by the prospect that Simpson was going to be paid at least $880,000 to talk about the crime–and that the money would be sheltered from the victims’ families, who won a $33.5 million civil verdict against him.

Internally, we weighed arguments for and against revisiting the Simpson saga. A few voices argued that printing anything about it would only draw attention to a book that was a bad idea to begin with. But others believed–and I am among them–we have something newsworthy we should share with our readers. For the first time in the Simpson drama–arguably the most celebrated American criminal case of the last half century–we have what can be read as a confession in Simpson’s own words. Truth will out, as Shakespeare told us, even in an unpublished book that Simpson’s lawyer insists is “hypothetical.” Read Mark’s piece and see how hypothetical Simpson’s story seems.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Hope Caffey”

Covering crises like Blacksburg requires a sense of proportion, and we spend a great deal of time working to ensure that we tell such stories in all their complexity, from the life of the killer to the lives of the victims to the larger social and political issues a given tragedy raises. “As journalists, we are sometimes accused of being exploitative and sensationalistic,” Daren says. “But Goddard’s comment—almost an aside—helped put my mind at ease, and I saw the cathartic role our stories can play, both as we are reporting them and as people read them and discuss them.”

This week’s special report tries to make sense of what happened at Virginia Tech, or at least as much sense of such a thing as one can. Trying to understand the mind and motives of a killer like Cho, as Evan Thomas does in a narrative reported by Daren, Arian Campo-Flores, Pat Wingert, Lynn Waddell, Catharine Skipp, Eve Conant, Mark Hosenball, Holly Bailey and Jinkeol Park, has, sadly, become essential. Why? Because, as Sharon Begley writes, the particular massacre in Virginia illuminates something universal: the impulse to violence, an impulse that emerges all too often in seemingly placid places, from Littleton, Colo., to Blacksburg.

Then there is the gun issue. Debates over whether stronger or different firearms laws could help prevent such massacres are perennial, and there is a kind of numbing, even boring, familiarity to such questions. But we should fight that bore-dom. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg writes for us, the conversation about guns needs to move beyond the extremes of Second Amendment purity and liberal utopianism. Much of the rest of the world manages to control gun violence better than we do; this is one case where American exceptionalism is nothing to be proud of.

In Blacksburg, survivors like Joe Aust soldier on. Our Lynn Waddell met Aust, Cho’s roommate, outside Virginia Tech’s Harper Hall. “He spoke unemotionally about Cho, saying his roommate wouldn’t even say hello to him when they passed on the sidewalk,” Lynn reports. “Like the dozens of other students I spoke with here, he said he was coming back to finish the semester next week and would return again in the fall. ‘It could happen anywhere,’ he said.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-16” author: “Deborah Darrough”

Youngblood is one of more than 100 of America’s fallen warriors whose voices we have collected in this Special Issue of NEWSWEEK. Directed by Nisid Hajari and Dan Ephron, the project brings together letters, e-mails and journals; through them we can follow the four years of the Iraq War. We are grateful to the families who shared the correspondence with us (those voices that are not in the magazine can be found in the coming days on NEWSWEEK.com). Arranged as long-form oral history, the package moves from year to year; essays by Anna Quindlen and Fareed Zakaria discuss how the war has changed us at home, and is itself still changing as we look for a way forward.

We decided to devote virtually the entire magazine to this single topic in order to shed new light on a war that is at once familiar and distant. Thankfully, reading the words of these warriors is as close to combat as most of us will ever get, and only in reading them can we begin to appreciate the story of the human cost of war. A list of the families who participated and of the NEWSWEEK team who worked on the project is on page 6. To give you a sense of how things came together, I would like to share a few paragraphs of an e-mail I received from Andy Murr, a correspondent of ours based in L.A.

“A few weeks after the war started in 2003, I signed up to receive the Defense Department’s e-mail notices of U.S. combat deaths. I had been reporting and writing short obituaries for the magazine, and I had an idea it might be helpful to get timely word of the passing of each soldier, sailor, Marine and airman killed in Iraq. Later, when my obituary duties ended, I decided against unsubscribing. The war and the deaths hadn’t ended, and I knew the frequent reminders of the war’s toll would help me keep my eye on an uncomfortable truth that much of the country then seemed anxious to forget. Today I have more than 3,000 of them saved in an Outlook folder marked ‘War Casualties,’ starting with the March 26, 2003, announcement of the death of Marine Pfc. Angel Rosa of South Portland, Maine.

“Now I have a second Outlook folder, ‘Voices,’ containing e-mails from the families of the service people I contacted for this project. My job was to get in touch with families of service members who were killed in the last part of 2006. Their grief was still very fresh, and I’m frankly amazed so many folks took the calls at all. There were long, tearful recollections and quick, sometimes embarrassed, ’no thanks.’

“From e-mails dashed off after all-night patrols to longer letters to wives and loved ones, they paint pictures of the war that for immediacy and life sometimes rank with the best combat reporting. Taken together, these men and women could be described as optimistic realists. They sent home word that all was not well, but few complained and virtually all seemed convinced that they were serving a good and worthy fight and would prevail.”

Our aim was to tell the story of a war that has now lasted longer than our engagement in World War II through the words of those who gave their all for it, and for all of us. “Some people will find the issue to be political,” said Karen Meredith, whose son Kenneth was killed in Iraq, “but war is political, and if you have done your jobs as journalists, each reader will reach their own conclusion.” Exactly so.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-22” author: “David Watson”

Then, in December 2005, I wrote an essay about the history of the Nativity narratives. Imus liked the piece, and I got a call: would I come on the show? I did not think twice about saying yes. The program was a venue for senators, anchors and historians: to be part of the crowd conferred a certain insider status, a frisson of celebrity. That initial conversation about religion led to more appearances; in the ensuing two and a half years, I was on the show roughly once or twice a month. Imus was scary but funny and smart, and gave his guests the rare opportunity to talk at some length about the news. (I took particular advantage of this; more than once, when I finished, Imus would say something to the effect that everyone in America had quit listening 10 minutes earlier.) Though I have met Imus just twice, I came to think of him as a friend—a quite generous one. On the air I got to talk about the magazine and about books I wrote. Alter, Fineman and Evan Thomas were also regulars. The four of us were part of Imus’s stable of mainstream journalists who formed the public-affairs wing of a show that also featured racist and sexist stereotyping, remarks and skits.

When Imus made his despicable racist remark about the Rutgers women’s basketball team—the women accepted his apology after a meeting last Thursday—he brought the unacceptable elements of his program into sharp relief, elements that had been overlooked by figures as diverse as Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, John McCain and the many journalists who have been guests on Imus’s show, including those of us at NEWSWEEK.

As the national conversation about Imus unfolded last week, our concerns about his comments grew, and it became clear that our view of the show—that the high outweighed the low—was no longer the right view for us to take. Staffers expressed strong reservations about the program, and, taken together with our own assessment of Imus’s remark in light of his history of such statements, Alter, Fineman, Thomas and I agreed that we would no longer take part in the program. NBC News and CBS Radio reached similar decisions, and by Friday Imus had been fired.

Are we being hypocritical—feigning shock in the tradition of “Casablanca,” that racism and sexism were parts of Imus’s program? Perhaps; for too long too many of us looked the other way when it suited our purposes. To continue to do the wrong thing because we have done the wrong thing in the past, however, is senseless, and if being charged with hypocrisy is the price of ending up in the right place, then it is a price worth paying.

Many of us learned things last week that we either did not know or maybe did not want to know, and our cover explores the issues of race and power the Imus episode has so vividly raised. An important conversation has begun, and should continue. I hope we will all ultimately be the better for it.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-11” author: “Amanda Magedanz”

Youngblood is one of more than 100 of America’s fallen warriors whose voices we have collected in this Special Issue of NEWSWEEK. Directed by Nisid Hajari and Dan Ephron, the project brings together letters, e-mails and journals; through them we can follow the four years of the Iraq War. We are grateful to the families who shared the correspondence with us (those voices that are not in the magazine can be found in the coming days on NEWSWEEK.com). Arranged as long-form oral history, the package moves from year to year; essays by Anna Quindlen and Fareed Zakaria discuss how the war has changed us at home, and is itself still changing as we look for a way forward.

We decided to devote virtually the entire magazine to this single topic in order to shed new light on a war that is at once familiar and distant. Thankfully, reading the words of these warriors is as close to combat as most of us will ever get, and only in reading them can we begin to appreciate the story of the human cost of war. A list of the families who participated and of the NEWSWEEK team who worked on the project is on page 6. To give you a sense of how things came together, I would like to share a few paragraphs of an e-mail I received from Andy Murr, a correspondent of ours based in L.A.

“A few weeks after the war started in 2003, I signed up to receive the Defense Department’s e-mail notices of U.S. combat deaths. I had been reporting and writing short obituaries for the magazine, and I had an idea it might be helpful to get timely word of the passing of each soldier, sailor, Marine and airman killed in Iraq. Later, when my obituary duties ended, I decided against unsubscribing. The war and the deaths hadn’t ended, and I knew the frequent reminders of the war’s toll would help me keep my eye on an uncomfortable truth that much of the country then seemed anxious to forget. Today I have more than 3,000 of them saved in an Outlook folder marked ‘War Casualties,’ starting with the March 13, 2003, announcement of the death of Marine Pfc. Angel Rosa of South Portland, Maine.

“Now I have a second Outlook folder, ‘Voices,’ containing e-mails from the families of the service people I contacted for this project. My job was to get in touch with families of service members who were killed in the last part of 2006. Their grief was still very fresh, and I’m frankly amazed so many folks took the calls at all. There were long, tearful recollections and quick, sometimes embarrassed, ’no thanks.’

“From e-mails dashed off after all-night patrols to longer letters to wives and loved ones, they paint pictures of the war that for immediacy and life sometimes rank with the best combat reporting. Taken together, these men and women could be described as optimistic realists. They sent home word that all was not well, but few complained and virtually all seemed convinced that they were serving a good and worthy fight and would prevail.”

Our aim was to tell the story of a war that has now lasted longer than our engagement in World War II through the words of those who gave their all for it, and for all of us. “Some people will find the issue to be political,” said Karen Meredith, whose son Kenneth was killed in Iraq, “but war is political, and if you have done your jobs as journalists, each reader will reach their own conclusion.” Exactly so.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-05” author: “Jan Carlos”

And then, as now, California was a crucial force. “Ecology,” said Jesse Unruh, the Democratic leader of the California Assembly, “has become the political substitute for the word ‘mother’.” Unruh spoke with urgency: he was engaged in a campaign to unseat the incumbent governor, a Republican who was seeking a second term in Sacramento. Unruh ultimately lost that midterm race, and Ronald Reagan would spend four more years running the nation’s largest state.

Four decades on, another movie star turned politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger, holds Reagan’s office, and he is taking on the cause of fighting greenhouse gases with the same verve and force that propelled him from obscurity in Austria to body-building fame to global box-office celebrity to the governor’s Sacramento cigar tent (which he uses to avoid breaking California’s tough laws against smoking indoors).

You can be forgiven for being initially overwhelmed by the recent wave of green talk and press coverage; from Schwarzenegger’s California campaign to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” the environment is, in media argot, hot. Will the moment last? The nature of journalism and politics is transitory and episodic; reporters and officeholders tend to lack what the activists call sustainability. Stories and subjects burn brightly for a time, then fade away to be replaced by some other story or some other subject. What is striking about global warming, however, is that it seems to have reached the same point smoking once did, a point at which there is consensus that it is a force for ill, and that we should devote the will and resources to stopping it.

Which brings us to this week’s cover, a Special Report on Leadership and the Environment. With pieces from Jerry Adler, Sharon Begley, Karen Breslau, Anna Kuchment, Anne Underwood, Barbara Kantrowitz and Fareed Zakaria, the package, which was edited by Alexis Gelber and George Hackett with help from David Jefferson, Julia Baird, Nisid Hajari and David Noonan, captures both the history and direction of the movement, and offers ideas for moving forward. Amid Capeci and Dan Revitte led the design; Sue Miklas and Elissa Curtis directed the photo effort; Jessica Ramirez, Kevin Hand, Marc Bain and Bonnie Scranton created the graphics. Carl Sullivan and Fred Guterl are leading the team developing the many interactive components of the project on NEWSWEEK.com.

A war on greenhouse gases does not stir the soul in quite the ways the soul is accustomed to being stirred, but it is the challenge of our time, and we will be judged by how well, or how poorly, we meet it. In 1970, Ken Auchincloss wrote: “The human animal is the most adaptable of creatures, and the challenge of preserving his environment may well be his greatest test.” That test confronts us still. If you are in the midst of the battle, or if you are just now enlisting, the reporting and thinking in the following pages will give you clarity and arm you with ideas for the long war ahead.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-19” author: “Renate Shappell”

Like many of you, I adore books. I have tested the bounds of domestic felicity by fighting any efforts to prune the rising number of volumes at home. (For some reason, a copy of Matthew Arnold’s “Literature and Dogma,” which I confess I have never read, has often been used as Exhibit A in my wife’s occasional attempts to argue that perhaps it is time to clear out some shelf space. I have thus far resisted, but it is touch-and-go.) I know that a lot of my colleagues share this weakness of mine, and I suspect that a lot of our readers do, too.

The debate over the future of books (or printed magazines, for that matter) sometimes gets framed in extreme terms. On the one hand you have devoted online denizens who seem to think that ink on paper is hopelessly out of date, and that the world Gutenberg made possible five centuries ago is as doomed as the Titanic. On the other are hard-core traditionalists, often older, who insist that, in a formulation I have heard over and over, you cannot “curl up with a computer.”

Bezos, Steven reports, appears to have found a middle ground. “The key feature of a book,” Bezos told Steven, “is that it disappears” as a reader is imaginatively transported to the writer’s universe. In Steven’s view, the Kindle manages to pull off the same trick: “It can take you down the rabbit hole.” This single device is not going to kill off the book as we know it, but it is a milestone in bringing a new kind of reading experience to a broad public. It will be fascinating to watch what happens.

Elsewhere, Rod Nordland writes a personal account of the Baghdad he has found after an absence of four months, and Dan Ephron raises an important question: why aren’t we offering the veterans of our own time a GI Bill? In THE LAST WORD, Anna Quindlen points out another critical issue, one that is particularly poignant this Thanksgiving week: the problem of persistent hunger in America.

This week also marks the debut of two new occasional contributors to our pages and to Newsweek.com: Karl Rove and Markos Moulitsas. They are controversial figures, which is why we asked them aboard. We have a long tradition of asking practitioners and opinion makers to write for us (George Stephanopoulos is a good recent example) and believe that Rove and Moulitsas will give readers useful perspectives. Sometimes they will write in the same issue (as they are this week), sometimes not. Agree or disagree with them, or with me for asking them to contribute from time to time, we can safely say this: conducted civilly (as it will be here), debate and disagreement are good and healthy things. I think I read that in a book somewhere.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-28” author: “Kathleen Banks”

The complexities of the era have long fascinated Brokaw, and helped give rise to his new book. One key question for him: if the Americans who fought World War II were, in his phrase, “The Greatest Generation,” then are the boomers—often caricatured as self-indulgent and selfabsorbed—the worst? “No, no, no, I have never thought that,” Brokaw said last week. “I think it’s the ‘Provocative Generation,’ but it remains too early to give them a final mark.”

We are happy to have an excerpt from “Boom!” in this week’s issue as a key part of a special collection of essays, reporting and photography exploring the meaning of 1968 on the eve of the 40th anniversary of a year that began with Tet and ended with Apollo 8. The cover (created for us by Peter Max) is more than an exercise in nostalgia, however: as Jonathan Darman writes, the era shapes us still, in ways seen and unseen, and the legacy of the 1960s is a factor in the presidential race. (Even if candidates like Barack Obama are struggling, unsuccessfully, to persuade the country to get over the past; see Jon’s piece for more on that.) “The running ideological gunfight we are still in—liberal versus conservative—has been going on since the Sixties, which was the birth of litmus tests for both parties, which have been very destructive to politics nationally,” says Brokaw.

Along with a gallery of portraits by Nigel Parry (subjects range from Ethel Kennedy to Tom Wolfe), Evan Thomas, Ellis Cose, Barbara Kantrowitz, Sharon Begley, David Gates and Jerry Adler plumb this epic era. And Malcolm Jones remembers Norman Mailer, who died late last week.

Inside the magazine, we were struck by the emotional response to the 1968 project, which was edited by Debra Rosenberg, Julia Baird and Bret Begun. “I was 13 in ‘68, and media came alive for me for the first time that year,” Johnnie Roberts recalled. “In particular, it was the network coverage of the Chicago Seven trial. It thrust the power of media to the forefront of my consciousness. Even more especially it was that artist rendering of the shackled and gagged Bobby Seale … I believe that drawing captured the Zeitgeist of the era—the youthful politicization/protest, anti-establishment rebellion and, most of all, the black consciousness movement.”

And so Brokaw has once again started a big, broad conversation. “My own empirical evidence is that so many activists are wondering why they walked away,” Brokaw says. “They are asking themselves, ‘Why didn’t we stay engaged?’ " A perennial question.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-19” author: “Robert Mckenney”

A young man interested in power, politics, opera, sports and surrounded with at least a whiff of controversy: as it was in the beginning, so it has been since. As Evan Thomas and Suzanne write, the roots of Giuliani’s outsize, complex adult personality can be traced back to his childhood and youth in New York City, to a family of cops and hoods and to a Roman Catholic culture with a strict moral code but always holding out the possibility of redemption and grace.

Arian Campo-Flores did a good deal of reporting for the piece, and had this to say about what he learned: “Virtually no one I spoke to who knew Rudy in his formative years thought he was destined for a successful political career. Though he certainly struck them as smart and ambitious, he seemed utterly lacking in the deft, diplomatic touch necessary to succeed in public life. Most of the people I spoke to had some comic anecdote about Rudy’s aggressiveness, stubbornness or quest for control. His old frat brother Sal Scarpato, for instance, told me how Rudy imposed Robert’s Rules of Order in the frat and wielded them to silence Scarpato and keep him from getting issues on the agenda. Things grew so heated between the two on one occasion that they took their dispute outside, where Rudy quickly overpowered Scarpato and got him to cry uncle. So it comes as a shock to many of these old peers that Rudy is now the front runner for the GOP nomination. The smiling, occasionally charming candidate they see on TV is unrecognizable. It just leaves me wondering if and when that old Rudy will make an appearance—and how the public will respond to him.”

Elsewhere, Larry Kaplow, Rod Nordland and Silvia Spring report on an encouraging trend: the return of refugees to Iraq. The flow of better news out of the war zone since the summer has put much of the press in something of a bind. On the one hand, however temporary the improvements are, the improvements, as Rod wrote last week, are nonetheless real. On the other, many journalists regret not pressing hard enough in the run-up to the war and are thus very reluctant to appear to be passing along the Bush administration’s version of events. Fair enough, but the dilemma, while understandable, raises a question: at what point does healthy skepticism become willful cynicism? It is a question many of us grapple with on a variety of topics, and there is no single, absolutely clear answer. The best we can do, probably, is judge the facts of the moment in the fullest context possible, avoid cheerleading and resist the temptation to mistake reflexive negativity for journalistic rigor. An essay from Charles Peters, an old friend and mentor to many of us, explores some of these issues this week. Charlie has long urged the country to judge things empirically rather than ideologically, a point we can never hear too often.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “Arthur Kim”

Bloomberg, meanwhile, was already on to the next event—a late-night flight across the country to the other Washington. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go to Seattle.” He swept out, piled his entourage into black Suburbans and was soon aboard one of his three jets. In the air, after exchanging his pinstripes for faded blue jeans and an orange golf sweater, Bloomberg had a sandwich and slept for a few hours.

Even at rest, then, he was moving. For our cover story, I spent a good deal of time with Bloomberg, the most interesting wild card in the 2008 presidential race. We have had rich men who thought they should be president, but the Bloomberg scenario is unique, for he is a rich man with a strong record of governing New York City and of taking on national and international issues (from immigration to guns to global warming). He is seriously considering whether to make history in March by announcing an independent campaign for president—a campaign in which he would be willing to spend $1 billion of his own money (his estimated net worth is roughly $13 billion).

The interest in a Bloomberg bid reflects the perennial dissatisfaction with the two-party system, but we have all heard that before. What is different about the Bloomberg possibility is that he is not a vanity candidate. He does not want to run for president simply to change the conversation. (He is already doing that from city hall.) He will enter only if he thinks he can win, and he will decide that once the major-party nominees are selected.

He surely has the money, and he may already have the message, too. “I think there’s much too much partisanship,” he said in a conversation at Gracie Mansion last week. “I’ve been a Democrat, I’ve been a Republican, and now I’m an independent … You’ll find despicable people and brilliant, philanthropic patriots in both parties. What we have to do is we have to pick the best out of both parties and pull them together instead of having this partisanship where it’s either-or. That’s what this country is suffering from.”

He may just be the man who could help cure it, or at least try to. (If Rudy Giuliani is Batman, a dramatic caped crusader, then Mike Bloomberg is Bruce Wayne, a more buttoned-down but effective force for philanthropy and centrist public policy.) With reporting from Jonathan Darman, Suzanne Smalley, Mark Hosenball, Eve Conant, Ashley Harris, Roxana Popescu and Karen Breslau, we profile Bloomberg this week. In addition, Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe interview Barack Obama; Wolffe and Evan Thomas chart Iowa’s terrain; Jon Alter explores the emergence of “Slick Hillary,” a smooth but possibly overly packaged front runner; Holly Bailey tries to explain Mike Huckabee; and Andrew Romano, Newsweek’s political blogger, jams with the former Arkansas governor. Fareed Zakaria looks at how Iraq and other foreign-policy challenges will play out.

Bloomberg loves risk—a pilot, he has walked away from airplane and helicopter crashes—and loves public life. “In briefings,” he says, “I always start out, ‘Let me tell you what we know’.” The story will move, for he is always moving, but here, for now, is what we know about Mike Bloomberg.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-04” author: “Barbara Williams”

Health is one of those subjects that can be of little interest until, in an instant, circumstances make it compelling and consuming. For decades we have been committed to serious-minded reporting on the latest in health and medicine, and this week’s Health for Life cover, edited by David Noonan, is a good example. As our central piece, by Mary Carmichael, makes clear, this is not a project about weight loss; it is about how a little sweat will go a long way toward decreasing anxiety, increasing brainpower, treating depression and possibly preventing some of the scariest diseases we face. In that light, exercise becomes something that one undertakes not only for selfish or cosmetic reasons but for others, too—family, friends and even a broader society struggling to take care of an aging population.

That may sound overly grand, but, in a formulation attributed to Henry Kissinger, it has the virtue of being true. Our reporting reveals that researchers are discovering just how wise the ancients were, and what a profound difference the simplest things can make—a half hour a day, for instance, of walking with some vigor; we are not necessarily talking about turning America into a nation of gym rats.

Now produced in cooperation with the Harvard Medical School (whose doctors contribute pieces to our pages), our quarterly Health for Life packages have deep roots. In the 1980s, Barbara Kantrowitz remembers, we divided health and medicine so that we could focus on what Alexis Gelber calls “the science and the service.” With a team that has included Alexis, David, Mary, Barbara, Jerry Adler,Sharon Begley, Claudia Kalb, Anne Underwood and Geoff Cowley (a former colleague who is now a New York City deputy health commissioner), NEWSWEEK has made health a priority. One sign of the impact we have had came last week, when the American Society of Magazine Editors nominated our May 15, 2006, cover, “AIDS at 25,” for a National Magazine Award for best single-topic issue. That project was executed under the direction of my predecessor, Mark Whitaker, who was deeply committed to these subjects in the years he ran the magazine. (NEWSWEEK received two other nominations: one for Fareed Zakaria’s columns on Iraq in the waning months of 2006, and another for best interactive feature for our coverage of the baby boomers at 60 on NEWSWEEK.com, which is edited by Deidre Depke.)

We have always defined “news” more broadly than politics or foreign affairs on the principle that readers, like us, are interested in reporting about both the life of the nation and their own lives. To paraphrase Alexis, the science element of exercise’s wider effects is intellectually illuminating; the service part is now up to you.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-18” author: “Patricia Brown”

For Strock and many other veterans, the furious pace of combat is giving way to the slow anguish of recovery within a broken system of care at home. On the morning she came out of amputation surgery, Strock was suffering, but was denied her pain medications because of what Strock says was an inattentive nurse. “They really need to make some changes to take better care of us when we come home,” she says.

The nation that President Bush has dedicated to the cause of ending tyranny around the world is failing to fulfill its obligations to the wounded among us. Whether the issue is physical or psychological, veterans like Strock feel abandoned and angry, and the lack of consistently strong care appears to be the result of an all-too-familiar phenomenon: poor planning.

Written by Dan Ephron and Sarah Childress with reporting from Jamie, Eve Conant, John Barry, Karen Springen, Jonathan Mummolo and Ty Brickhouse, andaccompanied by photographs by Ethan Hill, our piece indicates that the VA system is unprepared for the scope and the complexity of the task at hand and ahead. Fifty thousand Americans have been injured in body or mind thus far, and the numbers will surely rise. No bureaucracy is perfect, and all human institutions make mistakes. But to fall short on taking care of the wounded is more than a mechanical failure. It is a moral lapse.

The obligation does not lie only with the government. We can contribute to charities such as the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, the Armed Services YMCA or Fisher House (there is a box to the right on these organizations). And politically, there is no excuse for our not demanding that the government straighten itself out. We lobby effectively for things we want all the time, from entitlement programs to subsidies. Through concerted pressure, Americans stigmatized drunk driving and smoking, forcing legislative and cultural change. Surely the cause of wounded veterans more than merits at least as much attention.

When President Bush is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, he can look up and see both a bust and a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The next time the president gazes at one of those images, we may hope he recalls Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. “With malice toward none, with charity for all … " Lincoln said on that March day in 1865, “let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan … " To care for him who shall have borne the battle: in a sacred American text, a clear articulation of a sacred American duty. The words may seem to belong to a distant past, but the mission they describe remains urgent, and essential.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-20” author: “Leonard Alexander”

I rarely disagree with anything Sharon says, but I have to dissent from the suggestion that she was not “smart enough” to do whatever she wanted—or wants—to do. With this week’s cover, we are delighted to welcome Sharon back to our pages. After a wonderful run here in the 1980s and ’ 90s, she left us for The Wall Street Journal in 2002, where she wrote the acclaimed Science Journal column. She has now come home, and our readers’ lives will be the richer for her essays and for her new biweekly column, which debuts next week.

In this week’s cover story, edited by Julia Baird, Sharon jumps into one of the more contentious and complicated regions within the contentious and complicated world of science: that of human origins. From the storm over Darwin’s “Origin of Species” in the 19th century to the Scopes trial in the 20th to the wars over “intelligent design” in the 21st, evolution has been at the heart of our scientific, religious and cultural debates for 150 years.

For many of us, the science of evolution can be summed up by the old horizontal textbook chart showing how monkeys led to cavemen and cavemen to modern man. As Sharon writes, however, the science of the brain and of DNA indicates that the story of human development is vastly more complicated, and more interesting, than we knew. The new evidence is forcing us to rethink the proposition that humankind inexorably moved from one stage to another in a kind of inevitable progression. It was, rather, a close-run thing. “The most intriguing thing I learned from my reporting was that there was nothing inevitable about human evolution,” Sharon says. “If just a few genes hadn’t come into existence, and if other ancient species had not gone extinct, our ancestors would never have survived, and the world would be filled with creatures much different from us.”

Given the history of conflicts between science and faith, it is worth saying a word about theology and evolution. Here, as in evolution itself, things are far from simple, for there is a divide between those who trust in a literalist interpretation of Genesis and believers who take a broader view of humankind’s origins. Perhaps the clearest expression of the moderate position can be found in a 1996 address by Pope John Paul II, who said, “New findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than [a] hypothesis.” Echoing Pius XII, he added: “If the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God”—which means that evolution could coexist with religion.

In the end, the search for answers to the question of where we came from will probably only end, in William Faulkner’s phrase, “on the last red and dying evening.” Until then, essays like Sharon’s will prove fascinating, for what can be more absorbing than the mystery of how we became what we are?

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-20” author: “Mary Tedder”

For Strock and many other veterans, the furious pace of combat is giving way to the slow anguish of recovery within a broken system of care at home. On the morning she came out of amputation surgery, Strock was suffering, but was denied her pain medications because of what Strock says was an inattentive nurse. “They really need to make some changes to take better care of us when we come home,” she says.

The nation that President Bush has dedicated to the cause of ending tyranny around the world is failing to fulfill its obligations to the wounded among us. Whether the issue is physical or psychological, veterans like Strock feel abandoned and angry, and the lack of consistently strong care appears to be the result of an all-too-familiar phenomenon: poor planning.

Written by Dan Ephron and Sarah Childress with reporting from Jamie, Eve Conant, John Barry, Karen Springen, Jonathan Mummolo and Ty Brickhouse, andaccompanied by photographs by Ethan Hill, our piece indicates that the VA system is unprepared for the scope and the complexity of the task at hand and ahead. Fifty thousand Americans have been injured in body or mind thus far, and the numbers will surely rise. No bureaucracy is perfect, and all human institutions make mistakes. But to fall short on taking care of the wounded is more than a mechanical failure. It is a moral lapse.

The obligation does not lie only with the government. We can contribute to charities such as the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, the Armed Services YMCA or Fisher House (there is a box to the right on these organizations). And politically, there is no excuse for our not demanding that the government straighten itself out. We lobby effectively for things we want all the time, from entitlement programs to subsidies. Through concerted pressure, Americans stigmatized drunk driving and smoking, forcing legislative and cultural change. Surely the cause of wounded veterans more than merits at least as much attention.

When President Bush is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, he can look up and see both a bust and a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The next time the president gazes at one of those images, we may hope he recalls Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. “With malice toward none, with charity for all … " Lincoln said on that March day in 1865, “let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan … " To care for him who shall have borne the battle: in a sacred American text, a clear articulation of a sacred American duty. The words may seem to belong to a distant past, but the mission they describe remains urgent, and essential.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-06” author: “Martha Strickler”

Napoleon had it wrong when he said geography was destiny; character is. We are shaped by the passions and predilections of those we choose to lead us. The nature and importance of personality is one of the themes of our cover this week about Rudy Giuliani, who, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, is now the front runner for the GOP nomination for president. As Jonathan Darman writes in a package edited by Bret Begun, Giuliani is an outsize figure—the mayor who proved that a city believed to be ungovernable could be governed; the hero who steadied New York, and the world, on September 11, 2001.

Much has been made of Giuliani’s liberal views on social issues such as abortion rights, gay rights and gun control. It is a political commonplace that he faces a difficult task in winning the nomination of a party dominated by conservatives. With reporting from Susannah Meadows, Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff, Eve Conant, Sarah Childress, Andrew Romano and Jonathan Mummolo, Jon’s piece raises a larger question: what will America make of the real Rudy—a man who is resolute but can be abrasive and who has led heroically but has hard edges? As Jonathan Alter notes in his column this week, the flip side of strength is stubbornness (something we have watched in President Bush the last six years), and Americans will soon have to decide whether they are willing to live with the mayor’s flaws in order to benefit from his undeniable talents.

We are also commemorating the life of Arthur Schlesinger. A contributor to our pages and a friend to many of us at NEWSWEEK, Schlesinger was generous and fun. As a man of action he was the consummate cold-war liberal, devoted to expanding rights at home and to the defense of liberty abroad; as a historian he wrote portraits of entire epochs of American life, from Jackson to FDR to the Kennedys. History, Arthur liked to say, is to a nation as memory is to a person—a way of recalling where we have been and where we should go. The America he left has a keener memory because of the work he did and the light he shed.

In the last piece he wrote for NEWSWEEK, assessing the legacy of Ronald Reagan, Schlesinger observed that Reagan “radiated civility and took disagreement in stride as a natural part of political life.” The same could be said of Schlesinger, a cheerful warrior. We will miss him, but we will always aim to follow his example of civility and wisdom as we try to make sense of what he once called “the chronic obscurity of events.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-24” author: “Miguel Hadfield”

It had been an odd kind of protest—but then, China is an odd kind of superpower. As Melinda reported at the time, “Beijing leaders quickly seized control of the demonstrations, allowing protesters to let off steam—but not actually to overrun U.S. installations. The government provided permits and buses for the Beijing demonstrators … Officials put up metal signs pointing out the ‘procession route’ in front of the embassy, and some policemen helpfully broke paving blocks into fist-sized chunks suitable for smashing windows.”

And then it passed. The Chinese were willing to break some glass, but not sever ties; to express anger, but not cause permanent harm. The calibrated response to the Belgrade bombing suggests the kind of nation, and the kind of world power, China is becoming. It is big, prideful and knows that isolation is not an option.

This week’s cover, edited by Nisid Hajari, takes you inside the culture and politics of the most populous country on the planet. The rise of China is already one of the most important sagas of our time, and next summer’s Olympics in Beijing will bring the world’s attention to a nation whose future will shape the rest of the globe well into the century.

In putting together this double issue, we have been very careful to avoid what journalists call the “Marco Polo problem,” which arises when a news organization convinces itself that it has discovered a whole new world. We know that you already know a good deal about China, and so we have given you what we hope is an engaging package. It is anchored by a memoir from Melinda of her lifetime of familial ties and decades of journalistic experience in China. Melinda’s autobiographical essay is accompanied by pieces from Fareed Zakaria and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (just back from China), and excerpts from the diaries George H.W. Bush kept during his time in Beijing in the Ford administration.

The country is, to say the very least, complex and contradictory. (Most countries, and most people, are, but China’s complexities and contradictions matter more than most.) As Fareed writes, China has experienced more industrialization, urbanization and transformation in the past two decades than Europe did in two centuries.

Is the rise of a Chinese superpower an inevitable threat to the American hyperpower? “The Chinese can be tough,” George Bush noted more than three decades ago. “They talk about principle—their principles. And when it is a matter of principle, it really means do it their way.” Conflict of some kind is almost certainly unavoidable; it always is in the lives of nations. But arguments about trade or carbon emissions are much different than military or expansionist tensions, and the emergence of a dynamic national force does not necessarily mean existing nations must lose what might be called greatpower market share.

One thing is clear: 2008 will be the year China takes center stage for a global audience. In the debris of the American Embassy on that long-ago May afternoon, Jim Sasser was optimistic, predicting the Sino-U.S. relationship would now “move ahead even faster.” The ensuing years have proved him right. Full speed ahead.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-26” author: “Patricia Conatser”

“This stuff” also includes matters of religion, a subject Mitt Romney addressed last Thursday in College Station, Texas. The battle for Iowa on the GOP side has taken on a religious cast, with many likely evangelical caucusgoers (46 percent in the NEWSWEEK Poll) saying Romney’s Mormon faith makes them less likely to support him. Huckabee, by contrast, is surging among such voters, who may make up as much as 40 percent of the electorate in Iowa on Jan. 3.

A word of disclosure. Early last week it was reported that Romney was “rereading” a book I wrote in 2006 on the American tradition of religious liberty, “American Gospel.” In the book and in an essay for this week’s issue, I argue that religion is important but not all-important in our politics and public life, and that the Founders gave us a republic in which many may believe but none must. Religious adherents, in my view, should be the most ferocious defenders of liberty of conscience, including the rights of those not to believe, for if God himself, in theological terms, does not compel obedience, then no man should try. The night before the speech, Romney called to talk about what he was going to say (for more on all this, see “The New American Holy War,” beginning on page 30). In College Station, Romney addressed an important subject, but did not, in my opinion, define religious liberty as broadly as the Founders did: their understanding of it extended to those who were not choosing among denominations but were altogether skeptical of religious traditions. Then, in a follow-up interview with me on Friday evening, the governor finally did acknowledge that religious liberty includes those of no religious belief.

It is not too much to say that the clash between Romney and Huckabee in Iowa touches on the most fundamental things about America. Whoever wins, let us hope that Lincoln’s “better angels of our nature” will prevail.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-28” author: “Edith Knapp”

Four times a year we collaborate with the Harvard Medical School on Health for Life, and the addition of another institution to the mix necessarily means a good deal of planning. In preparation for this installment called “What’s Next in Medicine,” Alexis Gelber and David Noonan went up to Boston in July to meet with Dr. Anthony Komaroff, editor in chief of Harvard Health Publications, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and our main contact for all things Harvard. Working with Tony, Alexis and David came up with an initial list of story ideas, which we refined as the months went by. Everything was cruising along.

Then, early in November, while much of the magazine was consumed with politics and Pakistan, David heard about a new book due out from Harvard and McGraw-Hill called “The Fertility Diet.” (Those are what we sometimes call “good cover words,” since they appeal to a broad swath of readers about a serious subject.) David immediately called Tony, who sent him a copy by overnight mail.

Reading the book, David and Alexis realized right away that it was something new and important. Dr. Walter Willett, one of the authors, is chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health; he is also an old NEWSWEEK hand, having contributed to past Health for Life installments. The previous cover subject on what’s next—the science of genes—became the second story in the package, and we had a new approach.

Beyond fertility and diet, the package covers a lot of ground, and Mary Carmichael’s genes piece offers a portrait of the changing understanding of DNA—an understanding that is changing so rapidly it is hard even for doctors to keep up. “One of the things I’ve always loved about science is how every time it answers a question it creates 10 new ones,” Mary says. “The researchers I talked to are some of the smartest people in the country, yet there are so many fundamental things they still don’t know. But that doesn’t seem to upset them. It excites them; I think they’re all a little awed by what they’ve learned so far. And I can see why. The body is such an immensely complex thing, and here they are, telling us that it’s built and controlled by these very simple chemicals—a methyl group, a kind of chemical switch that turns genes on or off, doesn’t even constitute its own molecule, yet it can cancel out information in a comparatively enormous molecule of DNA. No wonder the scientists are in awe.”

In another unplanned moment last week, Evel Knievel died—there was some of the inevitable “isn’t he dead already?” muttering around the magazine—and Steve Tuttle went to work. Steve’s obituary is a classic of the genre, a grown-up fan’s remembrance of a childhood hero, written with affection but also with an appreciation of the old showman’s kitschy appeal.

Elsewhere in this issue, Michael Isikoff explores Rudy Giuliani’s business ties (see Anna Quindlen’s THE LAST WORD column for a tough perspective on the former mayor) and also takes on Bill Clinton and Karl Rove’s revisions of history on Iraq. Dan Ephron, Michael Hirsh and Evan Thomas reconstruct how Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—the pragmatist called in to replace Donald Rumsfeld after the 2006 midterms—has worked to avoid military conflict with Iran. Jonathan Alter breaks off from the top-tier pack to write about Joe Biden and Chris Dodd. With Iowa roughly 30 days away, in the coming months you will be reading much more about politics in our pages and online. That much, at least, we can plan on.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-19” author: “Grant Davis”

It is now December, and the 2008 campaign, as anyone who is even remotely interested in it knows, is unusually fluid—or at least unusually so in that we know it is fluid, as opposed to the journalistic tendency to convince ourselves that a single front runner is pretty much inevitable. Does Edwards’s appearance on our cover this week suggest that we think he is going to win Iowa on Jan. 3 or New Hampshire on Jan. 8? No, because we have no idea who is going to win those contests on either side. But our cover choice does mean we do not believe the conventional wisdom that has turned this largely into a Clinton-Obama race.

A big reason for our skepticism is Edwards’s character. As ArianCampo Flores and Suzanne Smalley report, he is a steely (some would say too steely) and hungry (some would say too hungry) politician, a man who has made his own way in the world and who sees no reason why he should not rise even further. On the bus that summer day, I asked him about trust. I told him that I have young children growing up in New York City, which no doubt remains a terrorist target. Why should I put their safety in his hands? Edwards answered instantly: “Because I know how to fight,” he said. “I grew up in a place where you had to know how to fight to survive.” The words came from the core; in them, there was a glimpse beyond and behind the artifice of a lawyer-candidate.

With immigration playing such a large role in the campaign and with worries about a 2008 recession on the rise, Sharon Begley explores the scientific roots of fear, with particular emphasis on how anxiety shapes our political choices.

Lally Weymouth’s exclusive interviews from Pakistan are reminders of the complexity of the job awaiting whoever wins next November. In conversations with Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, Lally got the two most important politicians in what is arguably the world’s least stable nuclear power to talk about terrorism, order and the Western view of Pakistan.

And I commend Joshua Alston’s profile of Sam Waterston to you. I am an unabashed admirer of “Law & Order,” and we are pleased to note that Waterston’s Jack McCoy is finally getting promoted to district attorney—which is, so far, perhaps the most significant thing to result from Fred Thompson’s decision to enter the presidential race.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-12” author: “Christine Cruz”

Understanding the spouses of those who would be president, then, is both interesting and important. This week Richard Wolffe profiles Michelle Obama, the formidable Princeton- and Harvard-trained lawyer from Chicago who is emerging as one of the most intriguing characters in an intriguing election year. Her husband calls her his “rock,” the force that keeps him grounded in reality—a busy role given the senator’s flights of oratory.

With two young daughters, Mrs. Obama is also fascinated by the issue of how women maintain a balance between their work and family lives, a fascination that will no doubt resonate with many voters as the campaign goes on.

She can be interestingly candid. When Richard asked whether she and Obama have time for a “normal relationship,” she replied, “Normal is relative.” “Her evolution on the national stage is striking,” says Richard. “As with her husband, it’s happened in full view—stumbles and all. Both were self-confident and polished when they first stepped out, but they were also unused to the scrutiny. I first saw her campaigning in Iowa last summer. At that time, she traveled by minivans driven (often badly) by young volunteers. She had no Secret Service detail (unlike her husband) and would talk to small but respectable crowds of a few dozen at a house party, or 100 at a hotel. She’d slip off her Jimmy Choo shoes and deliver a punchy sales pitch for her husband—the kind of hard sell he hadn’t mastered at that time. Today she has her own security protection, draws 1,000-plus crowds (easily equal to, and sometimes bigger than, Bill Clinton’s), and her SUV moves in a motorcade. Perhaps more telling than the trappings of co-front runner: her voice. She’s more personal in her stump speech, better able to follow the rhythm of the crowd, more rehearsed and at ease.”

Raina Kelley contributes an essay on the complexities of the image of a strong black woman, Howard Fineman writes about a new power bloc: Ivy League-educated African-Americans, and Arian Campo-Flores sends in a letter from Texas, which, along with Ohio on March 4, may be Hillary Clinton’s last stand. If it is Obama-McCain in November, Jonathan Alter writes, “Once their niceties about one’s heroism and the other’s inspiration are dispensed with, Obama would try to make the Arizona senator look like a hypocritical, clueless and warlike geezer, while McCain would suggest that the Illinois senator is a naive, liberal and dreamy kid.”

Of Mrs. Obama, Richard adds: “Can you fully rein her in? Not really, and that’s part of her freshness and, yes, greenness. She’s a bold character—strikingly tall (even without her Jimmy Choos), always well dressed, with a commanding presence and a competitive spirit. But she’s also a hugger, someone who can put people at ease and give the impression that the Obamas are still ’normal’ people, not that far removed from real-life concerns like student loans. If her husband keeps on winning, they surely won’t be normal for much longer.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-09” author: “Charity Thomas”

“I think if you can channel it—and it took me a long time to channel it, as you well know—and mature with it, then I think it’s an attribute,” McCain replied. You have to get past “self-glory—that ‘it’s all me’ and ‘it’s my gratification’ " and “make the transition” to what he called “a cause greater than myself.”

Like many people, particularly many politicians, John Sidney McCain III is a complex figure. His wit can be charming or searing; his temper stoic or volcanic. Unlike virtually anyone else in America other than his comrades in captivity, though, he has endured the unimaginable, and lived not only to tell the tale but to rise from his broken bones and teeth, from years of torture and pain, to become a congressman, a senator and now the front runner to become the Republican nominee for president of the United States. He is at once familiar yet mysterious, a hero from an unheroic time, a politician who has long charmed the press with the appearance (and often the reality) of candor, an independent-minded senator who essentially became a party man in the Bush years.

He has a winning personality partly because he acknowledges the obvious—something other politicians train themselves hard not to do. Here is an exchange from his interview with NEWSWEEK: “Back in 2000, when the rumor mill was saying you were crazy, you actually released your medical reports,” Evan said to him. “Amazingly, they said that you weren’t crazy, which is why it didn’t get much pick-up.” Most candidates would have disputed the premise, or immediately tacked to talking points about being ready to lead, or something equally anodyne. McCain just laughed, said it was indeed unfortunate nobody had noticed, and moved on. Asked if he has to work on his temper, the answer was straight: “Sure, every day you try to improve your conduct. I am a man of many failings. I make no bones about it. That’s why I’m such a believer in redemption. I’ve done many, many things wrong in my life. The key is to try to improve.”

Implicit in the answer, however, is the acknowledgment that there is a temper—why else would he have to try to improve?—and our cover this week explores the roots of McCain’s character, from his resilience to his occasional rages. Evan’s story is not about the campaign horse race—we will all know the results soon enough—but about the making of a fascinating man. (Evan also writes an essay on the historical intricacies raised by Caroline and Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama.)

A temper is, of course, the expression of powerful emotions, and the rest of us are also in for some scrutiny this week in Sharon Begley’s exploration into why we vote the way we do. A hint about the answer: no matter how thoughtful you believe yourself to be about politics, your choice probably has more to do with your heart than with your head. (Like Evan, Sharon does double duty this week, also writing a piece about why happiness may be overrated. Yes, you read that right.) In a guest essay, Karl Rove takes exception to the proposition that the Republican Party is in the midst of an especially difficult identity crisis, and Fareed Zakaria writes on the foreign-policy distinctions between Obama and Hillary Clinton.

With Super Tuesday, we will have a clearer sense of the direction each party is likely to take in the coming months, and perhaps years. That direction will be about policy, but it will also be about the character of the candidates. A new chapter in the 2008 campaign is opening, and it is fairly certain, I think, that it is going to be as rich and as riveting as the months that are already passing into history.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “Katie Gordon”

It has long been unfashionable to think of addiction as a failure of character or of willpower. More than 50 years ago, in 1956, the American Medical Association recognized addiction as a disease, and we now speak of it in the vernacular of treatment and therapy. But only recently have scientists started making progress in understanding, and possibly treating, the underlying biological factors. When we began hearing about new advances in the search for pharmaceutical solutions for common addictions, we were curious. If addiction is in fact a disease, then could it be treated in the way, say, diabetes is with insulin?

As Jeneen Interlandi writes in this week’s cover, the hunt for vaccines is not a quest for a cure-all—addiction is a chronic disease; like the conflict in the Middle East, it is something that can only be managed, not solved—but there is important work underway that may produce some pharmaceutical weapons in the struggle against addiction. In an essay, Mitchell Rosenthal, who founded Phoenix House, the national drug and alcohol treatment and prevention organization, notes that vaccines could well help, but are not magic bullets. As in cases of depression, pharmaceuticals work best in combination with other kinds of therapies. A change of heart, of mind or of spirit can be critical in the treatment of addiction; biology surely shapes us, but need not totally control us.

History has been unkind to hopes for a medicinal solution to addiction: opium and cocaine were introduced to the United States as cures for alcoholism in the late 1800s. Still, the National Institute on Drug Abuse is developing or testing more than 200 compounds that block the intoxicating effects of drugs, including vaccines that train the body’s own immune system to bar them from the brain.

Elsewhere, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas (with Holly Bailey, Suzanne Smalley, Richard Wolffe, Pat Wingert and Eve Conant) weigh in on The New York Times’s story about John McCain and his ties to a female lobbyist, Vicki Iseman. As most of the world knows by now, the Times reported that, nearly a decade ago, McCain aides feared the senator was involved in an intimate relationship with Iseman—an allegation both McCain and Iseman deny. In a Toledo press conference after the story was published, McCain also denied that advisers had confronted him with concerns about his friendship with her. While two sources tell NEWSWEEK that such a meeting did occur, neither source could provide any evidence of an inappropriate relationship.

Mike also discovered a 2002 deposition contradicting McCain’s denial that he had contact with a client of Iseman’s about whom he wrote the Federal Communications Commission seeking a decision on a pending matter. (McCain did not argue for the decision to go one way or another.) McCain says he learns from his mistakes, and his insistence that there was no conversation with advisers about Iseman and that he did not have contact—perfectly legal contact, by the way—with the businessman suggests a stubbornness that may be more relevant to his conduct of the presidency than anything in the Times story.

Let us be honest: without the allegations about sex, there was no Times story. (McCain’s FCC efforts and links to the communications company had been previously reported.) No suggestion of sex, no front page; no suggestion of sex, no right-wing rally to McCain’s side against the Times. It is, as Margaret Thatcher used to say, a funny old world.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-25” author: “Paul Kelly”

John McCain is being tested mightily—and not by the Democrats. The most passionate criticism of McCain is coming from conservative celebrities (and semi-celebrities) who believe he is a sleeper liberal. The ferocity of the remarks from Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and others, Holly Bailey reports, has McCain watching his own words with care.

“He’s still the straight talker, the guy who seems to take some enjoyment in mixing it up with voters at town halls over, for example, immigration reform,” says Holly, a coauthor of our cover this week. “But you can also tell he’s trying to be very careful about choosing his words when it comes to his critics, especially his fellow Republicans. His aides have been telling him to think and act presidential, and he has been, to some extent. When you ask him about Rush Limbaugh and critics who have been hammering him on talk radio, he often responds by saying that he’ll work to unite the party. But you can tell it irritates him. He sometimes pauses before answering, as if he’s trying not to pop off. It doesn’t always work. Last week he made it pretty clear to reporters on his plane that he doesn’t care for Limbaugh’s show. ‘I don’t even listen,’ he said. ‘I’m not a masochist.’ It was about that time that one of his aides tried to push him back toward his seat at the front of the plane.”

With Eve Conant and Michael Hirsh, Holly traces the roots of the right’s anger over McCain. The conservative discontent with the Arizona senator is a well-established storyline in political circles, but the question our cover explores is whether it matters that some evangelical leaders and talk-radio titans hate the idea of a McCain presidency.

The tentative answer—answers to such questions are necessarily tentative in politics—is the opposition on the right is likely to be a factor in a narrow race. A NEWSWEEK Poll shows less enthusiasm among Republicans for McCain than there is for Obama and Clinton among Democrats, which suggests McCain will need all the Republicans he can get, as well as independents, to win in November.

The idea that core conservative voters would stay home or vote for Clinton or Obama instead of choosing McCain still seems farfetched (or at least medium-fetched), but purists of both the right and the left are quite capable of self-defeating behavior. Conservatives may well be in the mood for what they would view as a principled loss. That the defeat would take down a pro-life senator who supported the Iraq War in its worst hours could become one of the great ironies of contemporary political history. (For another perspective on the history-making nature of this race, Andrew Romano, the author of the Newsweek.com blog Stumper, offers an essay on how his generation—he is 25, a “millennial” in the vernacular of demographers—views the Democratic contest.)

McCain and his aides are reaching out to their critics. Jack Kemp, a frequent guest on Limbaugh’s show, told us that he had “just finished a first draft of an open letter to Sean and Rush and Laura and the other conservative talk-show hosts.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain ally, has also appealed to Hannity. Two McCain advisers confirm that there has been tentative outreach to Limbaugh.

After reporting on the talk-radio world, Eve Conant came away certain of at least one thing: “This seems like it will boost ratings.” It will surely do that—and it will no doubt provide McCain plenty of opportunities to test his tolerance for criticism.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-20” author: “Elizabeth Hippler”

Thus begins Mary’s account of the Blake family’s struggle with Max’s bipolar disorder, a serious mental illness typified by recurring bouts of mania and depression. Roughly 6.5 million Americans are affected by it, and of those about 800,000 are under the age of 18. It is a mysterious and stigmatizing disease. As Mary writes in her piece, which was edited by David Noonan, the bipolar brain is miswired, but no one knows why this happens, and while there are many drugs, many do not work well, or at all. And the number of bipolar diagnoses is rising, which means you are going to be hearing more about this disease and its effects in the coming years.

All of which are the kinds of general points you would expect from a piece of journalism about a disease and its sufferers. They are important points. What you are more likely to take away from Mary’s story of the Blakes, however, is less about medicine and science and more about the family itself—a family whose story is so raw and so real that I asked Mary why anyone would let a reporter get so close. “They told me right off, the first time I met them, that they felt this kind of story hadn’t been told and they wanted to help other parents—to make them realize they’re not alone.

“Driving through Peabody, Mass., on my way to meet the Blakes for the first time five months ago, I was struck by their neighborhood: it was so ordinary,” Mary says. “There were kids shooting hoops in their driveways, a postman walking from mailbox to mailbox—and the Blakes’ own house had a full-height flagpole in the front yard. I’ve been a journalist long enough to know that appearance often belies reality, but still, this was classic suburbia, a neighborhood just like the one where I grew up. It didn’t seem like a place where bizarre or horrible or unpredictable things happened on a daily basis. Then I met Max.

“Over the next five months I spent a lot of time with the Blakes. By a few weeks in, I was pretty sure that at some point Max was going to attack me. I’d already seen him bite his mother on the first full day I spent with the family. The two of us were playing tag. Max is 10, but he weighs more than I do, and he came running at me and almost knocked me over. I knew he was in a good mood, but I also didn’t know what would happen if I accidentally shoved him a little while righting myself. He might shove back. I was thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’m terrified of a 10-year-old.’

“Max never did attack me, though, and in fact, the last time I saw him he said ‘I love you’ to me. That’s the main thing I learned: with kids like him, you never know what you’re going to get. That’s probably why I felt so much sympathy for Amy and Richie Blake. All parents want predictability; all parents want to protect their kids. But parents of mentally ill kids like Max—truly sick kids, with severe disorders—can never know what that kind of safety feels like. They can move to leafy suburbs and enroll their kids in good therapeutic schools, but they can never be sure they have protected their kids, because ultimately, you can’t protect a child from himself. Amy Blake told me at one point that everything she has ever predicted for Max has turned out to be wrong. Like her, I worry a lot about what will happen to him. But I’m not going to try to predict anything, either. I’m just going to stay in touch, because as much as Max sometimes scares me, I love him, too.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-25” author: “Kelly Varin”

Lally Weymouth, NEWSWEEK’s special diplomatic correspondent, is a formidable interrogator of presidents, monarchs and dictators. This week she’s a triple threat. On the occasion of Israel’s 60th anniversary, Lally scored interviews with Shimon Peres, the country’s president and the last of its founding generation still in office; Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, and Israeli P.M. Ehud Olmert. Besides opining on the current state of Middle East peace negotiations, Olmert, the target of a criminal investigation into campaign-finance irregularities, reveals he has weighed stepping down.

Great reporting requires talent, instinct—native or honed through experience—and serendipity. That’s equally true of the best photojournalism. When a tropical cyclone devastated Burma on May 2, we saw all those qualities on display here at NEWSWEEK. The early reports were sketchy, but Simon Barnett, our director of photography, sensed they were ominously bad. He also knew that getting images out of a repressive dictatorship like Burma’s would be a challenge. “We realized that this disaster, unfolding in a poor, remote country, devoid of technology, would be the domain of the professional photojournalist—if any happened to be in the country at the time,” Simon recalls. His international photo editors, James Wellford in New York and Bija Bociek in London, reached out to their network of photographers and found several who had made it into Burma. The results, obtained rapidly and under extreme circumstances, are the wrenching images by photojournalists Will Baxter and Ayalung Thaksin that we publish, along with an essay by Melinda Liu, in this week’s magazine. Simon, a bighearted Welshman, believes passionately in the power of news photography. “We commit these resources for the simple reason that if we as a public don’t see these tragedies, we care less about them. The power of still images can change things, and I hope they do.” A noble sentiment backed up by hard work.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-16” author: “Linda Champagne”

The issue you are holding, however, is neither redundant punditry about what we recently referred to as “Obama’s Bubba Gap,” nor is it pre-emptive hand-wringing about how the race card might get played in the months to come. Our goal, rather, is to show how a seemingly straightforward question (are we really ready to elect a black man president?) has no simple answer.

Many readers will disagree with me on that, believing—drawing on hope, I think, more than empirical evidence—that America is not only ready but willing, able and about to do so. Most surveys back up the cheerier vision of a nation that has drawn closer to the Promised Land: the new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the percentage of Americans saying the country is ready for a black president has nearly doubled in the last eight years, from 37 percent in 2000 to 71 percent today.

What is most interesting about the coming election is that there may well be a gap between our claims of openness to a black president and the reality of how many people will in fact vote for Obama. (An important nuance: for those who support either Hillary Clinton or John McCain, the more precise and more useful way to frame the question is not whether America is ready to elect a black man president but rather should the country elect this black man president. This is a significant point, and it is critical that we bear in mind that one can be for McCain [or for Clinton] without being racist.) Our pollsters at Princeton have created what they are calling the Racial Resentment Index. The index is made up of 10 questions testing voters’ views on issues such as interracial marriage and racial preferences; the higher one’s score, the higher one’s racial resentments. (People lie to pollsters about race, but usually to appear more accepting, not more resentful.) Twenty-nine percent of all white Democrats scored “high.” Of those, 44 percent say race will be a very important factor in an Obama-McCain contest. While Clinton leads McCain 78-18 percent among the high Racial Resentment scorers, Obama beats McCain much more narrowly, 51-33 percent. In sum, race matters—and it could make all the difference in a close general election.

We can either ignore that and hope we are inexorably moving toward a post-racial society, or we can acknowledge the role race still plays, for candor is ultimately more constructive, and more liberating, than polite indirection.

In our package, Evan Thomas uses the most basic of political tools—the memo format—to offer Obama unsolicited advice on what the campaign needs to do to win over a public that is not overtly racist but whose views are still, to some extent and to some degree, affected by race. In a series of essays, Harold Ford Jr., Ellis Cose, Richard Rodriguez and Marjorie Valbrun explore different aspects of the race factor.

It is a complex thing. As Ellis writes, “In the old days, when Southern governors were declaring allegiance to racial segregation, it was useful classifying Americans by whether they were racist. We are a different America today, one in which race interacts in a complicated way with other factors—age, gender, education, accent, religion, wealth—to determine how we feel about people and their place. It’s harder than ever to tease out a purely racial effect.” It is hard, but as Ellis also notes, it is not impossible. We cannot wish race away, but the more we know about people’s resentments and fears, the better we may be able to put them to rest. That is a task for all of us—for Obama, for McCain, for the press and, in the end, for every voter who believes in what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-09” author: “Donna Timmons”

Understood as widespread contractions in economic activity, recessions are officially defined only in retrospect, when financial data is later analyzed. But with the subprime-mortgage effect still rippling through the economy—leading to defaults, foreclosures and ultimately tens of billions in write-downs for big firms like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch—many believe we are well on the road to recession, and the story of how we got to this point sheds light on America’s role in the world economy and on the hidden risks that we face.

“Given the complicated financial machinery that now connects the world’s market, will a U.S. recession quash the booming growth we’ve seen in emerging markets like India and China and tip European economies over the edge?” Daniel writes in a package that includes essays by Robert Samuelson and Fareed Zakaria. “We are, of course, far short of a Great Depression now,” said Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “But in terms of systemic risk and the risks of a financial meltdown, you almost have to go back that far to find a good analogy.”

Daniel worked from Davos, where, he reported, “I’ve heard very little talk about the U.S. primary elections, very little talk about Iraq or terrorism, and lots of talk about systemic risk and technology. Hard not to feel, as an American, that the world is, if not passing us by, getting on with its affairs at its own pace. The indispensable nation seems a little dispensable here. But some U.S. figures who are respected on the world stage are still here: I just cut in front of Tom Friedman at the bar.”

There was, in fact, conversation at Davos about war as well as commerce. In two exclusive interviews, Lally Weymouth talked with Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai and Israel’s Ehud Barak about the perennial issues of terror and security, including the essential but mysterious question of Iran and its nuclear ambitions—reminders, if any were needed, of the serious matters that, like the economy, await whoever emerges from the hurly-burly of the presidential campaign.

Finally, a word of farewell. Richard Darman died last Friday at 64—too young and too soon. A distinguished public servant in the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush, he fought a characteristically brave fight against the leukemia that killed him. The father of NEWSWEEK writer Jonathan Darman, the elder Darman loved his family and his country; a student of power and an intellectually rigorous thinker, he saw public service as a noble undertaking. Late last week, when we were weighing where to run Evan Thomas’s obituary of his friend in this issue, we decided to put Darman right in the center of the action, in the heart of the magazine, amid stories of political strife and economic crisis. It is where he would want to be.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-04” author: “Melody Dougherty”

A word about the decision to put Obama on our cover. Weekly magazines like ours have traditionally worried about looking stale or out of sync if the candidate we are featuring loses a different primary early in the week we publish. We suffered from that perennial concern until Thursday night. Then, when Obama’s victory— 8 points over John Edwards, and 9 over Hillary Clinton—became clear, so did the cover decision. Barack Obama has made not only news but history.

In an election to choose a successor to an unpopular incumbent at an hour of danger, an African-American candidate for president convincingly won a state that is virtually all white; a 46-year-old first-term senator defeated two more seasoned national politicians; an insurgent is roiling the stately party establishment Bill Clinton built as the first two-term Democratic president since FDR. No matter what happens going forward, in New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond, the Obama win—a vote for a viable candidate of color in a nation in which the issue of race has been called simply “the American dilemma”—is a new chapter in our long national story.

Part of the message from Iowa, whatever one’s politics, is that we are one step closer to judging our politicians, and one another, in the classic King formulation, not by color but by character. “I’ve said from the beginning I had confidence in the American people,” Obama told Richard. “Race is no doubt still a factor in our culture. But people want to know who is going to provide health care that works, schools that work, a foreign policy that works. If they think you can do the work, I think they are willing to give you a chance.”

This is at once a confusing and exhilarating moment in American politics, which is explored in this issue by Jonathan Alter, Holly Bailey, Karen Breslau, Eleanor Clift, Sarah Elkins, Howard Fineman, Sarah Kliff, Matthew Philips, Andrew Romano, Suzanne Smalley, Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe—with photographs by Christopher Anderson,Khue Bui,Charles Ommanney and Jonathan Torgovnik. (And on NEWSWEEK.com, including video from Tammy Haddad and Jennifer Molina).

If Senator Clinton ultimately loses the nomination to Obama, historians should study Charlie Rose’s December 2007 interview with Bill Clinton as evidence of the Clintons’ anxiety about and anger at the Obama challenge. “If you listen to the people who are most strongly for [Obama],” Clinton told Rose, “they say, basically, we have to throw away all these experienced people because they’ve been through the wars of the 1990s … and what we want is somebody who started running for president a year after he became a senator because he is fresh, he is new, he has never made a mistake and he has massive political skills. And we’re willing to risk it.”

The Republican Party was engaged in its own kind of risky business last week when Mike Huckabee emerged as the winner in Iowa. As Howard Fineman points out, though, you reap what you sow, and Huckabee is, in a way, the apotheosis of the GOP’s longtime cultivation of religious conservatives. Sixty percent of the Republicans voting in Iowa were evangelical Christians; how the former Arkansas governor and minister does when that number is lower has much of the GOP watching—to put it mildly—with great care. We will be here watching, too.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-13” author: “Robert Harris”

Not so in 2008, and one reason for the chaotic nature of the Republican primary race is that the party of Reagan is now divided in ways it has not been in more than a generation. This view, which informs our lead essay by Evan Thomas, is not the unsurprising opinion of what many people think of as the liberal media. It is also held by Michael Gerson, the former senior adviser to President Bush and speechwriter, who writes in this week’s cover: “In early 2008, by nearly every measure, the Republican Party is in trouble. Republicans in the House and Senate have been exiled from leadership and are retiring in large numbers. Fund-raising—the most tangible measure of enthusiasm—is weak. In the first three quarters of 2007, Democratic presidential candidates outraised their Republican counterparts by $77 million. One adviser to a major Republican campaign recently complained to me that a significant number of wealthy donors on their fund-raising list were giving to … Barack Obama.”

The heart of the issue this week lies in an excerpt from Jacob Weisberg’s new book, “The Bush Tragedy.” The editor in chief of Slate (which is, like NEWSWEEK, owned by The Washington Post Company), Jacob wrote the book, he says, because “after Bush faced his last election—in the 2006 midterms—I thought it might be possible to look back on his presidency with the beginnings of some historical perspective. I wanted to try to do for him what Garry Wills did so brilliantly for Ronald Reagan in ‘Reagan’s America.’ That is, I wanted to try to step far enough away from the political fracas to ask who this man really was, what ideas and relationships had driven him, and why he had governed the way he did.

“One thing that surprised me is how complex and tormented his relationship with his father is. George W.’s attitude toward his dad is neither simple reverence nor straight repudiation, but contains elements of both. Much is explained by George W. Bush’s private view that his dad was a failed president, and by the way he defined his own persona and politics in opposition to his father’s. But even as he rejected his father’s approach to foreign policy, George W. remained intent on trying to win his father’s respect.

“Readers may also be surprised, as I was, by how big a factor the anthrax attacks of October 2001 were in Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq. Even more than the September 11 attacks, the fear of biological warfare—and the erroneous belief that Saddam Hussein not only possessed germ weapons, but might have used them against the United States—drove Dick Cheney and Bush toward the logic of pre-emptive war.”

Hopes run high in campaigns; realities run deep in the last year of an administration. A series of short pieces by Daniel Gross, Jerry Adler, Michael Hirsh and Jennifer Barrett lays out the challenges the next president will face on the economy, the environment, foreign policy and health care. The title of the project, which is addressed to the presidential candidates? “Careful What You Wish For.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-17” author: “Robert Thompson”

Will Senator Clinton win this week, or in the contests after that, or on Feb. 5 or even beyond? We do not know, and we do not pretend to know. In our view, Clinton is the most consuming story of the moment for many of the same reasons Barack Obama was the story coming out of Iowa: she made not only news but history, becoming the first woman to win the New Hampshire primary. Like Obama, she is a viscerally compelling figure, and our cover on her focuses on the human drama of a woman who, by her own admission, is still struggling to, in her phrase, find her voice. For people with a sense of history, there is nothing soft or sexist or surprising about a candidate or even a president who is still evolving. There is a tendency to want to believe that our leaders are certain of who they are and what they want to do, and some (Ronald Reagan) are like that. But many are not: it seems safe to say that George W. Bush was not fully comfortable with the presidency until the days after September 11, with his remarks at the National Cathedral and his bullhorn exchange with the rescue workers at Ground Zero.

For about a year, we have devoted much of our political coverage to the biographical, on giving you profiles of the characters and experiences of the presidential candidates. In our covers, we have tried to stay out of the impossible practice of predicting the outcome of the horse race. What we can bring you is reporting and analysis on the people and issues at play in the campaign and the forces raising unsettling questions for many Democrats. People who fought against Jim Crow and for women’s rights now find themselves having to choose from what Anna Quindlen calls “an embarrassment of riches” in Clinton and Obama. But “choose” is the operative word. As the Rev. Herman Bing, pastor of the Carpentersville Baptist Church in North Augusta, S.C., told Allison Samuels: “I really hate that they had to run at the same time in the same election. It just makes what should be a wonderful situation very stressful for folk like me. I never imagined you could have too much of a good thing.”

In our package, we explore how the race—both its immediacy and its fraught and exhilarating issues of history and identity—looks and feels from Hillary Clinton’s perspective. She and I sat down in Los Angeles to discuss those and other issues, and Samuels, Karen Breslau, Arian CampoFlores, Raina Kelley, Chris Dixon, Martha Brant and Eleanor Clift talked to political observers about the Clinton camp’s challenges. Richard Wolffe, Karen Springen and Sarah Kliff scrub Obama’s public record, Dan Gross writes on the politics of the economy, Holly Bailey talks to John McCain, and Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball and Evan Thomas report on the shadowy world of dirty tricks and negative campaigning.

In my interview with Clinton, we spoke about the provisional nature of politics. The good and the bad are mixed together, but there is always good. “I believe that we have to be optimistic realists,” she said—not a bad view for a politician in the arena.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-28” author: “Aaron Pollack”

Yet statecraft is not only about the spectacular. Politics, while entertaining, is not—or at least should not be—entertainment. Despite the way we go about deciding who gets it, the presidency is more than a popularity contest, though winning the popular vote is (usually) key. We are not electing someone to room with, drink with or play tennis with but someone to keep the nation safe and direct the affairs of the most powerful country on earth.

It is also true, however, that politics is about people, about their passions and their hopes and their fears. Anyone who would lead us has to be able to win—and winning, to state the obvious, requires getting more votes than the other guy (or gal). This is why some of our noblest public servants have done dopey and dirty things to succeed, and many of them have taken pains to appear to be just like the rest of us. It has been this way since at least 1828, when Andrew Jackson became the first self-made man to win the White House.

Barack Obama, though, can take comfort in this: three of our greatest 20th-century presidents—Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan—never worried too much about trying to appear to be the guy next door. (Yes, FDR served the King and Queen of England hot dogs at Hyde Park, but only an American aristocrat certain of his place would have done that.)

Does it matter, then, that Hillary Clinton says she likes to bowl, or that Barack Obama cannot? The answer, as unsatisfying as it may be, is: sort of. He needs to dispose of the elitist charge somehow, or voters need to decide—as they may very well—that they do not care about it, and then it will disappear. For now, though, the arugula factor—shorthand for the impression that Obama is out of touch with common voters—is a real one as the Illinois senator struggles to show that he can win the kinds of white working-class voters both parties need to triumph in November.

Our cover this week explores what we are calling Obama’s Bubba gap. As Evan Thomas, Holly Bailey and Richard Wolffe write, the John McCain campaign is no longer frightened by the prospect of a general election against Obama. Only in America, it seems, could the first major African-American presidential candidate be seen by some as more elitist than Clinton, who has spent the last 30 years in a governor’s mansion, the White House or the U.S. Senate. In a series of essays by Jonathan Alter, Ellis Cose, Raina Kelley and Karl Rove, we explore the complexities of class and race—complexities that are finding daily expression in the campaign. Jonathan Darman asks a big question: what happened to Bill Clinton? How did the darling of the African-American community become so blinded by ambition for his wife that many of his most loyal supporters believe he has done himself permanent damage? (Though with Bill Clinton there is really no such thing as truly permanent damage.) As a reminder of the debate to come, Fareed Zakaria weighs in on McCain’s bipolar foreign policy.

If Obama had eliminated Clinton earlier, we would probably not be having these discussions about class, but he did not, and so we are. It is up to him whether the debate goes on, or whether it ends with convincing victories in the remaining primaries and among the superdelegates. Then the next chapter can begin.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-20” author: “Matthew Hampton”

As with so many public-policy debates, the one over the environment can seem hopelessly divided into fervent followers of Al Gore, fervid skeptics of the science who think global warming is a liberal fiction (or at least a liberal vast exaggeration) and a big middle realm in which many people are convinced of the scale of the problem but are honestly confused about which sacrifices are reasonable and which are possibly excessive, and thus unlikely to be made.

There is no doubt that most Americans agree, to use a familiar editorial construction, that something must be done, but the precise nature of that something is another question. This issue is our second annual project on “Environment & Leadership,” which is devoted to reporting on the people and the ideas that are shaping the ever-evolving work on climate change and other environmental issues. The package, edited by Alexis Gelber and George Hackett, explores the politics and dynamics of the debate and offers examples of what is working—and, in a piece by Sharon Begley, what is not. (There is also additional coverage on Newsweek.com, and we are hosting a conference this week at Georgetown University keynoted by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The mayor was preceded in that role last year by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.) And Daniel Gross discovers new virtues in Iceland, aside from the fish: a congenial investing environment with renewable energy. The aluminum giant Alcoa is already there. “It’s almost the ideal place to invest, because of the combination of a highly skilled work force, an open and transparent democracy and the endless supplies of renewable energy,” Alcoa’s Jake Siewert tells Daniel.

Politics being politics, big reforms requiring economic sacrifice and devotion to the common good are not easy to accomplish—if they were easy, there would be less need for big reforms—and Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert explore what history tells us about what makes a transformative president. Karen Breslau, who has covered Senator Clinton and was deeply involved in the making of this issue, has been struck by “the dearth of ’typical’ environmental events on the campaign: flannel-shirted candidates clearing trails in a national forest, or clambering up a melting glacier. Instead, we see candidates at wind-turbine factories and ethanol plants, or inspecting solar panels. The imagery is industrial; the talk is of jobs and energy ‘independence,’ not of drowning polar bears or donning our cardigans.” About a year from now we will find out, in the new president’s early months, just how much of 2008’s style becomes 2009’s substance.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-20” author: “Irene Coleman”

Reading news accounts of the document find, our foreign editor, Nisid Hajari, was intrigued, and called Kevin Peraino, our Middle East correspondent. The mission sounded simple—answer the question, why Darnah?—but Libya is, well, Libya. As Kevin, who wrote our cover this week, says: “One of the frustrating things about covering the Middle East wars is that, for security reasons, it’s often so difficult to tell a richly reported story about America’s enemies in the region. I knew it would be tough to gain access to the people we wanted to see in a police state like Libya. I had heard warning stories about the ubiquitous surveillance, impossible bureaucrats, planeloads full of people who were denied entry because they had forgotten to translate their passports into Arabic.

“It took me more than three months to get a visa, but once I was in I was pleasantly surprised by the access. A government minder met me at the airport—a beefy guy with a slight limp who wore a sweater vest in all weather—but I found that the authorities let me travel essentially wherever I liked as long as they could keep tabs on me. We flew to Benghazi and then drove three hours along the Mediterranean coast to Darnah. I wasn’t entirely sure what I would find there. When I had spoken to the brothers of some of the foreign fighters by phone ahead of time, they were deeply suspicious of my intentions. But one of the men I spoke to told me he worked at a local spice shop, so when I was in Darnah I just stopped by. Outside the shop one of the foreign fighters’ brothers was unloading crates, tightly gripping a box cutter as we approached. He greeted us coolly and looked a little nervous at first to see an American show up unannounced, but he eventually relaxed and invited us in for tea. The story that he told was fascinating to me—a world that we seldom get a clear window on. By the time I left, two weeks after I arrived in Libya, I felt as though I had wandered way through the looking glass.”

Kevin’s story is a piece of enterprising reporting. Other exclusive offerings this week include Lally Weymouth’s interview with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Karen Breslau’s conversation with Hillary Clinton. In an adaptation of his new book, “The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country,” Howard Fineman makes the counterintuitive case that arguing in politics is all to the good.

And in the realm of enterprise, Johnnie L. Roberts profiles Rupert Murdoch, who is making a counterintuitive bet of his own—on print journalism. After buying The Wall Street Journal last year from its longtime owners, the Bancroft family, Murdoch—master of media properties too numerous to name here—has decided to start an old-fashioned newspaper war with The New York Times. The stakes: which will become the most influential general-interest paper in the country. In a Webby world, an inky battle seems quaint, but it is real. If Murdoch believes in his cause—and he does—then this will be an epic struggle. Barons fight no other kind.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Thomas Cox”

“I had mixed feelings about reconnecting with my high-school classmates. My image of my high-school self had been that of the nerd, and I had no interest in stirring up those feelings of not being one of the ‘cool kids.’ Would the class president and Miss Congeniality think I was a dork if I called them and asked for an interview? But once I dove into the reporting, the fears dissipated. As my classmates told me about the shame and isolation many of them had felt growing up as children of divorce, I realized just how little each of us had known about one another back when we were in high school. As kids, most of us had kept our family secrets from one another. Now, speaking to my classmates as adults, I realized just how similar we all were. We were just people traveling though life with our respective baggage.”

What David also found reporting our cover story, edited by Julia Baird, was that despite the complications and collateral damage, divorce did not have to be a life sentence of misery. And, for the most part, his classmates did not blame their parents for whatever turmoil they were experiencing in their lives now. They had simply done the best they could at the time. The Divorce Generation had grown up.

At every magazine or newspaper where I’ve ever worked, spirited debate, occasionally a little too spirited, spills into the corridors. One of the things we like to do is reflect that kind of intellectual combat in our pages and on Newsweek.com. This week we’re fortunate to have two such clashes of ideas. Jonathan Alter and Fareed Zakaria square off on whether there should be an Olympic boycott. And on the occasion of Pope Benedict’s arrival in the United States this week, NEWSWEEK contributor and theologian George Weigel and Senior Editor Lisa Miller debate the relevance of his visit for a Catholic community here that can be assertive about its independence from Rome. Maybe these pieces will provide ammo for your own water-cooler arguments. Or, who knows, maybe they’ll change your mind about these important topics.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Daniele Huls”

The great thing about journalism is that we get paid to go in search of answers to the questions that interest us. And so we launched a reporting project to find out what we could about the small but fascinating world of surrogacy. The result is this week’s cover, written by Lorraine Ali and Raina Kelley with additional reporting from Jeneen Interlandi and Daniel Stone. Raina, who is in her second trimester, says that “it was truly strange working on this story while pregnant. The knowledge made intended parents nervous and defensive (though it did help them to open up regarding their own fertility struggles, all of which were nightmarish).”

Along the way we discovered what are called—and they love the term, treating it as an inside joke—“military carriers”: the wives of American servicemen who bear children for others. “I would never have imagined that one of the most disciplined, conservative and straitlaced slices of our society would be involved in one of the most unconventional—and contested—methods of achieving family,” says Lorraine. “But in the military-housing complexes surrounding San Diego’s bases, the wives of corpsmen and Navy petty officers told me their decision to become surrogates was largely based on the same ideals that brought their husbands to the military—that of sacrificing oneself for the greater good of others. The money also helps, they said, which made sense, considering they’re trying to raise kids on salaries that start at $16,080.”

The idea of surrogacy makes many people uncomfortable—some conservatives find it unnatural, some liberals say it exploits women—but our reporting destroyed a lot of popular preconceptions. “What amazed me about this story was the kindness of many of the women involved, the sense of empowerment, daring and duty, and the fact that for many, the greatest satisfaction—delight, even—came from giving a child to those unable to carry or deliver them themselves,” says Julia. “They defy stereotypes and, in some cases, can transform what appears to be a commercial transaction into something almost sisterly, or altruistic.”

One of the military wives Lorraine spent time with, 29-year-old Christina Slason, lives in San Diego. Photos of her husband, Joseph, helping a wounded soldier during the invasion of Baghdad, hung in the entryway alongside pictures of their three children. “Slason is a stoic woman,” Lorraine says. “But when she told me she couldn’t imagine being unable to have kids—how incomplete life would be—she teared up. She felt a great responsibility toward the couple she was carrying for—a same-sex male couple from Mexico City.”

As you will see, the numbers are relatively small, but the issues raised are enormous, and we think you will be glad that Julia got curious.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-29” author: “Antonio Matson”

It is interesting, then, that Barack Obama was not always Barack Obama. For a long time he was Barry Obama, which made us wonder about the milieu in which he moved from his nickname to the formal Barack, the name with which he came of age and has now risen to become the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination at the relatively young age of 46.

So when did Barry become Barack? In 1980–81, a period in which he was a student at Occidental College in California and was heading to New York, where he would finish college at Columbia. “It was when I made a conscious decision: I want to grow up,” Obama told us last week. In our cover, reported by Richard Wolffe, Jessica Ramirez, Eve Conant, Sarah Kliff, Andrew Murr and Miyoko Ohtake and written by Jeffrey Bartholet, we reconstruct Obama’s journey from one name to the other, and explore what light that journey sheds on his character. Allison Samuels, Ellis Cose and Jonathan Alter also contribute essays.

In electing presidents we are also choosing stories, and Obama’s personal narrative is a crucial element of his campaign. We should not allow the politics of the primary season to muddle that truth. Senator Clinton has very effectively cast Senator Obama as all story and no substance, which he is not, any more than she is all past and no future, which is Senator Obama’s caricature of her. But the Obama story is important, because character is important, and character can be understood only in the context of biography.

His Kenyan father had changed the name he went by, too—but from Barack to Barry. The elder Obama made the switch when he came to the United States as a student in 1959, reflecting the immigrant’s instinct to fit in, to assimilate. That his son would make the reverse journey in order to fit into the world in which he found himself suggests how much America has changed, and is still changing.

“The identity quest, which began before he became Barack and continued after, put him on a trajectory into a black America he had never really known as a child in Hawaii and abroad,” Jeff writes. “In the end, he would come to see and accept that he was in an almost unique position as an American—someone who had been part of both the white and the black American ‘families,’ able to view the secret doubts and fears and dreams of both, and to understand them. He could be part of a black world where his pastor and spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., expressed paranoid fantasies about white conspiracies to spread drugs or HIV, because he understood in his gut the history of racism that stoked those fears. He could, for a time, shrug off Wright’s more incendiary views, in part because he knew that whites, in their private worlds, often expressed or shrugged off bigotry themselves, partly because of fears that might seem irrational to African-Americans.”

His story is one that crosses at least two worlds, and he will have to keep telling that story—clearly and honestly, in the way he addressed race in Philadelphia— if he wants to lead the world.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-27” author: “Jana Beach”

It was a perfectly fine idea, but hardly startling. As the day went on, a persistent theme emerged in both passing and more-formal conversations. Many of our writers and editors, particularly but not exclusively women, believed Senator Clinton’s victories in Ohio and Texas were the most vivid expressions yet of a female backlash against what they believe to be a sexist bias among male voters and in the mainstream media.

The conversations were passionate, heartfelt and smart; Kathy Deveny, an assistant managing editor, said men talked about Clinton in ways they would—could —never talk about African-Americans or Jews. Julia Baird, the senior editor who runs our science and ideas coverage (and who wrote a book about female politicians and media) pointed out that even Margaret Thatcher had felt compelled to play on gender stereotypes in her rise to power. Deidre Depke, the editor of Newsweek.com, argued that Tina Fey’s “Saturday Night Live” cri de coeur—“bitch is the new black”— represented the unspoken feelings of swaths of the country.

It became clear that there was so much energy around the topic of gender and class that the right thing to do was to toss aside my initial idea and try to capture the vigor and the complexities of the debates we were having in the office.

In this week’s cover, then, you will find essays by 13 women from both inside and outside the magazine (not counting Anna Quindlen’s column, or Mark Miller’s contribution to the forum, or Jonathan Alter’s piece about his mother’s political career in Chicago). Tina Brown, who is at work on a book about Clinton and was already out on the trail for us, writes our lead essay; Dahlia Lithwick, a columnist for Slate, makes her debut as a regular NEWSWEEK contributor (going forward, Dahlia will be writing a biweekly column on culture and legal affairs). Monica Crowley offers a conservative view.

The campaign is, naturally, about more than identity politics. Clinton is not simply the “women’s candidate.” One can oppose her on political and policy grounds without being a retrograde sexist who wants to keep women in their place, just as one can oppose Obama on political and policy grounds without being a racist. One can even—and I know this sounds radical in this fervid Democratic moment—be a Republican, and favor McCain on his own merits.

But that is an argument, and a cover, for another day. Our essays are a window into the world of Democratic or Democratic-leaning women. They are designed to offer many, but not all, perspectives: conservatives will find themselves more often arguing with these personal pieces than nodding in agreement, but one of our jobs is to provoke debate, and we would rather raise complicated issues than handicap the horse race (though in an interview with Suzanne Smalley, Clinton sounds determined about claiming delegates from Michigan and Florida—always, always Florida). But enough from me. The roars begin on page 28.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-26” author: “Sheila Lyles”

A few days after the piece was published, a National Review envelope arrived in the mail at home. It was a letter from Buckley, whom I did not know. He thanked me for the review, and added that he would endeavor to do nothing in his dotage to embarrass me.

He kept his word. His death last week at age 82—he was found at his desk at his country house in Sharon, Conn.—marked the passing of an influential public intellectual and further depressed an already melancholy American right. Conservatism in 2008 is as disparate and adrift as it was more than half a century ago, when the young Buckley helped move the right beyond isolationists and anti-Semites to build the coalition of fiscal, foreign-policy and cultural conservatives that elected Reagan president in 1980.

As Evan Thomas writes in our cover, Buckley led a grand and consequential life. An aristocrat, he was not a snob; an archconservative, he was not harsh; a devoted ideologue, he respected the other side. Buckley is on the cover this week, however, not to be lionized—he was tragically wrong about race in the civil-rights era—but to be assessed as both a shaper and a symbol of one of the two most important political movements in modern America (postwar conservatism is one; New Deal liberalism the other).

To understand Buckley is to understand the rise of the right, and some of the reasons for its recent fall. “Several generations of conservatives grew up (in more than one sense) with Bill Buckley,” The Wall Street Journal said. “Now they have—well, there is no one like him.” The New York Times’s David Brooks, who worked for Buckley, told us: “He changed the personality of conservatism. It had been sort of negative, and he made it smart and sophisticated and pushed out all these oddballs and created a movement.” Of late, however, Brooks added, the right has “lost something.”

Evan adds: “In the conservatism spawned by talk radio and TV, the haters and know-nothings are back, ranting about immigrants and liberals.”

Buckley came to oppose the Iraq War. That the man who articulated the most ferocious case for an unrelenting struggle against communism decided, along with many other conservatives, that the government, even a Republican one, was unwisely overreaching in Iraq is one of the signs of the conservative crackup now underway. In an essay, Michael Gerson mines Buckley’s life for lessons that may help the right going forward, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor and publisher of The Nation, looks at Buckley from the world of the left, and of the band of small but hardy political magazines that defy financial gravity in order to keep the faith of their founders, whether of the left or of the right.

The last book Buckley finished—a memoir of Barry Goldwater—will be published this spring. “It was a grand time we had,” Buckley wrote of 1964, “providing all that political experiences could yield, joys and sorrows, excitement and depression.” The same could be said of the whole of Buckley’s life. The book’s title? “Flying High.” Buckley always was. Requiescat in pace.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-03” author: “Robert Tollison”

Winning their loyalty is a far more uncertain prospect. Still, Larry and Babak, with the perspective of five years in the Iraqi theater, can measure the progress. Babak recalls being embedded with the Marines in Fallujah in November 2004. “It was the largest combat operation since the 2003 invasion, and there really wasn’t much nuance,” he says. “The mission was simple—kill the enemy and take back lost territory. In one briefing, a commander told the troops to put a bullet in the head of anyone using a cell phone, assuming that cell phones were going to be used to detonate IEDs.” Nowadays, “there isn’t much of the gung-ho bluster. There seems to be a genuine desire to work with and talk to Iraqis because the GIs realize that’s their ticket out.” Larry adds: “Soldiers in Iraq are the point men for America’s hard-knocks education about our country’s power and place in the world. Over their repeated tours, they’ve shed a lot of Yankee naiveté for a more pragmatic, nuanced understanding of the world in the places where America is distrusted and disliked.”

Officers like Captain Wright are the leading edge of Gen. David Petraeus’s surge strategy, and are largely responsible for the fragile successes U.S. forces have had in recent months. Still, as Evan and John Barry report elsewhere in the cover package, Petraeus’s way of war faces institutional resistance from an old guard that remains wedded to a big-combat approach. The problem is that, given today’s messy world of terror groups and rogue states, we’ll have to prepare to fight both kinds of war. As we mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War this week, we should reflect on how far we’ve come, but cannot lose sight of these tough, looming questions either. Log on to Newsweek.com for full coverage of this important milestone.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-27” author: “Cynthia Bramblett”

You’ve read a lot about anti-Americanism in Europe. But what’s struck me since I’ve been here is the deep sense of uncertainty behind it. Europeans seem smug about our financial scandals but also nervous about how they may affect the global economy. They criticize our approach to fighting terror but haven’t had unqualified success uprooting it at home. They don’t like our Mideast policy but admit they can’t do much to improve the situation. Dumping on America, whether it’s over the death penalty or the World Court, has become more a reflex than a cause. The ritual makes it easier to confront the true reality: that no one has all the answers to the world’s problems these days.

If anything is certain, it’s that economic and security woes have only made it harder to sleep. In this week’s cover story, Barbara Kantrowitz takes you on her own journey to get more shut-eye, and explores new scientific research that may eventually help us all get a better night’s rest. On the Vivendi beat, Johnnie L. Roberts examines the role that Universal’s Barry Diller could play in cleaning up Messier’s mess. Allan Sloan looks for pockets of stability amid the stock-market turmoil, while Martha Brant and Michael Isikoff report on allegations of insider trading and accounting shenanigans that created problems for Harken Energy while George W. Bush was a director. Joshua Hammer spent time with Israeli reservists on patrol in the West Bank, documenting their debate about how far to go in the conflict with the Palestinians. Cathleen McGuigan demonstrates why preserving Old Havana is at least one thing Fidel Castro got right. And to eulogize Ted Williams, we turned to that former Yale first baseman, George Herbert Walker Bush, who is undoubtedly happier to be writing about baseball than wrestling with the challenges now facing his son.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-03” author: “Velvet Wilkes”

So I called my financial planner, hoping for a dramatic recommendation (sell! buy!). Instead, I got a welcome dose of common sense. She told me she felt my pain, but explained patiently for the umpteenth time that at my age (mid-40s) I still needed to be in stocks over the long run. If I sold everything now, I might spare myself more losses, but I’d also miss out on the rebound–whenever that comes. She did prescribe putting more money into bond funds, but pointed out that their returns are pretty lousy these days, too. On the bright side, she suggested I take advantage of record-low interest rates to refinance my mortgage, and think about shelling out a bit more for a 15-year loan so it will be paid off by the time I retire. The money I’d ultimately save in interest, she noted cheerfully, would more than make up for my losses in this bear market.

We’re all looking to our political leaders to give us similar perspective on this deepening financial crisis. Yet after several stabs at it, President Bush hasn’t succeeded in making us feel any better. Questions about his conduct as a director at Harken Energy (and Vice President Cheney’s at Halliburton) have hurt Bush’s credibility on the subject of corporate greed. He also has to fight comparisons with Bill Clinton, who for all his sins knew how to convince voters that the economy was his top priority. But increasingly, there’s also the sense that we may be watching Poppy, the Sequel: another Bush who gives great war but is slowly undone by lack of confidence in his handling of the economy. Although it’s far too early to predict that fate, Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman’s cover story this week makes clear that keeping the past from becoming prologue will be political job one for Bush in the next two years.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-18” author: “David Stevens”

My wife and I took my mother and our kids to Le Chambon last week, to visit French relatives but also to learn more about the town’s history. Around the kitchen table, my mother and her sister relived their memories of those awful years. After the German occupation in 1940, my grandparents arranged to put six of their eight daughters on a boat to stay with families in America; my mother, the oldest, was only 14. Later, the Vichy police arrested my grandfather and two colleagues and sent them to a detention camp. Luckily, they were released, but the camp’s other detainees were deported to Germany and never came back. Not all the Jews hidden in Le Chambon escaped the Gestapo when they made their sweeps through town. But most of them did, and after the war some expressed their gratitude by staying on to help build an international school called Le College Cevenol. It now has exchange programs with America, Israel–and Germany.

Like most kids who live in New York, mine are still occasionally haunted by the World Trade Center attacks, and wonder when the next terrorist strike might come. But the visit to Le Chambon was a reminder of how fortunate they, and most of the rest of us in the West, are. Western Europeans have not only avoided war for half a century but now get along well enough to share a common currency. In America, we have the luxury of fretting about a wobbly stock market and the effects of anti-aging treatments. September 11 showed that enemies of freedom still exist, and that we can’t take our way of life for granted. But it’s important to keep this latest war in perspective, and to be grateful for all the progress we’ve made since the people of Le Chambon refused to close their doors to a far greater evil.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-10” author: “Rosalie Murphy”

It was front-page news–but not news to us. Weeks after September 11, we reported that of all the terror threats, smallpox is the scariest, given how lethal it is and how quickly it spreads once a fully contaminated victim comes into contact with other people. And last month, we began digging into the government’s emergency plan to treat America within days in the event of a smallpox attack. Debra Rosenberg met with top public-health officials in Washington and came back with details of how cities would be mobilized, health workers immunized and doses diluted to produce more than 300 million shots. But as Geoffrey Cowley makes clear in our cover story, the terror scenario poses grave questions. Will the 55 percent of Americans who were vaccinated before 1972 need to be reinoculated? And what happens to people with conditions, from AIDS to eczema, that make their immune systems too weak to risk dying from the vaccine?

Just how real is the threat of a smallpox attack? Experts still aren’t sure if Saddam has smallpox among his weapons of mass destruction. But our lead story, by Christopher Dickey, suggests that if he does, it’s likely to be stored in one of the presidential palaces he still insists on keeping off-limits to U.N. inspectors. In another must-read exclusive, an excerpt from historian Michael Beschloss’s latest book reveals evidence that FDR may have been personally responsible for the controversial U.S. decision not to bomb German concentration camps in the final year of World War II. And for all you “Sopranos” fans out there, Jonathan Alter, a proud resident of Montclair, N.J., explains the subliminal effect the hit HBO series may have had on the downfall of Democratic Sen. Robert (The Torch) Torricelli.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-14” author: “Luis Crosby”

As Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert report in this week’s cover story, until recently they often didn’t. But now everything from research on the teenage brain to increased sensitivity to mental-health issues is helping identify the some 3 million American kids who suffer from symptoms of depression. They also have more options for treatment than ever, from antidepression drugs to cognitive-behavior therapy. That’s the good news. But we also explore some hard, unanswered questions. What effect do antidepressants have on growing brains? And can high schools and colleges always give kids the help they need while respecting their privacy?

With the midterm elections just a month away, Howard Fineman traveled to Texas to look at a Senate race that could help determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill for the next two years. Will the Republicans succeed in using the Iraq issue to keep Democratic candidates from focusing pivotal races on the wobbly economy and worries about education and health care? Meanwhile, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman report on a new link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that the administration believes could help rally support for going to war.

Besides Saddam Hussein, newsrooms around the country have been buzzing about another rogue: Bob Greene, the acclaimed Chicago Tribune reporter who resigned after admitting he had a sexual relationship with a teenage girl he wrote about in a column more than a decade ago. At first the gossip centered on Greene: did his offense warrant losing his job? But on our Web site last week, Seth Mnookin reported that Tribune colleagues have long suspected Greene’s wandering eye, including use of his old “beauty contest” column to identify potential conquests. As Seth points out this week, a profession that has spent so much time exposing sexual hypocrisy is now getting a taste of its own medicine.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Virginia Martinez”

That wasn’t the original reason we were interested in Cobain’s unpublished diary entries and letters. Our critics have always regarded his group Nirvana as a revolutionary cultural force: a band that blew out of Seattle in the late 1980s and reminded a jaded record industry and public of the musical and emotional honesty that should be at the heart of rock and roll. When Cobain committed suicide in 1994, we recognized it as a seismic moment for the post-boomer generation and put him on newsweek’s cover. So when Senior Editor Jeff Giles found out that “Journals” was in the works, he eagerly pursued the rights to excerpt it. Only when we read it did we realize just how powerful and tragic a story Cobain’s own words tell. As Lorraine Ali notes in her introduction, they show him evolving from an energetic twentysomething plotting to put together a “tight” band into a desperate junkie with a heroin addiction that was literally sapping his will to live. Warning: while funny and delightful in parts, the excerpt is not for the faint of heart. But we think it will be essential reading for anyone who cares about Nirvana’s music–and a fascinating and sobering journey for any reader.

Three inside stories offer other reminders that life is more complicated than some people would like it to be. In the wake of North Korea’s admission that it has nuclear weapons, and reports that Al Qaeda may have been behind the deadly terror strike in Bali, Michael Hirsh, Tamara Lipper and Michael Isikoff examine whether George W. Bush can successfully deal with these threats while forcing an all-or-nothing confrontation with Iraq. Our report on the D.C. sniper investigation shows the double-edged effect that media coverage (including ours) has had on the case: heightening alarm, but also helping disseminate clues and dispel false leads. And for all of you who have been wolfing down salmon because you’ve heard what wonders it does for your heart and skin, you’ll want to check out this week’s Health story. You’ll learn why farmed “Atlantic” salmon (the stuff you’re probably eating) is nowhere near as healthy as wild “Alaska” salmon (the kind you always pay more for in restaurants).

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-03” author: “Jimmy Weise”

Of course, when he was finally captured, Son of Sam turned out to be a pudgy, porn-addicted lunatic named David Berkowitz who claimed that Sam was a 6,000-year-old man who spoke to him through his neighbor’s dog. In the end, it was hard to believe such a pathetic psycho had managed to kill six innocent people and paralyze the world’s biggest city with fear.

It’s human nature to try to make sense of the senseless. So again last week, Americans tried to figure out why, day after horrifying day, a sniper firing .223-caliber bullets was killing random victims in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs around Washington, D.C. The gunman was felling his prey with one bullet from long range, so he must be a trained military marksman. (Or maybe not, since he shot at more bodies than heads.) A tarot card was found near one crime scene, so he must be a follower of the occult. (Or maybe not, since anyone who understood the “Death” card wouldn’t link it to murder.) “Dear Policeman, I am God,” a note on the tarot card boasted. So the killer must be a grandiose madman–or maybe a videogame nut acting out a gruesome real-life version of “One Shot, One Kill.”

Yet while we played amateur detective, parents in the crime zone worried about sending kids to football practice, and drivers crouched behind cars as they filled gas tanks. And to families of the victims, no explanation will ever sort out why their loved ones died so needlessly. Because this story has gripped the country–and reminded us of our vulnerability to criminal as well as international terror–we decided to put it on the cover despite the chance the killer (or killers) may be captured or dead by the time you read this. In that case, our story will be missing the last chapter. But if it means the families around Washington can rest easy again, that will be fine with us.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-31” author: “Shirley Ikehara”

This week, we’re pleased to bring you another special report in our ongoing Next Frontiers series, on how technology will change the way doctors treat everything from brain disease to cancer. Geoffrey Cowley writes about computerized scans that can detect the onset of Alzheimer’s and pinpoint its treatment. Daniel McGinn and Brad Stone investigate the exciting progress of “neural prosthetics”–the use of bionic body parts that can restore failing eyesight, hearing and speech. Karen Breslau explains “bionanotechnology,” the science of delivering chemotherapy and other needed medicine directly to individual cells. David Noonan chronicles the way medical schools are now training doctors for this brave new world, abandoning rote learning and rites of passage like cadaver dissections for a much greater emphasis on wired diagnosis and surgery. Finally, Anne Underwood gives an update on the AbioCor heart, which has now been transplanted in seven patients, including two who are still alive, and one, Tom Christerson, who’s out of the hospital and back to enjoying barbecued ribs. I’m very proud of this package, which was conceived by Alexis Gelber and edited by her and Nancy Cooper, Barbara Kantrowitz and Lisa Miller. And I hope that this time, too, we will not only keep readers on the cutting edge of medical thought but help them discover new ideas for improving their health and prolonging their lives.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-08” author: “John Walling”

In fact, that’s part of Martha’s problem right now. She’s built an empire on pitching herself as the model of perfection. So it’s only human nature that people are taking a bit of guilty pleasure in seeing her mussed up. Her broker is being questioned for, among other things, unloading Stewart’s stake in ImClone, a biotech company, the day before the government refused to review its most promising drug. Although Stewart says neither the broker nor ImClone’s CEO, a social friend, told her about the drug snag before she dumped the stock, the scandal has tarnished her image and could hurt the business she’s built around it.

Still, we didn’t put Martha on the cover just because she makes good dish (although as you’ll see from Marc Peyser’s profile, she does). ImClone is only the latest scandal feeding a growing wave of public distrust in corporate America and Wall Street. Enron, Merrill Lynch, Tyco–all have added to the sense that CEOs and insiders have made out like bandits while average investors are taking a beating. In companion pieces, Allan Sloan examines whether anything will change as a result of these scandals, while Robert J. Samuelson takes the press to task for first hyping, and now depressing, “the New Economy.”

Leading the book, Joshua Hammer wrests another powerful human-interest story from the carnage in the Middle East, about ER docs in Jerusalem struggling to treat the victims of suicide bombers. A generation after Mary McCarthy’s “The Group,” Barbara Kantrowitz profiles the network of women now running universities. And Angela Bassett opens up to Allison Samuels about the prejudices and personal pride that have kept her from fulfilling her early promise as the next black movie superstar. If you liked Allison’s Denzel Washington piece in February, you’ll love this one.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Julia Jones”

Our first scoop came as early as Sept. 15. Dan Klaidman, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball reported that at the time of the attack, the CIA had two of the hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, on its “watch list,” in connection with their suspected role in bin Laden’s bombings of the USS Cole in Yemen. On Oct. 1, Isikoff and Klaidman broke another bombshell on our Web site: that after arresting the suspected “20th hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui, in August, FBI agents in Minneapolis had asked for permission to inspect his computer hard drive but been denied by the Justice Department in Washington. On Oct. 29 we were the first news organization to report that the FBI’s field office in Phoenix had cabled head-quarters “about an unusual number of Arabs who seem to be taking flight lessons.”

In some cases, we’ve also been the first to shoot down rumors that others hyped. Last month we broke the story that the widely reported meeting between Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent of Saddam Hussein’s in Prague before September 11 probably never took place. As with the other scoops, the nation’s most influential newspapers and TV news broadcasts picked up the story (and some even gave us credit).

This week our cover package explores what went wrong: why so many balls were dropped, what the political fallout will be for Bush and how we can improve our domestic intelligence to prevent the next attack. And of course, with Klaidman, Isikoff and Hosenball on the case, we have more exclusives. Among them: that a Phoenix FBI agent requested authority to wiretap the Arab flight-school students, but was turned down, and that in recent weeks the FBI has received specific threats of a terrorist attack on an “all-glass” building near the U.S. Capitol. The story, written by Michael Hirsh, begins on page 28.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-23” author: “Terry Cumberledge”

In the past few years organic has gone mainstream–and big-time. It is now an $11 billion business and the fastest-growing segment of food retailing. And next month the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the first time will issue an official stamp of approval indicating whether your apples, green beans or chicken are authentically “organic.” So we thought it was a good time to ask Geoff, Karen Springen and Anne Underwood to explore some basic questions. What exactly will the new label mean? When is organic food healthier for you and when isn’t it? And what do organic farming and production mean to the environment?

Five weeks ago we devoted our cover (The War Crimes Of Afghanistan, Aug. 26) to an investigative report on evidence that our Afghan allies in the war against the Taliban deliberately suffocated as many as 1,000 prisoners of war in sealed cargo containers and buried them in mass graves, and that the United Nations and the Red Cross remained silent for fear of upending the task of postwar nation-building in Afghanistan. Last week we learned that the U.N.’s top man in Afghanistan told the Security Council that he had secured the government’s cooperation in investigating the mass grave. We applaud this first step toward uncovering the truth. And I’m proud that it was taken at least in part because of the courageous reporting of Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry and Roy Gutman.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “Sharon Bocook”

Next came the day itself. Although we had seen the pictures and watched the footage and heard the heartbreaking stories before, we relived them again, and in some ways they had even more power. Now we knew the faces and life stories attached to so many of the names that were so movingly read at Ground Zero. We had heard the accounts of those who made it out, like the “impact zone” survivors who first told their stories to NEWSWEEK, so we had an even more harrowing sense of what the end must have been like for those who didn’t. As my kids’ babysitter put it, we’ve seen all those babies who will never know their fathers. This September 11 was like a memorial service for the entire nation.

Then we returned to talking about war. In our cover story a week ago, we asked whether President Bush would favor the unilateralist macho of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or the multilateralist cool of Secretary of State Colin Powell in trying to rid the world of the menace posed by Saddam Hussein. Addressing the United Nations, Bush came down on the side of Powell, in perhaps the most demanding and intellectually impressive speech of his presidency. Yet the debate doesn’t end there. As Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas point out in their cover story this week, the same volatile factors that led the United States to help keep Saddam in power for so many years won’t disappear with him. Bush has forcefully “made the case” about the risks of mass destruction and even more horrific terror if we don’t confront Saddam. The next step is to address how we can fix Iraq and keep the region around it from exploding if we do.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-16” author: “Alfonso Dickerson”

This is a tricky subject, because there are very real victims among us. Men still abuse women in alarming numbers. Racism and discrimination persist in subtle and not-so-subtle forms. But these days, almost anyone can find a therapist or lawyer to assure them that their professional, relationship or health problems aren’t their fault. As Marc Peyser tells us in his terrific profile of Dr. Phil, the TV suits were initially afraid audiences would be offended by his stern advice to “get real!” In fact, viewers craved the tough talk. Privately, we all know we have to take responsibility for decisions we control. It may not be revolutionary advice (and may leave out important factors like unconscious impulses). But it’s still an important message with clear resonance as, a year later, we contemplate the personal lessons of September 11.

Back at the ranch–the one in Crawford, Texas–President Bush continued to issue mixed signals on Iraq. He finally promised to consult allies and Congress before going to war, and signaled an attack isn’t imminent (“I’m a patient man”). But so far there has been little consensus-building, even as the administration talks of “regime change” and positions troops in the gulf. Bush’s team also ridiculed the press for giving so much coverage to the Iraq issue. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld called it a “frenzy,” and Press Secretary Ari Fleischer dismissed it as “self-inflicted silliness.” But as Michael Hirsh notes in our lead story, much of the debate has been inside the Republican Party, where important voices of experience argue Bush needs to prepare domestic and world opinion and think through the global consequences before moving forward. With so much at stake, the media shouldn’t pay attention? Now who’s being silly?

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-25” author: “Glenda Mooberry”

We’ve arrived at that point in the debate over Iraq. Although they may agree that Saddam Hussein poses a threat, Bush’s top foreign-policy advisers are clearly at odds over how to deal with it. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, backed by Vice President Dick Cheney, would like to see the U.S. military take Saddam out, with or without direct provocation or global support. Secretary of State Colin Powell represents a school of moderates who worry about consequences: of sending U.S. troops into battle without a clear exit strategy; of not bringing along our allies and the United Nations, of setting a precedent of “preventative” war that could come back to haunt us. As Evan Thomas and Michael Hirsh explore in our cover package, this isn’t just a disagreement about Iraq. It reflects a fundamental dispute over how America should earn the respect of the rest of world: through raw strength, or through restraint and consultation.

So what will Bush decide? Addressing the United Nations this week, he’s likely to show where his heart lies. But as he weighs the reservations of allies, generals and even some of his father’s most sage foreign-policy aides, what role will his head play?

The anniversary of September 11 may seem an odd time to excerpt a book called “Authentic Happiness.” But we felt psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman’s message was appropriate this week. While tragedy or good fortune can alter people’s lives, he argues, their ultimate sense of well-being depends much more on inner reserves of strength, virtue and self-knowledge. Since 9-11, the example shown by its heroes and the loved ones of its victims has amply proved the point. In this time of remembrance and new beginnings, we should all wish each other the authentic happiness that Seligman says is within our grasp.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “Mary Henderson”

Still, NEWSWEEK’s Pentagon correspondent John Barry was troubled by the reports and urged us to launch our own investigation. In three trips to the Sheberghan region, Babak Dehghanpisheh interviewed drivers, villagers and surviving prisoners who told a horrifying story: that forces under an American ally, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, had packed prisoners into sealed cargo containers, without air or water, leaving hundreds to suffocate on the trek to the prison. In Washington, Barry interviewed experts from Physicians for Human Rights who found a fresh mass grave near Sheberghan where several hundred of the bodies may be buried; PHR says it alerted Bush officials but got no response. As Barry and Roy Gutman probed further, they learned details of a U.N. report that suggested close to a thousand prisoners had been killed in circumstances warranting a “criminal investigation.” But the U.N. had sat on its own report, in part for fear of creating new disorder in Afghanistan.

And the U.S. role? We found no evidence that Special Ops forces approved the actions of Dostum’s soldiers. But there is evidence (including photos gathered by James Wellford) that American troops were present at Sheberghan in the days the bodies arrived. Since U.S. forces helped broker the surrender of Taliban forces at Konduz, this story raises the question of whether we bore some responsibility for their safe transfer under the Geneva Conventions of war. And it carries clear, and disturbing, lessons about the risks in fighting wars by “proxy,” as we are now contemplating again in Iraq. Because of its horror and potential fallout, this is a story a lot of people didn’t want told. For the same reasons, we believe it’s one the public has a right to know.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-12” author: “Sophie Formica”

But there are some things about Jane you may not know. She has a wild streak: as she revealed recently in Tip Sheet, she drives a bright red Mercedes convertible. She can be sentimental: every Christmas she and her husband, David, invite friends over to do a reading of Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” complete with costumes and spooky lighting. And for someone who doles out dispassionate financial tips, she is deeply passionate. She loves nothing better than taking on charlatans who peddle bogus investment schemes and misleading insurance or credit-card claims. (Our lawyers have the battle scars to prove it.)

So it came as no surprise when Jane made a remarkable confession: after all these years of dispensing it, she’s decided people just aren’t that good at following financial advice. We were talking about all the money people have lost in their 401(k)s during the recent stock crash, and she went on a tear. It wasn’t enough to give employees a lot of investment options and let them choose on their own, she argued. With 401(k)s taking the place of pension funds and Social Security as many people’s best hope for retirement, companies and the government needed to make sure people used them wisely. Well, when Jane gets that worked up, she’s usually on to something, so we decided to do a cover. We hope it helps you in these turbulent times–and stirs more debate in Washington and CEO offices about how to keep little guys safer from the bear.

Note: Last week NEWSWEEK lost one of the quiet pros who are the backbone of our business: marketing research analyst Helene Daly, who died of cancer at 58, a month before she planned to retire. We’ll miss her deeply.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-12” author: “Charles Dean”

Jeff Giles sensed that about M. Night Shyamalan as soon as they met in 2000. Then only 29, Shyamalan had directed the sleeper hit “The Sixth Sense,” and Jeff invited him to our editorial Oscar Round Table. Shyamalan confidently declared his ambition to make quality blockbusters, and got into a tiff with Sam Mendes (“American Beauty”) by complaining that critics only like films that “break the rules.” Yet like Steven Spielberg (or Alfred Hitchcock), Shyamalan is an artist as well as a crowd-pleaser. He writes his own scripts, and films them around his native Philadelphia, rather than in L.A. And while his plots involve ghosts and extraterrestials, they revolve around characters and emotions more than special effects. Coming between “Goldmember” and “XXX,” his haunting, touching new film, “Signs,” may be the best horror flick and the best family movie of the summer. And as you’ll see from Giles’s profile, “Night” has the talent, vision (and healthy ego) to be a force for years to come.

A note to all the brokers who wrote after the last Editor’s Desk: I’m not looking for more financial help. But it was nice to see the stock market calm down, at least for now. This week, Howard Fineman assesses the politics behind the Bush administration’s crackdown on crooked CEOs, while Jane Bryant Quinn looks for refuge in foreign funds. And Peg Tyre reports on the growing crusade to hold fast-food companies liable for health problems they help create, particularly among kids. Any parent will want to read her piece on whether “Big Fat” could become the next “Big Tobacco.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-27” author: “Harriett Holland”

It was, as they say, the start of a beautiful friendship. We were so impressed by the quality and reliability of Quadracci’s operation that we gave him all our Midwest business a year later. It was his first big account, and he ran with it. During the next two decades Quadracci kept investing in the best new technology–and the best people–and built Quad/Graphics into the largest privately owned printing company in the world, with 11,000 employees, 35 facilities around the globe and annual revenues of $1.8 billion. The company now prints more than 2 million copies of NEWSWEEK every week, as well as Time, Playboy, National Geographic and a majority of America’s shopping catalogs.

But when Harry Quadracci died last week at 66, of accidental drowning while swimming near his lakeside home, the crowds who attended his funeral in Milwaukee came to honor the man as much as the businessman. Unlike some CEOs in the headlines today, Quadracci was a pioneer in sharing his success with his workers: from an employee stock-ownership plan, to on-site child- and health-care facilities, to the company planes, trains and houses that he made available to his people. He and his wife, Betty, gave generously to Milwaukee, funding a theater, a new wing of the art museum and many other good works. “And he was just as generous when he wasn’t rich,” recalls Rivello, now our vice president for manufacturing and distribution. “If a pressman was going to lose his house, Harry was there with the mortgage payment.” As Chairman Rick Smith put it in a memo to our staff last week, “NEWSWEEK and NEWSWEEK’s readers have lost a great friend.” Perhaps it’s fitting that our cover subject this week is heaven. We’re sure that’s where Harry Quadracci is now.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-15” author: “William Wu”

For all the laughter, I remember two very serious moments from that lunch. When asked what he learned from his father’s loss in 1992, Bush replied firmly: “You have to spend political capital.” Elaborating, he said his father hadn’t done enough to exploit his popularity after the gulf war. And as we left the governor’s mansion, still debating whether Bush had the stuff to become president, Howard set us straight. “Bush likes people to have low expectations,” he said. “Then he can exceed them. He’s been doing it his whole life. He’s a lot better politician than people realize.”

No one doubts that now, after Bush defied history and helped Republicans pick up seats in Congress and win back the Senate in a midterm election. As Fineman and Tamara Lipper reconstruct in our cover story, he did it by gambling his political capital on a furious round of personal campaigning in close races across the country. If it hadn’t worked, Bush would have lost face. But because it did, he has won newfound political respect as well as a friendly Congress to support his agenda on Iraq, homeland security, tax cuts and judicial appointments. And as Jonathan Alter and Anna Quindlen make clear, the narrow swing has devastated the Democratic Party, leaving it demoralized and with no clear leader or message going forward.

With one son in college and another on his way, Barbara Kantrowitz is a veteran of the college-admissions process. And she applauds the move by Yale and Stanford to abandon binding “Early Decision.” As she writes this week, the growing trend toward rethinking this practice is bound to create new confusion. But in the long run, she thinks it will lead to more options and less pressure for kids–something all of us with teenagers at home can applaud.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-23” author: “Sherri Kneser”

Like a lot of our best stories, this week’s cover grew out of the personal experiences of our reporters. Dan got so interested in the subject of kids TV that he began doing more research. He discovered a growing school of educational experts who think a lot of today’s quality television is good for preschoolers; in fact, some even argue that it can help intellectual development. Not surprisingly, other NEWSWEEKers with young children strongly disagreed. As she writes in a heartfelt dissent, Karen Springen from our Chicago bureau and her husband, Mark, don’t let her kids watch any TV–even at other houses. And like some others around the magazine, she thinks even praising good television will only encourage the trend toward kids’ watching far too much bad TV. “Well-meaning friends tell us our girls may be missing out,” Karen says of Jazzy, nearly 6, and Gigi, 3. “On what? ‘Pokemon’ or ‘Survivor’?”

So what should you think? As usual, we’ll let you decide. But after all the passionate discussion we’ve had around the office, we’re sure any parent with young kids, and anyone who grew up watching TV or seeing it as forbidden fruit, will be interested in the debate.

Are we punishing Saddam Hussein by not buying Iraq’s oil? Not as much as we think, according to Mark Hosenball’s exclusive report on the scams Saddam uses to get around the oil embargo. Jane Bryant Quinn issues a tough report card on corporate reform since the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Cathleen McGuigan looks at the exciting new architecture transforming downtown L.A. And Fred Guterl reports that brain science is now showing that Dr. Freud was right all along about his theory of the mind. From dreams to Elmo, it turns out that it all really does go back to childhood.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-28” author: “Helen Lepak”

In the war on terror, it was another week that helped explain why people are so hungry for escapism these days. An audiotape of what sounded like the voice of Osama bin Laden suggested that the Qaeda leader is still alive, and the FBI issued new alerts about terror threats at home and abroad. In an alarming investigative report, Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau piece together evidence that Qaeda operatives may have already rebuilt makeshift training camps in Afghanistan, and are busy preparing local Afghans for new attacks. And we have a magazine exclusive with riveting details from Bob Woodward’s new book, “Bush at War,” which documents for the first time the extent of the personal fears and uncertainty that reigned in the White House in the early hours and days after September 11.

Having covered the global war against AIDS for a decade and a half, Geoffrey Cowley warns that the next major battleground will be India. Traveling there recently, he found all the ingredients for an epidemic–overpopulation, illiteracy, rampant prostitution and cultural taboos–but also surprising rays of hope, including growing public and charitable support for sex education. I urge you to read his story, which is accompanied by haunting photographs taken for NEWSWEEK by Alex Majoli.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-09” author: “Mary Rowe”

From the very beginning, NEWSWEEK’s coverage of the most deadly serial-crime case in a decade has been a remarkable team effort. On the ground, Wingert was joined by T. Trent Gegax and Suzanne Smalley, who worked police contacts made during the Chandra Levy story to break exclusive details of a law-enforcement-strategy meeting. Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball and Daniel Klaidman tracked the federal investigation, collectively drawing on decades of experience covering the FBI. Looking back through a dog-eared notebook, Klaidman found the name of one source who even-tually confirmed that the FBI had wired $100,000 to a bank account in response to the snipers’ demands.

As the authorities began to close in on the suspects, Andrew Murr and Ana Figueroa traveled to their former home in Washington state, and Arian Campo-Flores scrambled to Montgomery, Ala., apparently the scene of the first shooting. And once we learned the identities of John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, Kevin Peraino and Catharine Skipp went to explore their pasts in Jamaica and Antigua, while Anne Belli Gesalman headed to Muhammad’s hometown of Baton Rouge, La., where she had an exclusive interview with a cousin who was one of the last relatives to see him.

Mark Miller oversaw the reporting, and Evan Thomas pulled it together into what we hope will be the most definitive account of this awful killing spree yet. Last Friday our reporters spent six hours double-checking their day-by-day, hour-by-hour time line of the crime and the investigation. When we called a Justice Department source to check it, he said NEWSWEEK was ahead of the Feds, who were still trying to figure out exactly what happened and when.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-14” author: “Audrey Connell”

This year we offer our list of people to watch in 2003. There’s Gen. Tommy Franks, who would lead a war against Iraq. There’s Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan, a charismatic new political star who could help revive the battered Democratic Party. There’s White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, whom President Bush may nominate to become the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. And we have some fun picks, too, like 13-year-old Freddy Adu, an immigrant from Ghana, touted as America’s greatest soccer prospect ever. Deputy Director of Photography Simon Barnett worked overtime to bring us pictures as memorable as the stories, uniting two Iraqi Kurdish rebel leaders in London and photographing economist Jeffrey Sachs in the swirl of rush-hour traffic in Grand Central Terminal.

In the world of movies, we selected the team behind the sci-fi thriller “The Matrix,” who have two much-anticipated sequels coming out in 2003. Devin Gordon spent weeks interviewing the producer, stars and crew and gained access to footage and plot lines to give fans an exclusive first peek. And for non-fans, he explains the revolutionary impact “The Matrix” has had on everything from special effects to fashion. Why are we so convinced the new films will be a hit? We listened to the young stars on our staff, and to our kids and their friends, many of whom have seen the original “Matrix” dozens of times on DVD. In fact, over the Christmas holiday my family is going to visit relatives outside Boston, where the son of friends has invited my son over… to watch “The Matrix.” I hope you enjoy the issue, and Happy Holidays from all of us at NEWSWEEK.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Jackson Blackman”

In October we published another cover story called “Operation: Smallpox,” on the emerging plans to inoculate Americans against the dreaded disease as we readied for war against Iraq and its suspected arsenal of biological weapons. We received scores of letters about that issue, some thanking us, but others complaining that we were being alarmist. In Washington last week, President Bush announced that he had approved the emergency plan, and that he himself would get a smallpox shot along with the military personnel who will be the first to be vaccinated. If you’ve been reading the magazine for a while, you may also remember a 1999 piece by Contributing Editor Julia Reed about the strange idiosyncrasies of the then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. In our cover story this week, Jon Meacham teams up with Julia and Eleanor Clift to explain the history of regional racism, political opportunism and psychological denial that all led one of the most powerful men in Congress to make the remarks that have ignited a political firestorm, deeply embarrassing his party and president, and putting his leadership in grave jeopardy.

We’re also proud of the reporting enterprise shown by NEWSWEEK’s foreign-language editions. Recently Dokyung Lim, the editor-in-chief of our Korean edition, HANKUK PAN, received the Kwanhun prize, South Korea’s highest press honor, for her exposes of the suspect activities of relatives and associates surrounding President Kim Dae Jung. And NEWSWEEK POLSKA, our Polish-language edition, garnered two awards for investigative reporting–on a corrupt prosecutor, and on environmental groups that threaten lawsuits to shake down companies for big payoffs.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-23” author: “Brandon Vroman”

In this week’s cover story, we look at the growing–and increasingly controversial–abstinence movement from both a political and a personal perspective. Visiting high-school programs, talking to experts and examining the data, Debra Rosenberg discovered near-universal support for talking up chastity as part of “comprehensive sex education.” But she also found worries about the most conservative programs, some of them now favored by the Bush administration, that condemn premarital sex as immoral and teach kids that contraception doesn’t work. Meanwhile, Lorraine Ali and Julie Scelfo got a half-dozen teenagers who are virgins by choice to tell their stories. What they found is that these kids are more influenced by strong religious values, close parents and the desire to avoid mistakes made by their peers than by cultural images or official antisex programs. Moving and real, their testimony suggests that teaching sexual values starts outside the classroom–and begins long before the teen years.

While fallout continues from our exclusive report last week–raising questions about how funds from the wife of the Saudi ambassador made their way to men who helped two of the September 11 hijackers–we look this week at the frightening new specter raised by a failed missile attack on an Israeli jetliner leaving Kenya. Business reporter Johnnie L. Roberts provides some fascinating new details showing the AOL-Time Warner merger was in trouble long before most people suspected it. And Jeff Giles and Barbara Kantrowitz have a Hollywood exclusive you’ll all enjoy: a group interview with Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore about their new film, “The Hours,” and the bravura performances that have made all three early Oscar favorites.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-16” author: “Edward Villegas”

Not that Rice’s background is irrelevant to her current role. In his cover profile, Evan Thomas points out that growing up in Birmingham, Ala., at the height of its desegregation battles steeled Rice for the turmoil of public life, and accustomed her to balancing idealism and hard reality. Fareed Zakaria, who has known Rice as a professor and policymaker for the past decade, explains how her (and her boss’s) world view has expanded since September 11. And while we were exploring Bush’s foreign policy, we thought we’d send Christopher Dickey and Carla Power to gauge the mood of the “Arab Street” by visiting Muhammad Atta’s old neighborhood in Cairo. What they found is admiration for America but also deep grievance about U.S. high-handedness and condescension: a wariness that applies just as much to our talk of “spreading values” as waging war.

You know a business is a hit when people start using it as a verb. To “Google” something now means using the Internet search engine of the same name to find out everything there is to learn about it. So we asked our technology guru, Steven Levy, to Google Google. And while a Web search may not be necessary to appreciate the genius of Jack Nicholson, you should also check out Jeff Giles’s profile of the aging master. With his portrayal of a lonely widower in his new movie, “About Schmidt,” Nicholson proves yet again that every time we think he’s gotten as good as it gets, he shows that we don’t know Jack.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-12” author: “Kathy Samantha”

Ironically, one thing that hasn’t changed over the decades is how willing we’ve been to embrace change. We were the first news magazine to run a color photo of a U.S. president (Roosevelt in 1935), to introduce columns on Washington (1943) and business (1956), to take an editorial stand (on civil rights in 1963) and to start a foreign-language edition (in Japan in 1986; we now have five worldwide). In the past 20 years we’ve led the way in giving writers bylines, encouraging them to write in their own voices, and livening the format with sharp, fun sections like Periscope and Tip Sheet. But the biggest move we’ve pioneered is away from rehashing last week’s news to peering beyond and behind the headlines we now assume readers get elsewhere. That’s why, as proud as we are of NEWSWEEK’s history, we’re not doing a 70th anniversary issue. These days we’re about looking ahead.

In that spirit, our cover package this week tackles all the questions that arose after Colin Powell’s case against Iraq before the United Nations last week. As impressive as it sounded, how solid was Powell’s evidence? Now that war seems so likely, how will we fight it, and with what new high-tech weapons? Elsewhere, we give you a heads-up on everything from the fate of the space shuttle after the Columbia tragedy, to the growing legal battle over lead-paint poisoning in kids, to the dazzling Matisse/Picasso exhibit about to arrive in New York. And notice all the cool graphics in this week’s issue? They’re the work of Karl Gude, Bonnie Scranton, Kevin Hand, Karen Yourish, Josh Ulick, Tonia Cowan and Stanford Kay. If the magazine looks a sight better than it did 70 years ago, Karl and his team are one reason why.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-17” author: “Jacob Taylor”

On war with Iraq, for instance, Sarah was a skeptic all along. Now, with thousands of soldiers shipping out to the Gulf, a majority of Americans, according to our latest poll, are beginning to question the Bush administration’s apparent determination to go into battle even without support from the United Nations or a clear “smoking gun.” In our cover package this week, Richard Wolffe and Michael Hirsh examine the short- and long-term consequences of Bush’s brinkmanship. Looking forward, Christopher Dickey argues that a U.S. occupation of a post-Saddam Iraq may only inflame anti-American fervor and terror. (Fareed Zakaria suggests why it won’t.) And Evan Thomas and Gen. Wayne Downing chronicle the very real fear that soldiers experience in battle–a needed reminder as we ask our young men and women to pay the price for the convictions of policymakers in Washington.

Thought stock market day trading died with the Internet boom? Daniel McGinn reports that it’s alive and clicking. Peg Tyre examines the latest thinking in Phys. Ed. for kids. And in our annual Oscar round table, David Jefferson and Jeff Giles get the dish from “best supporting” hopefuls Catherine Zeta-Jones, Christopher Walken, Kathy Bates, John C. Reilly, Dennis Quaid and Chris Cooper. As David and Jeff would be the first to tell you, the round table is another NEWSWEEK tradition that Sarah Pettit loved and took to new heights.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-21” author: “Elaine Morris”

In this week’s cover package, we look beyond the frenzy over duct tape and plastic sheeting to examine what effect living in this age of anxiety is having on our health. Reviewing the latest science, Geoffrey Cowley explains why, over time, persistent worry over physical threats can have a serious impact on our brains and our bodies. Claudia Kalb offers a sensible guide to coping with anxious feelings, while sidebars and graphics explain how to comfort your kids and, yes, the do’s and don’ts of duct tape. In our news section, we cover the latest developments contributing to our stress levels. Daniel Klaidman and Evan Thomas have exclusive reporting on the good–and bad–intelligence behind the new terror alerts. And Christopher Dickey assesses the widening rift between the United States and much of Europe over war with Iraq, a split he predicted a full year ago in his piece “Fears in the Un-America” (Feb. 11, 2002, issue).

Of course, one way we all deal with anxiety is by trying to take our minds off it. In an exclusive scoop from the world of technology, Steven Levy explains how a team of twentysomethings at Microsoft have created a new group-software concept called “NetGen” designed more for fun than productivity. And Anna Quindlen weighs in on our hottest national diversion, reality TV shows. Anna loves an escapist novel or movie as much as anyone, but she has one word for folks who see harmless entertainment in shows like “Are You Hot?” Not.

–Mark Whitaker

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-31” author: “Bonnie Navarro”

At NEWSWEEK, we were still a half-a-day away from our Saturday-night “close,” so we didn’t hesitate to rip up the magazine. Within minutes of hearing that the shuttle Columbia had blown up during re-entry, Chief of Correspondents Marcus Mabry was deploying reporters from Texas to Wyoming. Photo Editors Michelle Molloy and Simon Barnett began contacting everyone from local newspapers to amateur photographers to gather the best images of Columbia’s flight and its crew members. And before we had to ask, Angelo Rivello, John Nallen, Jack Widener and Becky Cassidy of our Manufacturing and Distribution department had war gamed how to give us later deadlines and print more issues.

The result is a 20-page cover package that, we hope, captures the emotional trauma of the Columbia disaster and helps sort out how it happened. Evan Thomas scrutinizes the theories about what went wrong, including the inevitable speculation that it involved terrorism. Weston Kosova, Sam Seibert and Seth Mnookin remember the U.S. astronauts who lost their lives, and Joshua Hammer profiles Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli to go into space. Jerry Adler analyzes the future of NASA, while former senator and Mercury astronaut John Glenn conjures up the stresses and fears that all astronauts confront and the courage and professionalism that will help the space program carry on.

Four days before dying, Columbia’s commander, Rick Husband, paid the Challenger crew this tribute from space: “Their dedication… was an inspiration to each of us and still motivates people around the world… in service to others.” No more fitting words can now be said of Husband and his fellow heroes.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-13” author: “Sherry Konon”

Leading the book, we have another good news/bad news health story with global implications. When President Bush travels to Africa this week, Topic A will be AIDS. As NEWSWEEK has reported for a decade, the epidemic is raging out of control in Africa, even as the triple-drug “cocktail” has prolonged lives in America. But as Geoffrey Cowley reports, the cost of AIDS drugs is plummeting, cutting the price to keep a Third World patient alive to as little as a dollar a day. Now the question is: who will step up to foot that bill? As Bush weighs sending U.S. troops to help restore peace in Liberia, meanwhile, Tom Masland looks at the civil war in Congo–another mess the West helped create, but no one now wants to confront.

Since it’s how I first came to NEWSWEEK 26 years ago, I take special pride and interest in our summer internship program. So let me introduce you to our intern class of 2003 (pictured, left to right): Isolde Raftery, Barney Gimbel, Nayelli Gonzalez, Sarah Childress, Peter Bailey, Melissa Brewster, Andrew Phil-lips, Kristin Kovner, Jason McLure, Maria Beaudoin and Meredith Sadin. (Also, not pictured: Arthur Kimball-Stanley, Suyon An, Beth Ferraro and Tracy Richmond.) They’re just as friendly as they look, but also smart, creative and amazingly gung-ho. And as you’ll see from their bylines across this magazine, they’re off to a flying start.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Larry Colin”

Unfortunately for them, however, it won’t be that simple. As Evan Thomas and Debra Rosenberg report, the high-court decision will embolden activists to push even harder for everything from gay marriage and universal adoption rights to open military service. But while Americans have grown more comfortable with gays and their right to privacy, many are still squeamish about according them full legal status and the benefits that go along with it. (It’s one reason the idea of affirmative action, which the court also upheld last week, will always be controversial. Americans find it a lot easier to accept laws defining what the state shouldn’t do to minority groups than what the state should do for them.) And both verdicts will increase pressure from staunch conservatives on President Bush to use any new court vacancies to appoint justices who share their views on “family values.”

Are we reaching the end of an era–captured in a profile of Sandra Day O’Connor by Thomas and Stuart Taylor Jr. and candid photos by David Hume Kennerly–in which swing justices who reflect public ambivalence about social issues have saved a divided court from all-out war? Let’s hope not. In a bitter dissent from the gay-rights decision, Justice Antonin Scalia raged about the “moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual activity.” If you ask me, what many Americans would really disapprove of is a court stripped of moderates who help legitimize what would otherwise be seen as purely ideological decisions.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Patricia Braxton”

For San Francisco bureau chief Karen Breslau, who coauthored the story with Howard Fineman, it brought back the partisan wars of Clinton-era Washington. Our White House correspondent in those days, Karen asked the embattled governor in a remarkably (for him) unbuttoned interview whether he identified with Hillary Clinton’s book. Davis joked that his own memoir might be called “Why I Had to Win Three Elections to Serve Two Terms.” Pulling out a chocolate-smeared picture of Jesus that he keeps in his pocket, he volunteered that being raised a Roman Catholic in the ’50s taught him to believe “suffering was a good thing.” (Full text on our Web site.)

For the newest member of our West Coast team, Jennifer Ordonez, it was a premonition of troubles to come in the rest of the country. As she and L.A. colleague Andrew Murr report, California’s economic woes can be traced not only to local mismanagement but to the fiscal crisis in Washington: a close to half-a-trillion-dollar federal deficit that is putting increasing strain on state and city budgets across America. At an Orange County job fair, Jennifer noted the line was full of the new unemployed: white men in dress shoes and ties.

And for the rest of our L.A. bureau, it was a busy week as well. Sean Smith reports on the making of “Seabiscuit,” a seemingly surefire summer movie hit that almost didn’t get made. And Allison Samuels, who has covered Kobe Bryant since he joined the L.A. Lakers, offers an up-close look at the basketball superstar’s strange, lonely world as he struggles with sexual-assault charges that could send him to prison. If our West Coast readers ever wondered what NEWSWEEK would be like if it was produced out there, this issue comes pretty close.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-12” author: “Franklin Kennedy”

Good question.

Once again last week, an audiotape surfaced of someone sounding like Saddam Hussein exhorting his supporters to attack American forces in Iraq. And in our cover story this week, Evan Thomas and Scott Johnson report evidence that Saddam may have planned this “afterwar” of attrition all along. A document obtained by NEWSWEEK appears to suggest that Iraq’s high command was preparing for a guerrilla war against U.S. troops “after the fall of the Iraqi leadership”–which was also about the time President Bush declared combat over. And another confidential report discloses that the rate of attacks on the occupying force in Baghdad is higher than previously understood–as much as one per hour.

As the body count rises, meanwhile, so does the cost to American taxpayers. Testifying before Congress, Gen. Tommy Franks conceded that U.S. troops will have to stay in Iraq “for the foreseeable future”–at a cost of roughly $1 billion a week. With oil bounty less plentiful than expected and key allies still balking at sharing the costs, Christopher Dickey explores where that money (and funds for rebuilding Iraq) will come from as the administration wrestles with the stalled economy at home and the new price of empire abroad.

In another exclusive, Howard Fineman reveals one reason Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is so passionate and combative: his favorite brother went missing in Indochina during the Vietnam War, prompting Dean to go into grief counseling in the early ’80s. Fineman also examines how Dean has used the Web to make a surprisingly strong showing in fund-raising, and asks whether he can keep up the momentum. And Allan Sloan assesses Microsoft’s decision to start taking a charge on stock options and to give employees real stock instead. Not only is this one more blow for good accounting and against the temptation to inflate stock values to enrich top executives, Sloan argues. It may be the ultimate sign that the go-go ’90s really are gone for good.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-09” author: “Thresa Arnold”

Working with Chee and our Cathleen McGuigan, Dorothy went to work on this special report on how design is getting real–touching us where we live, shop and work. To get you up to speed, we profile six leading taste-setters in the design world, offer a guide to “design literacy” and select eight “design cities” around the world. In the realm of business, Mark Miller and Jerry Adler examine how design can propel sales by looking at the shopping giant Target and its new design guru, Isaac Mizrahi. On the home front, Devin Gordon shows how design can maximize family comfort and happiness by taking you inside a state-of-the-art Seattle house, while McGuigan argues why “McMansions” are so dehumanizing. And peering into the future, Brad Stone profiles the influential San Francisco firm IDEO, which is rethinking the design of everything from hospitals to phone mail.

In the front of the book, Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff dig into a big, underreported problem in the war on terror–our government’s continued lack of Arabic speakers–and on how it’s hurting intelligence-gathering and may leave us open to new attacks. We excerpt Barbara Bush’s new memoir, and Melinda Henneber-ger writes a profile of the First Mother that shows she’s still as funny and outspoken as ever. And in pictures and words, we take you along with photographer Gary Knight on a rare visit to North Korea, a dangerous but badly understood country that we Americans need to know better before we can figure out how to deal with it.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-24” author: “Wanda Valenti”

You’ll be seeing a lot of Farewell, “Friends” stories this year, as the most successful TV sitcom of the past decade completes its ninth and final year. But our cover story this week–reported by Marc Peyser and photographed by David Hume Kennerly–is the first to take you behind the scenes as the actors film the last season. In addition to hanging out on the set and offering tantalizing plot lines from coming episodes, Peyser analyzes why “Friends” has stayed so good for so long, and why the latest crop of TV sitcoms is so lame. At a time when a whole generation of hit comedies is nearing retirement, reality TV has hit the wall and the networks are running out of ways to knock off “CSI,” the unfunny state of sitcoms is serious business for viewers and for the bottom lines of the TV networks.

Last week, we made news with our poll showing novice candidate retired Gen. Wesley Clark moving to the head of the Democratic field. This week we have him gaining more ground, even after a CNBC debate where he mostly avoided mistakes and projected amiability. As Iraq and the economy continue to sputter, Howard Fineman and Tamara Lipper report on the perhaps too-loud bravado within Bush’s political team, and on their strategy for recapturing the White House. John Barry and Evan Thomas reconstruct our postwar planning for Iraq and find that it was even messier than we knew. And for adventure-travel fans–or for anyone who likes to read about it–the latest in our Next Frontiers series looks at the amazing places technology can now take ordinary citizens, from the bottom of the ocean to the edges of outer space.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-19” author: “Matthew Adams”

While he was demanding zero tolerance for drug addicts, it turns out, Limbaugh was getting hooked on–and may have broken the law to score–prescription narcotics that he had started using for back pain. As a reporting team led by Evan Thomas reveals, he hid his addiction even from his wife, and might have been let off the hook by police had his housekeeper not produced e-mails and taped phone calls proving his role. So is Limbaugh a conservative hypocrite, or an example of human fallibility who will now be pilloried by the liberal press? As Jonathan Alter notes, the debate could have lasting resonance in the media “echo chamber” that shapes so much of our political discourse. And updating our OxyContin coverage, Claudia Kalb and Debra Rosenberg report on progress on painkillers that may be as strong but less addictive.

This summer, we were also the first newsweekly to do a cover on the California recall (“California in Crisis,” July 28, 2003, followed by “All About Arnold,” Aug. 18, 2003). Now Howard Fineman assesses the political challenge facing Arnold Schwarzenegger, and what his victory augurs for the 2004 presidential race. And Allan Sloan, with reporting from Andrew Murr, looks at what the governor-elect can do to close the state’s boggling budget gap. As Allan points out, the battles ahead could make the bloody fights in Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator” movies look like goofing around with Danny DeVito in “Twins.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-04” author: “Sam Burnett”

Although the conversation suggested that we needed to be exceedingly careful, it also showed how deep a nerve the Kobe Bryant story has touched. And ultimately, everyone agreed that we should do the cover for another reason: we could shed new light on the case and on the man himself, thanks to L.A. correspondent Allison Samuels. For the past decade, Allison has covered the behind-the-scenes world of professional basketball. And long before the incident in Colorado, she had developed sources among Bryant’s teammates and others who know him well. Drawing on those sources, she for the first time reports what people closest to Bryant believe happened. (She recounts the accuser’s version as well.) And Allison paints a portrait of the superstar that will surprise those who only know his public image: as a supremely talented athlete but also a naive, isolated, often selfish teammate, friend and boyfriend who insists on playing by his own rules on and off the court.

Men were behaving badly all over the place last week, from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s groping confessions to Rush Limbaugh’s racial putdown. But in Washington, the scandal for once was about political rather than personal behavior. As Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff report, the “Leakgate” story, about charges that a Bush official illegally revealed the name of a CIA operative, is raising fresh questions about the administration’s tendencies toward secrecy and vindictiveness. Meanwhile, movie fans should check out a new feature we’re calling “Review & Rebuttal,” where our critics will evaluate work to artists’ faces. We start with David Ansen arguing the merits of the new movie “Kill Bill” with its director, the notorious shrinking violet Quentin Tarantino.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-14” author: “Rex Melton”

We also try to stay out front in covering social and lifestyle issues like work and family. And lately, we’ve noticed experts talking with increasing candor about a delicate subject: how a lot of two-career couples have all but stopped having sex. If the topic may sound a bit risque, psychologists say it has very real consequences–for everything from divorce rates to productivity. And as Kathleen Deveny reports, the fault lies both in our age and in ourselves. Yes, work, kids and fights over household chores have taken their toll on passion. But today’s couples also have unrealistic expectations about the longevity of desire. In a guest piece, even Erica Jong admits that the'60s were less swinging than we think (or she wrote). So while we don’t pretend to give answers, our reporting suggests that realism may be as important as fantasy in treating this “epidemic.”

As the Democratic presidential race heats up, Melinda Henneberger looks at the controversial relationship between Sen. John Kerry and his outspoken (as you’ll see) wife, Teresa. Malcolm Jones reviews the latest “Harry Potter” book and has a rare, in-depth interview with author J. K. Rowling. And on the eve of the Supreme Court’s big decision on affirmative action, Debra Rosenberg talks to doctors who went to medical school with Allan Bakke after he won his historic 1978 case. Like almost everything else in this issue, their views turn out to be more complicated than you might think.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-31” author: “Ester Lehman”

In the Arab world, the news is pretty sobering as well. Suddenly, all the arguments cited for taking on Saddam Hussein are looking less convincing. After two months, U.S. forces have failed to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Despite Bush’s embrace of a new Mideast “roadmap,” the latest wave of violence makes it hard to believe the war has created conditions for peace. And while we did end Saddam’s brutal dictatorship, unrest throughout Iraq continues to endanger U.S. soldiers and spread doubt about what comes next. So whose bright idea was the war anyway? Michael Hirsh takes a close look at the so-called neoconservatives who are credited with pushing Bush to take on Saddam, explores what they were really thinking and what they have to say now that the liberation isn’t going as planned.

She may not be a household name, but if you’re a high-school student, you probably know who Blair Hornstine is. Last month the 18-year-old from Moorestown, N.J., sued her school to be its only valedictorian, earning the scorn of honors students everywhere. But Barbara Kantrowitz and Julie Scelfo found a much more complex tale of townwide college competition gone out of control. And to cheer you up, we have Sean Smith’s hilarious interview with the three stars of “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle”–the first sit-down they’ve done with a reporter who’s seen the movie. It’s a tough job out there in Hollywood, and we’re glad Sean is there to do it.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-17” author: “Susan Witmer”

And what does the American public think? As usual, it depends on what questions you’re asked. In a NEWSWEEK Poll, respondents were split almost evenly on abortion rights, with 47% declaring themselves “pro-choice” and 48% “pro-life.” But all but 11% agreed that life begins before birth–with 46% saying it happens “when a man’s sperm fertilizes a woman’s egg,” 12% when “an embryo is implanted in a woman’s uterus” and 24% when a fetus can survive outside the womb. And 56% say prosecutors should bring separate murder charges against someone who kills a fetus still in the womb, whether it is viable or not. The public shows less support, however, for the idea of extending legal rights to embryos: 49% think fertilization clinics should be able to dispose of them with the donors’ consent, while only 37% believe they shouldn’t. So, like science, public opinion is only making the debate more complex.

Where are the weapons of mass destruction? For the Bush administration, that’s one of the troubling questions now clouding our victory over Saddam Hussein. Evan Thomas, Richard Wolffe and Michael Isikoff examine why our information on Iraq’s weapons was so faulty, and how Bush officials grasped at intelligence straws to justify the war. And as if our political scene wasn’t strange enough already, Arnold Schwarzenegger may run for governor of California. Fresh from a visit with the action star, Jerry Adler muses on how Conan could become a contender.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-22” author: “Julia Childs”

No one wanted to be discussing Orange Alerts over holiday barbecues and along Memorial Day parade routes. But after the latest bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and with a new audiotape of Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri making the rounds, it’s clear that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have hardly eliminated the terror threat. Leading the magazine this week, Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman and Evan Thomas have exclusive new details of U.S. intelligence “threat assessments” that may augur more anxiety for the rest of the summer. David Jefferson looks at CEO Michael Eisner’s latest, and perhaps last-chance, bid to resurrect the fortunes of the troubled Disney company. And Malcolm Jones travels to Paris to review an exhibition of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and visit with the great photographer, who, at 94, is still as spontaneous and unpredictable as his immortal images.

NEWSWEEK wouldn’t be what it is today without the visionary leadership we received in the 1960s and ’70s from Osborn Elliott. To honor Oz, New York’s Asia Society has created an annual Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Asian Journalism. For the first award, the jury–chaired by Fareed Zakaria, editor of NEWSWEEK international–has chosen Elizabeth Rosenthal of The New York Times, for her unrelenting coverage of the AIDS crisis in China. Congratulations to Elizabeth, and, of course, to the magical Oz.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “Jean Shand”

In the latest installment of our ongoing Health for Life series, we team up with our friends from Harvard Medical School to look at the newest thinking in how to treat men’s bodies–and men’s minds. Jerry Adler, Karen Springen and David Noonan examine care options for two of our biggest killers: prostate cancer and heart disease. Geoffrey Cowley explores the physical and evolutionary roots of status anxiety. From Harvard, Michael C. Miller, M.D., explains how men can cope with depression, while Harvey B. Simon, M.D., addresses the controversies over circumcision, hormone therapy and PSA testing. We also have a chapter called “Reaching Your Peak,” which looks at how to get the most out of everything from strength training to stretching and meditation. Yes, argues author John Capouya, who’s written a book about it: real men do yoga.

Elsewhere in the magazine, we report on three big news stories that will come as no surprise to NEWSWEEK readers. Our April 1, 2002, cover story “The Future of Israel” explored the mounting crisis that led to last week’s historic summit between President Bush and the prime ministers of Israel and the Palestinian National Authority. “Martha’s Mess” (July 1, 2002) reported on the insider-trading charges that culminated in Wednesday’s indictment of homemaking mogul Martha Stewart. And last month, “The Secret Life of Jayson Blair” exposed the turmoil at The New York Times that on Thursday caused the paper’s two top editors to resign. Also check out Keith Naughton’s remarkably candid profile of car executive Bill Ford and Devin Gordon’s piece on the making of “The Hulk.” You’ll see why some women around our office call this the “What Is It With Men?” issue.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Deborah Mongelli”

Given that Seth was able to break important news on such a powerful human and institutional drama, it wasn’t a hard call to put his story on the cover. But The New York Times saga also touches on important social themes that our columnists address in accompanying opinion pieces. Jonathan Alter argues that the Blair scandal will only reinforce the growing public cynicism about the media and trend toward Americans seeking out sources of news that confirm their own prejudices. Allan Sloan calls the story another test case for corporate responsibility, and wonders if the Times will ask its own leaders to pay the kind of price it often clamors for at other institutions. And Ellis Cose addresses charges that an overemphasis on diversity led to the Blair catastrophe, arguing that the problem wasn’t that the Times had an affirmative-action policy, but that editors managed it badly.

We also break ground on some other big stories. As the pitfalls of peacekeeping become painfully apparent from Riyadh to Baghdad, Melinda Henneberger offers a profile of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, based on exclusive access and interviews, that shows how he is coping with the taxing challenge of making the United Nations “relevant” again. And Marc Peyser, Sean M. Smith and B. J. Sigesmund take you behind the scenes of the year’s hottest TV show, “American Idol,” as the country prepares to vote: Ruben or Clay? Isn’t democracy great? (Or is it really democracy? Read our piece and you decide…)

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-31” author: “Nora Powell”

For the millions of Americans who know that anguish, we decided to devote the latest installment of our Next Frontiers series to looking at how technology is changing the way doctors study and combat persistent pain. Claudia Kalb reports the good news: that breakthroughs in genetic mapping and diagnostic imaging are paving the way toward better prediction and more targeted treatment. Karen Springen tracks new advances in dealing with children, who feel pain but often struggle to articulate the source of their discomfort. And best-selling writer Dr. Sherwin Nuland ponders the emotional and spiritual dimensions of pain, and how they interact with physiology.

Returning to explore two untold stories of the war against Iraq, Evan Thomas recounts how Gen. Tommy Franks constructed his unconventional battle plan, and Joshua Hammer investigates the killing of a Muslim cleric who was sent back to Iraq with blessings and cash from the CIA. Lally Weymouth talks exclusively to Syrian President Bashar Assad about his alleged ties to terrorist groups and harboring of high-level Saddam Hussein aides. (See the full text on our Web site.) And Seth Mnookin delves into two stories–about a New York Times correspondent and a former New Republic writer–that expose a dirty little secret of our profession: how easy it is for journalists to plagiarize and fabricate. When that topic came up at our family dinner table, my daughter noted that some of her high-school teachers now require students to submit term papers to a Web site that cross-checks for plagiarism. Now, why haven’t editors at the Times (or NEWSWEEK, for that matter) thought of a system like that?

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Lucio Kirby”

As the death toll continues to mount in rural China, and slowly creep up from Hong Kong to Toronto, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) has become the world’s scariest new acronym. In this week’s cover package, our health experts tell you what you need to know–now, and in the future. Claudia Kalb reports on the spread of the disease, and the search for ways to combat it. And Geoffrey Cowley explains why we may be living in a new age of epidemics, where backwardness and modernity combine to make viruses more dangerous than ever. In this case, SARS started in rural China, and for months was hushed up by local communist authorities. But it spread around the world thanks to air travel, emergency rooms and modern immune systems which, ironically, have been weakened by constant use of antibiotics to fight more routine infections.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-10” author: “Kymberly Rendon”

In this week’s issue, Peg Tyre and Daniel McGinn examine the causes and the implications of the Alpha Female trend. Talking to dozens of these families, they found a complex mix of emotions: satisfaction among fathers and kids about forming closer bonds; but worries among spouses about social stigma and marital strain. Experts are just as divided. Some applaud this latest breakdown of gender stereotypes. But others, like writer Laura Doyle, argue that most men will never be happy if their wives wield more financial power. Visiting a college campus, meanwhile, Barbara Kantrowitz discovered a refreshing lack of traditional hang-ups. Just as our generation is more comfortable with both spouses’ working than our parents were, she predicts our kids will consider it no big deal who works–or earns–more.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-10” author: “Roman Mendoza”

We start by remembering all the Americans who have lost their lives after 9/11 to terror and the wars that the Bush administration has launched in the name of fighting it. The toll stood at 433 as we went to press, and may be higher by the time you read this. We talk to families of the fallen GIs, who are fiercely proud but increasingly restive about the strategy their loved ones died for. As Bush’s cabinet officers face off about the U.N. role in Iraq, Evan Thomas and Daniel Klaidman report on the infighting on the front lines of the war on terror–between gung-ho officials and lawyers, bureaucrats and veterans wary of getting blamed if “leaning forward” backfires. Fareed Zakaria assesses how the global chessboard has changed, while Jonathan Alter looks back to the flag-waving of 2001 and asks: what constitutes patriotism now? How do we reconcile nationalism and multilateralism, deference and dissent?

The ripples stretching from Ground Zero to Baghdad are also evident in our other big stories. We report on the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, which further dashes hopes that the Iraq war would jump-start a Roadmap to Mideast peace. Howard Fineman weighs the pitfalls that could follow the early antiwar success of Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. And Daniel McGinn looks at a new book which argues that two-career incomes have lured many Americans into buying pricier homes than they can afford, particularly with jobs dwindling and the post-9/11 economy still so uncertain. Even as we sign our mortgage checks, it’s hard to escape how different the world is since that cataclysmic–and catalytic–day two years ago.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Pamela Pough”

From there, I went to dinner with a veteran NEWSWEEK correspondent who covered Clark when he was commander of NATO. When I asked what he thought of the general, my colleague made an “L” with his thumb and index finger. “Loser!” he said. Sure, Clark was very smart, he conceded, but he was also brittle and egotistical. He just couldn’t compete with what our man thinks is George W. Bush’s greatest political strength: the impression he gives of being a “regular guy” you can trust.

So who is Gen. Wes Clark: savior or showboat? And what impact will he have on Election 2004? In our cover package, Howard Fineman analyzes how Clark’s charge could shake up the Democratic race. Evan Thomas profiles the impressive but quirky man behind the stripes. And Jonathan Alter examines whether a proud general can withstand the mudbath of modern presidential politics. We also offer an excerpt from Clark’s new book, “Winning Modern Wars,” on how he thinks we went wrong in Iraq.

It’s a good week for excerpts in the magazine. Jerusalem bureau chief Joshua Hammer files a report on Christians caught in the middle of the Middle East crisis, based on his new book on the battle of Bethlehem. And we excerpt the new memoir by Mariane Pearl, the wife of slain Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl. As you read her account and an accompanying interview, you’ll find it hard not to be moved, or to deny the high historical stakes that drew a four-star general out of retirement.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-23” author: “Antonette Soto”

After interviewing other experts and families struggling with autism, Geoff and Anne Underwood came away convinced that the findings by psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University warranted another cover story. Baron-Cohen observes that human brains lie on a spectrum between those that are better at understanding people and those that are better at analyzing things. Women tend to be “empathizers” and men “systemizers,” but most people combine both skills. Yet people with autism don’t: they’re obsessed by organizing facts, but unable to read human emotion. Put another way, they have an extreme version of “male intelligence.” That may help explain why four out of five autistic kids are boys. While probing the strengths (and some weaknesses) of the gender-gap thesis, Geoff notes how it could help autistic people lead happier lives: by finding work that requires attention to detail but little social interaction.

Where is Osama bin Laden, and what is he up to? Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau offer exclusive new evidence that he may be holed up in Afghanistan’s Kunar mountains, and still issuing orders to terrorists around the world. Following our report on the bombing of a leading Iraqi cleric, Fareed Zakaria argues that the Bush administration now has no choice but to assemble the multinational peacekeeping force it spurned before the war. And as viewers buzzed about “the kiss” between Madonna and Britney Spears at the MTV Video Music Awards, Johnnie L. Roberts profiles a record label that’s making profits with a novel approach these days: helping young musicians learn how to behave like adults.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-09” author: “Kathleen Hulsey”

We start with pieces by Jerry Adler and Dirk Johnson on allergies and asthma, two conditions that have risen rapidly among young Americans. Peg Tyre and Julie Scelfo look at new approaches to fighting childhood obesity, while the Harvard doctors suggest how to get kids eating smarter (one of a series of advice boxes). One answer is exercise, but that has its own risks, as David Noonan points out in a guide to safe sports. And now that growth hormone has been approved for broader use, Anne Underwood examines the ethical debate over whether to give it to kids just because they’re short.

In a chapter on mood and behavior, Claudia Kalb reports on mental illness in kids–an experience, she says, that reminded her again of the stigma sufferers and families must battle. And Barbara Kantrowitz and Karen Springen assess a problem familiar to any parent of a teenager: the psychological and physical toll taken by lack of sleep.

Speaking of parental anxieties, in our news section Steven Levy and Johnnie L. Roberts explain why the music industry needs to reinvent itself rather than just suing teens and other customers who swap free music. And Michael Hirsh dissects the latest videotape from Osama bin Laden and asks the pressing question: why are we bogged down in Iraq when we haven’t caught the mastermind of 9/11? Sadly, I suspect my daughter will be asking her question for some time, and that I still won’t have a good answer.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-24” author: “Lori Miller”

This week, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman review the report and connect the dots with more exclusive reporting. And we devote our cover story to fresh details about the latest major development in the post-9/11 war on terror: the elimination of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay. As Evan Thomas and Rod Nordland report, the brothers spent their final weeks struggling to keep one step ahead of U.S. forces, growing beards for disguise and traveling with Viagra, cologne, dress shirts and contraceptives–seemingly better equipped for a night at the disco than directing a guerrilla war. But whether capturing Saddam himself, or taming Iraq, will now become easier remains to be seen. Last week eight more U.S. soldiers were killed, and as Jerry Adler reports, families of servicemen there are increasingly restive about the U.S. occupation.

Our Africa correspondent Tom Masland was injured in Liberia last week, suffering a minor shrapnel wound during a rebel attack. But after receiving treatment, he gamely stayed on to report a story with Michael Hirsh on the deepening crisis in that war-torn country. And while it didn’t involve any such heroics, London correspondent Carla Power scored her own coup. She is the first correspondent to report from the set of the latest Harry Potter movie, “Prisoner of Azkaban,” offering a tantalizing peek at changes being made by “Y Tu Mama Tambien” director Alfonso Cuaron, and at how the actors are coping with new nemeses–and puberty.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-20” author: “Anne Ho”

In short, Jon brings unique perspective to covering the 2004 race. So when we asked him to write a cover story on the surprising surge of Howard Dean, he argued against a traditional profile or “horse race” story. He wanted to put the Dean insurrection in context–of the Democratic Party’s perpetual love of outsiders, and post-loss fratricidal battles between centrists and “the base.” He also pointed out that Dean embodies the dilemma that all the Democratic hopefuls face: whether to run to the right and risk a head-on collision with George Bush’s political Humvee, or attack to the left and risk heading off an electoral cliff. Yet while Republicans may salivate at the prospect of running against Dean, Jon explains why the former Vermont governor isn’t Michael Dukakis, and how he or one of the other Democrats could still make it a very close race if the economy, Iraq and the war on terror continue to falter and they play their cards right on the issues.

Over the next 15 months, look for a lot more probing coverage of the 2004 race from Alter and Howard Fineman, Evan Thomas, Melinda Henneberger, Eleanor Clift, George Will and Anna Quindlen. And in this issue, check out Richard Wolffe’s tale of a high-school classmate who’s now one of our top Qaeda detainees, and an excerpt of Henry Kissinger’s phone log during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. All these stories were completed under the watchful eye of Managing Editor Jon Meacham, who will edit the magazine and write this note for the next few weeks while I’m on vacation. Have a peaceful August, and I’ll talk to you when I get back.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-03” author: “Robert Hansen”

Soon, however, Hammer saw hovering military choppers and then smoke rising from the U.N. building. Ditching his car, he hurried across a field to get within a quarter mile of the blast site as the first survivors were making their way out of the compound. It had been the largest attack on the U.N. ever, forcing Americans (and the world) to confront a new reality: the intersection of carefully calibrated terrorism with the chaos of occupied Iraq.

What to do now is the subject of this week’s cover. Despite some defiant spin, administration insiders tell NEWSWEEK they’re searching for a Plan B, and Fareed Zakaria offers ideas on how to put the peace back together. From Washington, Evan Thomas and Howard Fineman explore the pressures President Bush is facing both in Iraq and in Israel. And while remembering his friend Sergio Vieira de Mello, the envoy killed in the bombing, Richard Holbrooke discusses how to strengthen the U.N.’s role in Iraq. With powerful images from Baghdad and a moving reconstruction of the attack from Hammer, the Special Report is a dramatic portrait of a grim afterwar.

Away from the front, we go inside the changing rules of the college-admissions game in a section adapted from the 2004 edition of the Kaplan-NEWSWEEK special issue How to Get Into College. The package helps students (and parents) through the maze of testing and takes a look at this year’s hottest schools. The special issue was supervised by Director of Special Projects Alexis Gelber and senior-edited by David A. Kaplan in cooperation with our Washington Post Company colleagues at Kaplan, Inc. And for a real breather, check out our fall arts preview. Let’s hope the world will be a calmer place by the time we’re lining up to see “Cold Mountain” or buying Toni Morrison’s new novel.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-19” author: “Gloria Lara”

In our cover package this week, we offer a guide to thinking about a debate that will rage until–and probably well after–the Supreme Court this spring issues its most important decision on affirmative action since the historic Bakke case 25 years ago. Reporting on the behind-the-scenes battle over Bush’s decision to file a brief in favor of overturning the University of Michigan’s affirmative-action program, Howard Fineman and Tamara Lipper assess what part was principle–and what part the politics of appeasing Bush’s conservative “base.” Barbara Kantrowitz takes a closer look at the Michigan program and its alternatives. Critics say the case involves “quotas,” but does it? And how does Bush’s preferred approach, “affirmative access,” work? Does it benefit more or less qualified minorities than other programs, and will it satisfy the most die-hard critics of race consciousness? Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, the former head of the U. Michigan, defends its program, while black conservative commentator Armstrong Williams argues the case against. And Jonathan Alter wrestles with the thorny question of how one can defend some special breaks and not others.

Of course, as Alter also points out, there’s another irony in opponents of points systems who judge “merit” by test scores. In the end, no matter what side we’re on, we should all preserve a sense of humility that comes with wrestling with history–which is not a numbers game, but a process that is as messy in the remaking as it is in the making.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-20” author: “Gregory Smolen”

In our cover story this week, we look at The Great Diet Debate from another perspective: what’s really healthy for you. As our health expert Geoffrey Cowley explains, it turns out that the fats-versus-carbs fight, and even the old government-approved food pyramid, have filled us with some pretty bad notions of what we should be eating. After intensive research, doctors from the Harvard School of Public Health have determined that what’s really important are the kinds of fats, carbs and proteins we eat. The good news: there’s a lot of healthy, even delicious food that may help improve your odds of staving off heart disease, certain forms of cancer, Alzheimer’s and even failing eyesight. The bad news: unhealthy food is still hard to resist. So we also offer tips from Harvard Medical School’s Michael Craig Miller, M.D., on how to boost your willpower, and Claudia Kalb on how regular exercise can improve weight control and health.

A wise friend reminded me last week that short-term success and failure decide not only who wins elections but how most history is written. If America goes to war and ousts Saddam Hussein, George Bush’s Iraq policy will be regarded as a huge success, regardless of the reverberations elsewhere in the world (and in other trouble spots like North Korea). And if the economy turns around in the next year and a half, his latest $674 billion tax-cut proposal will be hailed as a masterstroke, even though, as Allan Sloan notes this week, the effect on America’s long-term fiscal balance sheet may not be clear for years. A shrewd and ever more confident politician not afraid to “spend political capital,” Bush understands this. Let’s just hope our kids look back elections from now and still think these gambles were worth it.

–Mark Whitaker

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-06” author: “Margaret Binette”

It’s actually a very serious question that many Americans are now asking themselves. While President Bush rallied U.S. soldiers for war against Iraq last week, he was scrambling to defuse a potential showdown with North Korea, where 37,000 American troops are stationed on the border, over Pyongyang’s move to resume its nuclear program. The dual crises yet again raised the question of whether America can afford to take on Iraq, North Korea and Al Qaeda all at the same time. In our cover package this week, Evan Thomas profiles North Korea’s eccentric leader Kim Jong Il, a man who may seem like a buffoon out of a Mike Myers movie but has enslaved his people, exported weapons of mass destruction and repeatedly threatened to destabilize Asia. While Richard Wolffe analyzes Bush’s diplomatic dilemma, our experts debate which tyrant poses the greatest threat. Dickey says it’s still Saddam Hussein. Michael Hirsh, author of a forthcoming book on Bush’s foreign policy, argues that it’s Kim.

Can America ever regain its reputation for making the very finest cars in the world? Bob Lutz of General Motors thinks so, and at the Detroit Auto Show this week he’s unveil-ing a new Cadillac “concept car” called the Sixteen that would cost $250,000 and compete with Mercedes and Rolls-Royce. Granted months of exclusive, behind-the-scenes access, Keith Naughton tells the story of how Lutz’s dream car was born. Jerry Adler probes the Raelians, the bizarre cloning sect in the headlines last week, while Jeff Giles talks with another likely Oscar nominee, Daniel Day-Lewis of “Gangs of New York.” And a group of men locked in a crazy courtship battle? No, it’s not the 2004 Democratic primary race. It’s “The Bachelorette,” the subject of Marc Peyser’s wry look at the latest “reality” TV entry.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-19” author: “Donna Dill”

As U.S. forces began moving on Baghdad, we decided to put our focus on “the grunts”–the men and women on the front lines. Kevin Peraino was with the Third Infantry Division as it pushed across the desert and seized the airport outside the capital. In our lead piece, he and Evan Thomas examine who these soldiers are, how they’ll wage this next battle and what they think about the war plan, the fighting conditions and the Iraqis they’ve been sent to kill and save. In our cover story, we tell the story of another soldier–19-year-old Pfc. Jessica Lynch–and her extraordinary rescue by Special-Ops forces from an Iraqi hospital where she was held prisoner. And as we explore the human side of the war, we haven’t forgotten the people we’re fighting for. From the dark, eerie streets of Baghdad, Melinda Liu reports on how Iraqis braced for the siege. And Christopher Dickey and Tom Masland talk to Arabs across the Middle East, from those cheering us as liberators to others more ready than ever to sign up for terror strikes on America. As we wish for the safe return of soldiers and journalists, let’s also pray for an outcome that doesn’t leave us more vulnerable than ever.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Timothy Summers”

Joshua Hammer, our Jerusalem bureau chief, was named a finalist in the Reporting category for “Suicide Mission” (April 15) and two other intimate portraits of people caught up in the turmoil in the Middle East. “The War Crimes of Afghanistan” (August 26), an investigation of alleged atrocities by our allies in the battle against the Taliban, was nominated for Public Interest. In the Personal Service category, we were recognized for “The Science of Alternative Medicine” (December 2), our cover story on the medical establishment’s growing acceptance of herbal treatments, acupuncture and yoga. And based on “The 9/11 Terrorists the CIA Should Have Caught” (June 10), “The New Virginity” (December 9) and “The Real Condi Rice” (December 16), we received a nomination for the biggest prize of all, General Excellence, which we won in 2002 for our coverage of September 11.

I’m particularly pleased that we were honored for stories that go beyond traditional NEWSWEEKly fare: investigative reporting, in-depth profiles and analysis, and pieces that identify political and social trends ahead of other media. (In fact, we were the only newsmagazine to be nominated this year.) We’ve tried to take the same news-breaking, ahead-of-the-curve approach in covering the war against Iraq. Last week, as U.S. forces faced unexpectedly stiff resistance, some commentators wondered why the press hadn’t paid more attention to how Saddam would fight back. But our readers know we did just that, in our March 17 cover story “CounterAttack.” As proud as we are of past accomplishments, I hope recent issues of NEWSWEEK show that we have no intention of resting on our laurels.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-13” author: “Jesse Smith”

Jeff, our International editor, is a former bureau chief in Nairobi, Jerusalem and Tokyo. Having been there himself, he has a quiet way of helping reporters hone ideas and copy without claiming any of the glory. He also is a thoughtful student of history with a knack for anticipating the next turn in the story. In the past two issues, for instance, he pushed for stories on the deep Iraqi religious yearnings and rivalries that would emerge once the war was over–a theme that proved prescient last week as Shiites and Sunnis rallied in Baghdad to demand a quick American exit.

A former editor of Legal Times and head of enterprise projects at Talk magazine, Tom loves nothing more than a good investigative story. During the war, he worked right up to our Saturday night deadline getting exclusive “nuggets” from our Washington bureau–like the intelligence tips that led to our bomb attacks on Saddam and other top Iraqi leaders–into our stories. (At our morning story meetings, Tom delights in tantalizing us with the latest hot rumor, then adding responsibly: “But we haven’t quite confirmed that yet.”)

Marcus grew up at NEWSWEEK, starting as a summer intern and moving on to report in Washington, Paris and Johannesburg before returning to become an editor and now chief of correspondents. He’s been responsible not only for coordinating the movements and assignments of all our correspondents in the war zone, but negotiating with the Pentagon over “embed” positions, arranging to replace faulty satellite phones and destroyed vehicles, and generally keeping the morale of the troops up with his warm encouragement and booming laugh. Marcus, Tom and Jeff are all consummate pros who don’t need constant pats on the back to do a good job. But let me take this occasion to give them a well-deserved one anyway.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-26” author: “Richard Wood”

In the end, Operation Iraqi Freedom is proving to be mercifully swift and decisive. Yet it has still provided a sobering reminder of how perilous even the most successful of wars can be for the soldiers who fight them and the journalists who report them. It also made us at NEWSWEEK more aware than ever of one of the cornerstones of good journalism: experience counts. After 20 years of documenting wars, coups and insurrections in Asia and around the world, Melinda has brought extraordinary insight and street smarts to covering the battle for Baghdad. As a veteran of wars from Central America to the Gulf to the Balkans, Rod Nordland was uniquely equipped to chronicle the doomed yet determined resistance in southern Iraq, and to supervise our battlefield reporters from his command post in Kuwait. And after two decades of reporting from the Middle East, Christopher Dickey offered invaluable perspective on the war for Arab hearts and minds from his perch in Amman, Jordan.

NEWSWEEK’s coverage has also benefited from another kind of experience: the depth of knowledge and perspective of our writers and editors in Washington and New York. The author of acclaimed books about the CIA and the post World War II foreign-policy establishment, Evan Thomas this week reconstructs the behind-the-scenes intelligence and psyop wars that made our rapid and overwhelming victory possible. And Fareed Zakaria draws upon his widely praised new book, “The Future of Freedom,” to analyze how America should go about promoting democracy and liberty in Iraq. And while I’m at it, I’d like to salute the remarkable reporting, for the magazine and on our Web site, of a new generation–embedded and battlefield reporters Kevin Peraino, Arian Campo-Flores, Babak Dehghanpisheh, Colin Soloway and Scott Johnson. While none of us wish more war, the experience they’ve gained in this one will surely make them all the more ready to cover the next.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Leo Schultz”

As our group talked, they also found themselves asking: Why Cheney? Why was someone so seemingly calm and analytical grasping at straws? The answer, the team reports this week, is more complicated than a simple desire to massage intelligence to justify the war. Cheney is driven, they conclude, by a particularly dark view of human nature and of the threats facing America, as well as a deeply held distrust of Washington’s intelligence establishment. At the same time, his extraordinary influence put him in a unique position to sell President Bush on tips coming from Iraqi opposition leaders and other suspect sources. It’s a cover story that breaks important news in reconstructing the intelligence pipeline, and sheds revealing new light on the most powerful vice president in recent U.S. history.

For two very different views of the latest good economic news, check out our Business section. In an excerpt of his new book, former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin argues that Bush’s tax cuts, while providing short-term stimulus, have helped produce huge budget deficits that will weaken growth in the long run. Bush’s chief economic adviser, Stephen Friedman, meanwhile, contends that the break in the clouds augurs a lot more sunshine ahead. Elsewhere, we look at the growing demands Iraq is placing on our military reservists and their loved ones at home. And David Ansen and Marc Peyser talk to the extraordinary ensemble behind the HBO film “Angels in America,” the award-winning play about the ’80s AIDS crisis that director Mike Nichols has managed to make unforgettable all over again.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Jose Brown”

So we decided to do just that, with an investigation into how billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent in Iraq. Michael Hirsh took weeks interviewing U.S. contractors and agency officials, while Rod Nordland, Christian Caryl and Babak Dehghanpisheh spanned out across Iraq to inspect ports, power plants, schools and other construction sites. What they found was disturbing. U.S. firms with close ties to the administration won the biggest contracts without open bidding, but their work has been riddled with delays and lack of accountability. The work of subcontractors is often shockingly substandard. Elaborate security and hazard pay are adding billions to the cost of the simplest projects. And Iraqis tell stories of kickback demands that raise the specter of corruption. Looking forward, our team argues that if we don’t quickly allow Iraqis to take more responsibility and reap more rewards from the reconstruction, we will strengthen the anti-American resistance and make the job even costlier. And visiting New Hampshire, Howard Fineman finds signs that the cost of rebuilding Iraq may already be turning swing voters against Bush.

Throughout the magazine this week, other stories also dig below the surface. In reporting on the right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo in Florida, Arian Campo-Flores finds a personal saga of a family torn apart by grief and greed. Susannah Meadows returns to Columbine High School and reveals the subtle and surprising ways in which that tragedy still haunts the community. And Allison Samuels shares a rare interview with Bill Cosby, who is out with a new book about diet but still has a lot of funny, angry, wise and moving things to say about race, aging, loss and life.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-29” author: “Brenda Fote”

Steven had the idea for this week’s cover while attending an analyst meeting at Microsoft last summer. Speaker after speaker brought up–and tried to shoot down–an article in the Harvard Business Review called “IT Doesn’t Matter.” It dawned on Steven that the software behemoth may now view its biggest threat as the possibility that businesses and consumers have bought all the technology they need. In our package, edited by George Hackett, Steven explores both sides of the “Are PCs Over?” debate, and talks to Gates about his vision of “seamless computing” and Microsoft’s new Longhorn operating system. Brad Stone explores the scourge of spam and how to fight it. And in a special foldout, we test your “Digital IQ” (which, if it’s high enough, you can also take online at our Web site).

Will “Iraqification” work? With the body count rising, the Bush administration announced it would move quickly to give Iraqis responsibility for governing and policing themselves. Michael Hirsh examines the motives behind adopting a course so roundly dismissed when the much-maligned French and others suggested it at the end of the war. But reporting from southern Iraq, Joshua Hammer sees little evidence that the locals are ready to bring order to their homeland. And 40 years later, we look back in words and pictures at the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As you read our remembrance by Benjamin C. Bradlee–then NEWSWEEK’s bureau chief and JFK’s neighbor and friend–you’ll find it hard in these gloomy times not to feel wistful about the loss of a leader of such intelligence, wit and grace.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-02” author: “Amy Curry”

As the journal studies proliferated, however, so did the protests. Other scientists attacked the research as flimsy, and warned that religious devotion can’t substitute for state-of-the-art medicine. More troubling, critics argued, the trend risked blurring the professional lines between doctors and patients, and clouding judgment on both sides. In other words, keep the candles in church, and leave hospitals to treat the body, not the soul.

While we can’t pretend to settle the debate, we did think that the new findings–and the controversy they’ve aroused–deserved a closer look. So in this week’s cover story, Claudia traces the faith and healing claims and sorts out what scientific research so far does, and does not, support. A respected physician who has led the attacks on the trend faces off against another well-known doctor who views it as having great promise. And we profile Sir John Templeton, the mutual-fund mogul who, at 90, is now funneling his millions into seeking scientific proof of God’s mysterious ways.

Who is the enemy we’re now facing in Iraq? As Evan Thomas, John Barry and Christian Caryl report, poor intelligence on the ground has kept us from determining whether it’s Saddam loyalists, foreign terrorists, ragtag troublemakers–or all of the above. Allan Sloan weighs in on the gaudy revelations in the trial of former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, and how some mutual funds have gotten away with abuses that are less obscene but just as serious. And Sean Smith and Marc Peyser dissect the war over the controversial TV mini-series “The Reagans,” a battle that has conservatives in a snit, CBS tied in knots and the rest of us dying to see what all the fuss is about.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Richard Dobbins”

Two blockbuster hits and $600 million in box office later, Jackson is now the hottest director in the world, and the battle for access to the third installment of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was intense. But Jeff had the inside track. Again, Jackson invited him to watch last-minute shooting, to hang out as the movie was scored at Abbey Road Studios in London, and to return to New Zealand to be the first journalist to view “The Return of the King.” Jeff’s verdict: the finale is every bit as thrilling as the first two movies, and a good bet to win a best-picture Oscar. But while offering exclusive details, Jeff also challenges Jackson on inconsistencies in the series, and chronicles the bitter wrangling between the studio and the director and actors over money. It’s a cover story that “LOTR” fans won’t want to miss, and will help explain to the rest of you why it’s the biggest movie phenomenon since “Star Wars.”

And what about putting Michael Jackson on the cover? Well, we already did it 10 years ago, when he was first accused of child molesting (Aug. 6, 1993). And as Jonathan Alter points out, it’s hard to get too excited about another “Jacko” scandal in the shadow of 9/11. On that front, Evan Thomas and Mark Hosenball report that the latest terror attacks in Turkey look like part of a new Al Qaeda game plan, while Ron Moreau, Sami Yousafzai and Zahid Hussain take us inside Pakistani madrassas that are still turning out Islamic zealots eager to attack the United States. It’s a reminder that we should enjoy a good, wholesome fantasy flick when we can, because reality is still as scary as ever.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Mary Gardner”

Emotions are running high as we move closer to war with Iraq, and the press has been a target. Among others, NEWSWEEK has been criticized for stories on what the U.S. military plan might be, and how war might foment more terror at home and abroad. But if 9-11 proved anything, it’s that the media needs to try to report some stories before they happen. In this week’s cover package, Evan Thomas and John Barry look at how Saddam might fight back, from trying to suck us into urban combat in Baghdad to attacking us with chemical and biological weapons. And Daniel Klaidman and Christopher Dickey weigh the chances that Iraq could strike inside America. That’s the bad news. As Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report, there’s also good news in the war on terror, as the arrest of Qaeda strategist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed may lead us closer to capturing Osama bin Laden.

We have a new Arts & Entertainment editor: Jeff Giles. Fans of our Hollywood coverage know Jeff for his masterful profiles of movie stars like Jack Nicholson and Julia Roberts and directors like M. Night Shyamalan and the Farrelly brothers. As a part-time editor, Jeff has also overseen covers on subjects ranging from the Beatles to Kurt Cobain’s diary to the “Matrix” sequels. This week, you’ll see a touch of the Giles sensibility in our offbeat lead story on Hilary Duff, the biggest star in teen TV, written by Kate Stroup. So stay tuned: you’re in for more fun, and food for thought, from Jeff and his team in the months and years to come.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-16” author: “Richard Helf”

These days smart, enterprising black women like my grandmother are everywhere, and taking full advantage of the opportunities now open to them. They’re graduating from college in record numbers, moving up in the workplace, and rising to advise presidents and run universities and banks. But there’s a wrinkle to this success story (beyond the fact that it’s far from universal): black women are slowly but surely eclipsing black men, who are statistically more likely to drop out of school, have trouble keeping jobs and land in prison. In this week’s cover story, Ellis Cose analyzes the causes and implications of the new black gender gap. And Allison Samuels sits down with some of America’s most prominent black women for a candid talk about the new rules of race, class and romance.

From the moment we heard about it, all of us at NEWSWEEK were gripped by the story of Jesica Santillan, the 17- year-old Mexican immigrant who was mistakenly given transplant-ed organs of the wrong blood type. As she struggled vainly for life, Arian Campo-Flores, Suzanne Smalley and Julie Scelfo scrambled to piece together who Jesica was, and how her operation could have gone so horribly wrong. And Dirk Johnson, fresh from reporting a deadly nightclub stampede in Chicago, wrote our account of the tragic rock-concert fire in Rhode Island that took close to 100 lives. As these powerful stories make clear, the grieving–and lawsuits–have only just begun.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-12” author: “Timothy Merlo”

At another fateful moment–when President Bush is set to go to war with Iraq in defiance of public opinion around the globe and in much of America–we asked Fareed to explain why so much of the world has turned against us in this fight. Going beyond the debate over Saddam’s threat, Fareed argues that the opposition is also about something bigger: that we now scare the entire world. As vulnerable as we may feel since 9-11, everyone else sees America as more powerful–militarily, economically, culturally–than ever. And the Bush administration, far from allaying those fears, has aggravated them with military aggressiveness, diplomatic arrogance and moral self-righteousness. Refusing to despair, however, Fareed suggests what Washington can do after the war to start winning back global good will. It’s another brilliant essay, and I hope it can serve as a guide to better understanding and wise action.

While we wait for war, we did get some good news: the rescue of Elizabeth Smart, the Utah teenager so many feared dead. But as Dirk Johnson and Elise Christenson report, the story of her abduction by cult-like polygamists got stranger by the day. And not even the specter of 21,000-pound bombs exploding over the Persian Gulf kept us from gossiping and guessing about the Oscars. Check out our gatefold guide to the great mysteries and boo-boos of Academy Award history, which I hope gives you a welcome chuckle in these worrisome times.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Donald Hinshaw”

Whatever the answers, we thought it was a good time to explore Bush’s faith, particularly as he invokes it to justify war with Iraq. As Howard Fineman reports, religion for Bush has been foremost a vehicle for personal transformation: it helped him stop drinking and gave him the discipline to become a successful businessman, governor and presidential candidate. But the experience of being born-again (along with the politics of courting his conservative Christian base) has also led to the president’s positions on issues ranging from stem-cell research and teaching abstinence to his good-vs.- evil view of America’s global agenda. In an accompanying piece, religious historian Martin E. Marty explains why so many church leaders and scholars worry about Bush’s “God talk”: that it will inflame Islamic radicalism, and fuel anti-Americanism in a world wary of mighty powers presuming to do God’s Will.

As war looms, our Melinda Liu has filed remarkable stories from inside Iraq, including a Web piece on Saddam’s human shields. In this issue, she contributes to a story on the vast bureaucracy that Saddam deploys to silence and cow his country- men. We excerpt “After,” Steven Brill’s new book on the homeland-security battles since 9-11. And from profiles of Daniel Libeskind, the architect chosen to rebuild Ground Zero, to cantankerous golf analyst Johnny Miller, we also have a mix of non-war stories, including Daniel McGinn’s appreciation of Mister Rogers, whose death was so widely mourned perhaps because it reminded us all of a more innocent time.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-09” author: “Debra Moore”

For over a month, Melinda Liu, one of our best and most experienced correspondents, has been reporting–brilliantly–from Baghdad. Until President Bush issued his 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam last Monday night, we had honored Melinda’s request to let her decide if it was safe to stay. But by Tuesday morning, with the Pentagon briefing us on how massive the air attack would be, we decided with most other major news organizations that it was too risky, and asked Melinda to leave–if she could find a safe route out of the country. Reluctantly, she agreed, but then encountered so much trouble getting exit papers that she was still stuck in Baghdad on Wednesday. With the 48 hours running out, leaving seemed every bit as dangerous, so we told Melinda she could stay. As a result, she was able to file a powerful first-person account (page 32) of Baghdad during the “shock and awe” assaults–a tale at once terrifying, funny and surreal.

Then on Saturday, we got another scare. Our correspondent Scott Johnson and contract photographer Luc Delahaye, driving into Iraq behind U.S. forces advancing from Kuwait, had come under Iraqi fire. For several hours, all we knew was that Scott’s car had flipped over as he tried to escape, and that Luc and two other photographers had abandoned their cars and fled on foot. Luckily, they all survived safely, thanks to their own resourcefulness and the extraordinary help they received from U.S. forces. Again, it made for a gripping story.

But the moral is not that we got the great stories, so it was worth the gambles. Our reporters and editors all know that some risks aren’t worth running, no matter how strongly we feel about seeing history first-hand, getting a competitive scoop or serving the public’s right to know. Yet there are no hard-and-fast rules, and we just have to keep exercising our judgment as best we can. Blessedly, we got lucky this time, and you as readers did too.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-18” author: “Gary Jankowski”

For a lot of professionals, however, it’s not a laughing matter. When I talk with friends who are doctors, school officials and clergymen, they all complain about how fear of being sued is making it increasingly hard to do their jobs. So when NBC came to us with the idea of a joint investigation into our legal system, we suggested focusing on the impact the litigation boom (or the perception of one) has had on our daily lives. In our cover story, Evan Thomas and Stuart Taylor Jr., one of America’s most respected legal journalists and a longtime reform advocate, survey the often heated debate, then offer ideas for how to improve the system. We profile professionals caught in the middle, and presidential candidate John Edwards, a former trial lawyer, argues why we still need the current system to hold powerful interests accountable. We hope you’ll find our report provocative but fair. And for more coverage of the issue, please tune in all week to NBC’s Nightly News, the Today show, MSNBC and CNBC.

“If NEWSWEEK can find Osama bin Laden, why can’t the U.S. military?” It’s become a standard line in Gen. Wesley Clark’s stump speech, referring to the groundbreaking reporting of Sami Yousafzai on the probable whereabouts of the Al Qaeda leader. This week, Sami has another exclusive on clues that bin Laden has redirected more of his men and resources to the anti-American resistance in Iraq. Julie Scelfo and Dirk Johnson report on the delicate issue of seniors who want to have sex in nursing homes. And David Ansen reviews the big holiday movies, and offers a Top 10 List for 2003 that should make fans of Hobbits, animated fish and Bill Murray happy.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-19” author: “Inez Sebeniecher”

But sometimes, a story only becomes more topical with age. While it sat on the shelf, a writer named Dan Brown published “The Da Vinci Code,” the controversial Biblical thriller that shot to the top of the bestseller lists and has stayed there for 36 weeks. All of a sudden, the hottest figure in religious discussion in America was a woman: Mary Magdalene, the witness to the Resurrection who for centuries has been portrayed as a harlot but who Brown suggests provocatively was in fact the wife of Jesus. So just in time for the religious holidays, Barbara, Anne, Pat and Karen updated their reporting to reflect the intense debate over the true meaning of “Mary of Magdala,” as well as the dozens of other Biblical women assuming more prominent roles in scholarship and worship. For anyone who hasn’t read the book, or is still trying to figure it out, we decipher “The Da Vinci Code” in a comprehensive graphic. And our veteran religion expert Kenneth L. Woodward offers a contrarian view on the dangers of taking the “feminization” of the Scriptures too far.

Why don’t the media report more good news from Iraq? It’s a criticism we hear a lot these days. So Christian Caryl went to the northern city of Mosul to profile a commander struggling to win hearts and minds: Gen. David Petraeus of the 101st Airborne. Continuing his aggressive coverage of the mutual-fund scandals, Allan Sloan explains how the worst offenders ripped off customers. And with inspiration and help from our friends at Harvard Medical School, our “Health for Life” team explores the top 10 medical stories of 2003–rounding out an issue we hope will do good for the body as well as the soul.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Joyce Davis”

As snow blanketed both cities, Evan Thomas drove into our Washington bureau to write the cover story, while Fareed Zakaria came into our New York office to rewrite his column and Jeffrey Bartholet, Tom Watson and Nisid Hajari manned their editing posts. In Iraq, Baghdad bureau manager Mohanid Obeidi relayed early reports while Nordland and photographer Gary Knight covered the press conference. Babak Dehghanpisheh, who had just returned from a trip to Saddam’s home village, Awja, filed on the manhunt. And in Washington, John Barry, Tamara Lipper, Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball, Michael Hirsh, and Richard Wolffe worked White House and Pentagon sources for “tick-tock” of the raid, reporting to bureau chief Daniel Klaidman and with the assistance of Steve Tuttle and Holly Bailey.

As usual, our art and production worked magic. Bruce Ramsay and Steve Walkowiak produced the cover, while Amid Capeci, Alex Ha, Dan Revitte and Cynthia Rachlin designed the inside pages. Simon Barnett, Michelle Molloy, James Wellford, Bruce Jaffe, Nicki Gostin and Anthony Kleva edited the photos and Karl Gude, Kevin Hand and Meredith Sadin handled graphics. Rebecca Pratt and her crew–Ignacio Kleva, Gary Lingard, Vicko Fabris, Herb Samuels, Annie Jac-kowski, Patrick Fisher, Dave Friedman, David Olivenbaum, Carl Rosen and Tita Gillespie–fit and copyread stories and handed them over to our manufacturing staff: Angelo Rivello, John Nallen, Becky Cassidy, Nancy McAuliffe, Michael Helldorfer and Gary Dzurenda. Deidre Depke and her staff updated our Web site, Madeline Cohen fed us research, and Barbara DiVittorio manned the phones and kept the coffee and bagels coming. They’re an amazing team, and we were able to bring you this historic story thanks to their heroic efforts.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-01” author: “Mildred White”

Yet if you had asked me then whether Trump could make a comeback as a cult hero, I wouldn’t have bet on it. So what’s made his new reality-TV show, “The Apprentice,” the biggest hit of the season? Why is it a must-see for college students and CEOs alike, and so popular that 215,000 Internet applications to compete in next year’s show were downloaded the first week they were available? As Keith Naughton and Marc Peyser explain in our cover story, it may partly be nostalgia for the excess of the ’80s and ’90s represented by Trump, his gilded apartment and black corporate helicopters. But at the same time, it’s a bracing reflection of today’s realities. These days, cutbacks have us all living at the office, and everyone dreads hearing Trump’s patented verdict: “You’re fired!” A roller coaster of workplace politics, the show allows us to have fun facing our fears.

Jobs are also the theme of our political coverage this week. After John Edwards’s surprisingly strong showing in the Wisconsin primary, Howard Fineman details why the North Carolina senator has gathered momentum–and could still give John Kerry a run for his money–by figuring out that economic insecurity could be as big an issue as homeland security in November. And Daniel McGinn explores why job growth is so sluggish despite the apparent business recovery. Read Dan’s piece for his full analysis, but suffice it to say that you may not hear a lot of executives saying “You’re hired!” any time soon.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-12” author: “Frank Luhman”

We also had the right man to do it: Managing Editor Jon Meacham. An observant Episcopalian, Jon studied Biblical history at Sewanee and has remained a close follower of religious scholarship. To write this story, he dusted off his old textbooks and spoke to Christian and Jewish leaders and experts. His analysis: that Gibson based his highly emotional and violent account on literal readings of New Testament passages that have been most often used to imply Jewish culpability. In fact, he argues, history suggests the Roman authorities targeted Jesus as a threat to their own power. Why, then, is Gibson offering such an inflammatory interpretation when Christian leaders have repudiated the “Christ killer” charges and apologized for centuries of anti-Semitism? Gibson wouldn’t speak with us in time for our deadline, but we got a sense of the deeply conservative Catholicism that suffuses the movie in Sean Smith’s interview with James Caviezel, the actor who plays Christ.

When the Supreme Court struck down Texas’s sodomy laws, our cover predicted gay marriage would become an election issue in 2004 (July 7, 2003). That’s clear now that a Massachusetts law allowing gays to wed has been upheld. With President Bush warming toward a constitutional ban on gay matrimony, Republicans hope the decision will help them paint likely Democratic nominee John Kerry as a “Massachusetts liberal.” But how easy will it be to pin that label on Kerry, a war hero who supports gay rights but not marriage? As Howard Fineman reports, the answer could rank with voter views of the economy and security in deciding who takes the Inauguration vows in 2005.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “Evelyn Thomas”

Infatuation is where this week’s cover story started, in fact. As more and more NEWSWEEKers purchased iPods, they kept popping into each other’s offices to talk about how much they loved the player and about all the neat new things they were doing with it. Eventually we realized that something big was happening. As Steven points out, the iPod is more than just a hot product that has helped triple Apple’s third-quarter profits. It’s a phenomenon that is changing the way people experience music, and could help bail out a record industry that has been slowly sinking under the weight of mediocre CDs and free downloading. Based on his exclusive peek, Steven tells you what to expect from the new iPod that Apple will unveil this week. And Bret Begun offers a confession: he’s become so addicted to his iPod that he’s vowed to give it up. (Good luck.)

This week the 9-11 Commission will release its official report, and Michael Isikoff and Michael Hirsh reveal that it will include alarming evidence that Iran may have had more ties to Al Qaeda than Iraq ever did. As the gossip continues about whether Dick Cheney will stay on the Republican ticket, Tamara Lipper and Evan Thomas profile the fiercely protective Cheney clan. Christopher Dickey and Babak Dehghanpisheh report that Iraq’s new interim leader, Ayad Allawi, is turning out to be more than a bit of a strongman himself. And after two years of covering the Martha Stewart case, Keith Naughton follows up on her sentencing by asking if the domestic diva can do the one thing advertisers and investors say she needs to do to rescue her image and business: admit she made a mistake and apologize.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-10” author: “Bianca Lawrence”

Will it work? As Howard Fineman reports, Kerry made the pick partly to create a contrast with the kind of campaign President Bush has run so far: predominantly (and expensively) negative, targeting people’s fears of more terror than their hope for a better future. His camp also likes the matchup with the brooding and controversial Dick Cheney, whom even some Republicans now see as a political liability. (Our poll this week shows that Bush would do better with either Colin Powell or John McCain by his side.) But while his new running mate may provide Kerry with a “charisma prosthesis,” Howard concludes, he alone can’t do what Kerry has failed to accomplish so far: give voters a reason not just to fire Bush but to hire him. And in Edwards, Evan Thomas finds, he has chosen a man with remarkable politics skills but a lifelong streak of eager ambition that he may have to tone down to be an effective wingman.

Who were the Arab prisoners under the interrogation hoods and piles of naked bodies in those awful Abu Ghraib photos? In a disturbing exclusive, Julie Scelfo reports that many weren’t terrorists at all but common criminals who just had the bad luck to be serving time in the prison. Back from a month in Africa, Geoffrey Cowley has some welcome good news in the war on AIDS: increasingly, it’s not foreign doctors but local villagers who are taking it upon themselves to distribute generic drugs and preach safe sex to their countrymen. And on the music beat, Lorraine Ali explains why the new album from The Hives will satisfy your itch to rock.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-25” author: “William Hall”

For weeks, Baghdad bureau chief Rod Nordland was by Petraeus’s side as the general inspected boot camps, gave firearm lessons and bucked up Iraqis about the future after America hands over sovereignty this week. (Rod didn’t try to keep up with Petraeus during his five-mile runs in Baghdad’s 100-degree-plus heat.) The good news, Rod found, is that Petraeus is the perfect man for the job: a brilliant, high-energy West Point grad and Princeton Ph.D. who is as knowledgeable about peacekeeping as military strategy and Special Ops. The bad news, however, is that the Iraqis he is training remain a mostly sorry lot: alarmingly weak on discipline, know-how and loyalty. And as Mark Hosenball and Babak Dehghanpisheh report, another week of deadly attacks and a beheading apparently ordered by terrorist leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi suggest that Petraeus may not have much time to keep the insurgency from spinning out of control.

Adam Smith believed that the economy is governed by rational laws–but he never studied the brain. As Jerry Adler reports, neuroscientists are now monitoring our noggins to see how we think about money, and finding that emotions like envy and pride play as big a role as cost-benefit analysis. (You probably knew that, but it’s fascinating to see science prove it.) Allison Samuels examines a new trend in cosmetic surgery: makeovers tailored for African-Americans. And Johnnie L. Roberts recounts the sad, tangled tale of Warren Lieberfarb, the movie executive who put DVDs on the map but is now a bitter exile in Brentwood with little of the riches his movie format has helped create.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-27” author: “Brittany Hudspeth”

While men are still far more likely to cheat, our team found, available poll and research data clearly indicate that women are closing the gap. Contrary to the stereotype of the bored housewife, their in-depth interviews showed that the trend cuts across class and regional lines and is largely driven by external forces: the increase in women who work and enabling technologies like the cell phone and Internet. Most surprising, the women they talked to expressed little guilt and even some pride that women now have the confidence and independence to behave the way men have for so long. As for the fallout, our reporting also found a complex range of experience: from wives whose families were destroyed to others who viewed their romances as a healthy step toward getting out of troubled marriages or patching together stale ones. As Holly put it, “We all agree that infidelity can break hearts and detonate families, but this is also an intensely modern story about women knowing what they want and being able to get it.”

Like Uncle Junior in “The Sopranos,” Saddam Hussein has reportedly been showing convenient signs of dementia in prison, but he seemed plenty lucid and defiant last week as he was handed over to Iraqi jurisdiction (if not custody). Rod Nordland and Babak Dehghanpisheh preview the case the Iraqis are likely to bring against him. Barbara Kantrowitz examines the role of the youth vote in this year’s election, and we publish the winner of a NEWSWEEK/MTV GENext essay contest. And Sean Smith profiles Will Ferrell, who has traded his TV imitations of George W. Bush for a new role as the wackiest movie star in Hollywood.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-21” author: “Emil Troutt”

So when Reagan finally passed away on Saturday after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, we knew where to turn for a tribute. At once affectionate and tough, sweeping and intimate, Jon’s remembrance does more than just recite the familiar accomplishments and controversies. It probes Reagan’s origins, upbringing and private life for clues to the convictions and temperament that made him such a (majestically or maddeningly, depending on your point of view) successful president. We asked historians Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Michael Beschloss to contemplate how Reagan is likely to be remembered through the ages, and turned to his daughter Patti Davis for her reflections on a father who was often distant or distracted but whose example and illness ultimately brought his devoted wife, Nancy, and their children together in moving reconciliation. And in a week when the resignation of a CIA director and a racehorse’s failed bid for the Triple Crown invited so many reflections on the lost glories of the past, Susanne Miklas gathered and skillfully edited still-evocative photographs of a life and an era that, whether you revered Ronald Reagan or not, won’t soon be erased from our consciousness.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-26” author: “Ralph Frizzell”

Start with phones. If you’re excited about the new devices that combine phones with PDAs, Brad Stone reports, just wait a few years and wireless will make it possible for your phone to replace your desktop computer. To illustrate that concept on our cover, we asked Frog Design, the firm that helped design the original Macintosh, to produce a phone-of-the-future prototype. Elsewhere, we profile 10 cities in the forefront of using wireless technology. Levy weighs in with three pieces: on how this revolution compares with previous breakthroughs; on how wireless mapping could change everything from shopping to crimefighting; and on the troublesome privacy issues that wireless brings with it. And throughout, we illustrate the new unwired world with photos expertly edited by Paul Moakley.

On the terror watch, Evan Thomas, Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff assess the latest high alerts, and the hunt for another American with ties to Al Qaeda. Michael Hirsh and John Barry examine evidence that U.S. officials may have covered up some of the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib and other secret detention sites. Charles Gasparino has new scoops on the growing war between Richard Grasso, the former New York Stock Exchange chairman, and NYSE board member Henry Paulson of Goldman Sachs. And Peg Tyre reports on the booming business in products that help you clean the mess in your home. (Just what we need, right: more stuff to organize all our other stuff.)

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-16” author: “Andrew Kautz”

Watching the reaction to last week’s news doesn’t inspire much confidence in our ability to deal with moral complexity. Politicians and anchorpeople expressed justified horror at the beheading of an American contractor in Saudi Arabia, but spent little time analyzing the delicate question of what role the U.S.-supported Saudi system continues to play in breeding terror. (We asked Fareed Zakaria, who recently returned from a visit to Saudi Arabia, to do just that.) And as the 9-11 Commission issued its findings on the events of that day, Daniel Klaidman and Michael Hirsh report that committee staff members believe President Bush and Vice President Cheney were more interested in saving face than standing to account, particularly on the question of whether Cheney consulted his boss before ordering terrorist planes to be shot down.

Of course, the other side doesn’t look too good on this score either. John Kerry has a sense of nuance, but in the campaign it has often seemed more calculated than considered. In his new memoir, which we obtained from a bookstore and gave to Weston Kosova and Michael Isikoff to read, Bill Clinton appears less intent on introspection than settling scores. And as David Gates points out, there is so much anti-Bush bile in liberal filmmaker Michael Moore’s new “Fahrenheit 9/11” that it could undercut the serious points the documentary tries to make. So in the end, should we blame the voting and moviegoing public for preferring macho to moral maturity? Or is the real problem the scarcity of leaders and artists who make a compelling case for it?

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-29” author: “Sergio Robinson”

Ancient words and old hymns echoed through the services in Washington and, at last, in the California dusk–images from Isaiah, St. Matthew, St. Paul and John Winthrop. There was the rousing “Hail to the Chief,” the martial “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the bittersweet “Amazing Grace.” This week we commemorate the Reagan farewell in pictures, including memorable images taken by Khue Bui and David Hume Kennerly, and in remembrances for NEWSWEEK from former Presidents Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Reagan’s death, though, was not only about pageantry and the past. Amid the grandeur, many people were talking about what could be done to cure the disease that killed him. Evan Thomas and Eleanor Clift tell the story of Mrs. Reagan’s decade of devoted caregiving, and Claudia Kalb and Debra Rosenberg explain how stem cells hold out hope for treating a variety of debilitating illnesses, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Claudia and Debra report on the origins of Nancy’s campaign for the controversial research. On one side stand many whose families (like Mrs. Reagan’s) have been affected by these diseases. On the other stand many with strong pro-life views (like President George W. Bush, who has limited the research because he opposes harvesting the cells from human embryos). Yet Mrs. Reagan’s moral authority, it would seem, has only grown in the last week, and Patti Davis explores the ways her mother will fight to keep the stem-cell work moving forward. Meanwhile, for the millions of Americans facing the challenges of caregiving, Julie Scelfo offers sensitive and sensible advice on coping.

Reagan would have liked the fact that his death is leading people to think about how life might be better lived. In his 1994 letter announcing his Alzheimer’s, he closed with a vision of the future: “I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.” And now Mrs. Reagan’s final crusade will be to ensure that the rest of us, if tragedy strikes, can hope for brighter days than her beloved knew in his long twilight.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-04” author: “Karen Hackler”

At the awards luncheon where the prizes are given out, I told the crowd that we owed this latest honor to two types of courage displayed by my colleagues. First, the intellectual courage of our reporters and editors who asked tough questions about the war’s pretexts and potential consequences before, during and after the fact. And second, the personal courage of Rod Nordland, Melinda Liu and our other reporters who covered the war on the ground and are still in Baghdad risking their lives. But our two big wins–and our 11 NMA nominations in the past three years–are also a credit to the creativity and hard work of everyone on our staff. Since 9/11, we’ve pushed harder than ever to break news, do in-depth investigations, offer provocative commentary and reinvigorate the design and photography in the magazine. Our goal has always been to serve our readers, but the awards are an awfully nice bonus.

In this week’s cover story, Evan Thomas explores how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped lay the groundwork for the Iraq prisoner scandal by creating a “command climate” at the Pentagon that discouraged bearers of bad news. And we serve up two scoops: on the arrest of a U.S. lawyer in connection with the Madrid train bombings (first reported by Michael Isikoff on our Web site), and Charles Gasparino’s exclusive interview with former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso in which he vows to go down fighting to keep his huge pay package. Fact and context, as the Ellie judges put it. It’s what we’re committed to bringing you every week.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-26” author: “Freda Nelson”

The buzz around Washington has long been that Kerry’s wife could be a political liability: too rich, too outspoken, too foreign to go over with heartland voters. But seeing her in action, Melinda came away with a more complex picture. The woman increasingly known just as Te-re-za does have a tendency to speak her mind in ways that could cause political headaches: for example, she shared some views on abortion that may not go over very well with Kerry’s liberal base. But she’s also proved quite effective in front of campaign crowds, who find her candor refreshing. And she seems to know just what to say to bring her husband down to earth. How much difference presidential spouses make in elections is always debatable. But in this TV age, Teresa’s biggest contribution may be to help her often wooden husband close the “likability” gap.

With photos of flag-draped coffins providing a backdrop to a growing debate about troop strength in Iraq, Melinda Liu, John Barry and Michael Hirsh report an alarming finding. Of the 789 American and allied soldiers who had died in Iraq by mid-April, more than a quarter were traveling in unprotected vehicles–suggesting that inadequate armor may have contributed to the body count. Dirk Johnson remembers Pat Tillman, the football star who left the NFL to fight and die in Afghanistan. And as the summer movie season approaches, Devin Gordon and Sean Smith ponder whether an onslaught of action movies centered around male stars is what Americans are looking for to help take their minds off war and politics.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-24” author: “Madeline Brooks”

But LaHaye and Jenkins are on the cover this week not just because of the scope of their success (62 million copies sold, which is better than Stephen King or John Grisham are currently doing). As David Gates’s piece makes clear, LaHaye and Jenkins’s contrasting sensibilities tell a larger story about the complexities of evangelical Christianity–and the “Left Behind” novels shed as much light on the nation’s faith and fears as they do on America’s reading habits. Lyrical and puzzling, Revelation is a literary universe as familiar to evangelical Christians as Middle-earth is to Tolkienites. That LaHaye and Jenkins’s books are selling so briskly at a time of global chaos suggests that millions are taking refuge in literal renderings of Scripture, seeking a port amid the storm of the present. It’s happened before, as Lisa Miller’s essay on Revelation argues. And Howard Fineman masterfully explains the roots of President Bush’s sympathy with the swath of America that’s drawn to “Left Behind.”

While Revelation promises “a new heaven and a new earth,” the world we have seems particularly bleak. Last week brought the chilling images of the beheading of Nicholas Berg in Iraq, and, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, John Barry, Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff give us an exclusive look inside the Bush administration’s debate over torture techniques since 9/11. Is it ever appropriate to adopt coercive interrogation and detention tactics when the extracted intelligence might save lives? Or does torture inevitably create a climate that can lead to sickening abuses like the ones at Abu Ghraib?

Difficult questions, with, as our story shows, few easy answers. Little wonder, then, that so many people are turning to fiction to alleviate the burden of fact.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-10” author: “Timmy Clift”

Consider heart attacks, the biggest killer of American women. As Claudia Kalb and Karen Springen report, doctors are gaining a better grasp of how women experience symptoms–often as indigestion or backache, rather than crushing chest or jaw pain–and how to treat them. Anne Underwood explores the latest thinking about breast-cancer treatment, while Karen Springen evaluates new research, including one drug that shows impressive results, in battling the scourge of lung cancer. Anna Kuchment offers a fascinating look at how social networking improves women’s well-being. Barbara Kantrowitz explains why excessive drinking is even riskier for women than men. And throughout, Harvard experts Celeste Robb-Nicholson, M.D., Carolyn Schatz and Nancy Ferrari offer state-of-the-art wisdom and advice.

If you were as disturbed as we were by footage of U.S. servicemen and -women humiliating Iraqi prisoners last week, you’ll want to read Rod Nordland and John Barry’s story on military justice in Iraq. Howard Fineman and T. Trent Gegax sniff out growing tension in the Democratic camp over Kerry’s lackluster performance in recent weeks. And Steven Levy looks at the innovative way in which Google is trying to go public, in the hottest IPO in years. That report also includes behind-the-scenes reporting on infighting between investment banks from Charles Gasparino. Readers of The Wall Street Journal know Charlie as one of the best financial reporters in the business, and I’m proud to welcome him as the newest addition to the NEWSWEEK team.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-12” author: “Ruby Grainger”

So is Chalabi to blame for leading us into war with bad intelligence and false promises that we would be greeted as liberators? As Hosenball and Evan Thomas report in this week’s cover story, the reality is a lot more complex, filled with evidence that Chalabi’s supporters in the administration (and the press) used him as much as he used us. Meanwhile, as George W. Bush prepares to go to France to mark the 60th anniversary of D-Day, I asked our Jon Meacham, the author of “Franklin and Winston,” a superb best seller on the wartime relationship between FDR and Churchill, to assess the president’s performance on Iraq in light of their example. His conclusion: that Bush compares favorably on resolve but shows little of their understanding of the need to secure allies or respect the lessons of history.

Like a lot of parents, I’ve been thrilled by the spell that J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have cast over my kids but somewhat disappointed with the film versions. So I was intrigued to be invited along for an early peek at “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” directed by Alfonso Cuaron. As Sean Smith details in his story on the making of the movie, the Mexican visionary behind the indie hit “Y Tu Mama Tambien” has kept the gee-whiz special effects but added the soulfulness that makes the books so haunting. Sadly, Cuaron won’t direct the next movie–but, in a cheerier scoop, he tells NEWSWEEK that he may be back again after that.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-12” author: “Dale Durham”

We didn’t exactly see it that way: we weren’t sure we were done yet, and at the time were just happy to have conceived another healthy child. But it made us realize that beyond the desire to have kids, a lot of Americans seem to share two other yearnings: to have offspring of both sexes, and to have more control over how it all happens.

Now science is bringing that day closer. As Claudia Kalb reports in our cover story, a sophisticated method of sperm sifting called MicroSort is now in clinical trials. And in a far more controversial procedure, some couples are creating embryos, then screening them for gender so they can be absolutely sure they get a boy or a girl. Yet as the technology improves, questions about the ethics of sex selection are becoming more urgent. As Barbara Kantrowitz notes, in America we tend to pine for “gender balance” between boys and girls. But in developing countries like India and China, reproductive technology is being used to avoid having female children altogether–a trend that may have a profound long-range impact on economics, politics and population growth in those countries. And if parents can pick and choose the sexual DNA of their children, how big a leap is it to the sci-fi world of demanding control over attributes like looks, intelligence, skin color and susceptibility to disease?

If newsweekly editors could control the timing of political votes, we wouldn’t have to publish stories about contests that will be over by the time many readers see the issue. So this week, Howard Fineman looks beyond the results in Iowa (whatever they are) to the rough game of “oppo,” or opposition research, which the Democratic candidates will be playing in the weeks ahead. Evan Thomas and Daniel Klaidman provide new insights into Howard Dean’s still elusive personality by investigating his formative years at a New England boarding school. And as the movie business decamps to the Sundance Film Festival, Sean Smith goes in search of the kids who made the 1999 indie hit “The Blair Witch Project”–and finds a story almost as strange as the movie itself.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-20” author: “Anne Cosper”

Maybe it’s just another sign of how polarized views of politics and the media have become these days, but I take all our letters seriously, so let me tell you what I wrote to some of these readers personally. Although many of our stories contain tough reporting and analysis, I hope that the range of subjects we take on–and the range of responses we get–shows that we have no fixed agendas. In choosing our cover subjects, the main questions we ask ourselves are: are we telling our readers something new, and do we have the facts to back it up? And as stories are in the works, we have spirited debates among ourselves about nuances of reporting, writing and presentation that almost always make the final results that you see in the magazine more balanced and reliable.

Does that mean we’re assured of getting things right, or that wording that suggests institutional bias never makes it into the magazine without being caught? Unfortunately not, and when a reader points out a clear error in fact or interpretation, we try to fess up to it, as followers of our Letters column see on a regular basis. But on the whole we pride ourselves on being what we believe the press should be: thorough but also independent, skeptical and unafraid to take on anyone’s sacred cows. And if that means we occasionally come under fire from all points on the political spectrum, I hope that’s actually a sign we’re doing something right.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-19” author: “Virginia Smith”

Already, young people are playing a major role in the biggest story of the campaign so far: the rise of Howard Dean. Yet while the former Vermont governor still looks like the favorite going into a compressed primary season that’s only weeks away, non-Dean Dems are increasingly gloomy that he won’t stand a chance against a wartime incumbent who is rising in the polls after the capture of Saddam Hussein and months of positive economic news. In our cover story this week, Howard Fineman reports on the frantic attempts by the other candidates to stop the Dean juggernaut, while Evan Thomas and Daniel Klaidman check in with Gen. Wesley Clark, who may stand the best chance of becoming the “Un-Dean” once the primaries head south and west. Jonathan Alter looks at the long history of Democratic Party fratricide. And our first GENext columnist, Laura Houston, explains why Dean doesn’t do much for the young people at her school, Ole Miss.

Some readers called us alarmist for publishing a cover story three years ago asking whether Mad Cow disease could reach America (March 12, 2001). But as Jerry Adler reports, that warning now looks prescient as the first recorded U.S. case has forced us to confront the alarming gaps in our meat and food safety systems. On the terror watch, Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff offer fresh details behind the Orange Alert over the year-end holidays. And Devin Gordon goes head-to-head with TV’s funniest misanthrope, Larry David, whose hilarious show “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is again giving us HBO watchers an excuse to cancel all other plans for Sunday nights.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-15” author: “Amy Graham”

Yet we didn’t decide to do a cover story on back pain just to restate an old problem. We were fascinated by a new debate among experts about how to treat it. A growing school of thought now contends that Americans have overmedicalized back problems, relying too heavily on prescription drugs and surgery to ease the agony. In fact, these contrarians argue, back pain remains a mystery that may be solved just as effectively with alternative techniques like massage, or simply by reducing the amount of stress in your life. Claudia Kalb reports on the controversy and its implications for the future of treating back ailments. And if you’re wondering who produced the cool, informative illustrations that accompany the story, they’re the work of designer Kevin Hand and researcher Josh Ulick from our crack graphics staff.

All presidents have fans and critics, but George W. Bush is a walking Rorschach test. His rare prime-time press conference last week showed once again that, depending on what you think of him, he can come off as forceful or dogmatic, plain-spoken or inarticulate, sincere or hypocritical. This week Howard Fineman weighs the electoral pros and cons of Bush’s unapologetic stance on Iraq and pre-9/11 intelligence, while Evan Thomas reports on the revelations in “Plan of Attack,” investigative journalist Bob Woodward’s new book on Bush and Iraq. Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff have exclusive details about how the administration fought over enemy combatants and secret detentions after 9/11. In Business, Jane Bryant Quinn helps sort through all the new financial and technical options for phone service. And Sean Smith offers a first look at the return of everyone’s favorite green ogre in “Shrek 2.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-13” author: “Amanda Shelpman”

That word, of course, raises the specter of Vietnam–the yardstick against which any modern American war, successful or unsuccessful, is still inevitably measured. So we asked Evan Thomas, who has written several books about modern U.S. foreign policy and has covered it for us for 20 years, to address the question head-on: How is Iraq starting to resemble that war? And how is it still very different? In our conversations, Fareed Zakaria was also saying he thought Washington had a last opportunity to salvage the occupation by paring back its loftiest ambitions for building a Western-style democracy in Iraq and trying to strike a deal that would at least ensure sovereignty and stability. Given Fareed’s thoughtful support for this war, I thought it was an important evolution in his analysis that our readers should hear.

Several other stories in this issue also take a fresh look at old assumptions. As politicians and the media fulminate about outsourcing, Brad Stone checks in with companies that have come away disappointed with its benefits. Robert J. Samuelson examines whether the real-estate boom, widely credited with easing the downturn, may now endanger the recovery if rising interest rates prick the bubble. And Arian Campo-Flores reports that one of the newest trends in teenage night life isn’t another bad-news story about drugs and drinking. It’s the rise of “Christian clubbing” at hot spots where devout, fun-loving kids can go to “get their praise on.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-05” author: “Leonard Aldrich”

Allan’s story is one in a series of pieces we’re calling “Issues 2004,” on important debates in the presidential race. (Allan also examines John Kerry’s position on taxes and finds it woefully lacking in specifics.) And this week we also return to another crucial election-year issue: has the war in Iraq made us safer? In the wake of the barbarous deaths of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, Christopher Dickey looks at how the occupation has altered the larger war on terror. And Rod Nordland and Melinda Liu document just how treacherous the occupation has become, to U.S. servicemen and the journalists covering them.

Much has been written about how the press handled the horrific pictures from Fallujah. Here at NEWSWEEK, we think it’s important to let photos convey the magnitude of momentous events, but we also respect the sensitivities of our readers, particularly parents concerned about what children see. Several weeks ago we ran some very bloody images from the train bombings in Madrid, and while I thought they helped convey the horror of the worst terror attack since 9/11, I also listened hard to those who thought we had shown too much. This time, we’ve let the photos show you exactly what happened without shoving it in your face. Sadly, that is still haunting enough.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-20” author: “Michael Thompson”

We put the Stewart case on our cover a year and a half ago because we sensed it would be more than just another celebrity scandal. For some observers, it seemed like good gossip but small potatoes: what did Martha really do wrong? But for many others, it tapped into a growing anger over all the advantages the rich have today–from playing the stock market to hiring expensive lawyers to get them out of jams. Indeed, Keith Naughton and Barney Gimbel report in this week’s cover story that jurors saw punishing Stewart, who turned down a plea bargain as recently as last April, as a blow for the little guy. Meanwhile, Allan Sloan poses an important dissenting question. Why should Martha, who only avoided losing thousands for herself, be on her way to a prison farm when the heads of fraudulent companies like Enron and WorldCom, which lost billions for small investors, have yet to do time?

So what else lies around the bend? In the war on terror, Michael Hirsh and John Barry have a scoop on the identity of the commander of the top-secret Special Forces unit assigned to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Melinda Henneberger reports on whether John Kerry’s lifelong ties to the Kennedy family will be an asset or a liability in a general-election fight against Bush. David Jefferson and Johnnie Roberts explain why Michael Eisner’s days as chief of Disney may be numbered even though he survived a shareholder rebellion last week. And in a tip sheet special report, Jane Bryant Quinn offers advice about how to prepare for something we’re all concerned about down the road: retirement.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-24” author: “Mary Bassett”

Health is also the subject of this week’s cover story on new ways of fighting strokes. Things have changed dramatically since my grandfather suffered a massive stroke in the early 1960s, paralyzing half his body. As Jerry Adler reports, new technology may soon make it possible to dissolve threatening blockages of blood vessels in the brain by zapping them with ultrasound or removing them with tiny corkscrews. And more victims are beating the odds thanks to state-of-the-art treatment–from faster intervention, to better rehabilitation, to closer monitoring of “mini-strokes.”

NEWSWEEK likes to help start conversations, as I like to think we did with our cover story three weeks ago on Mel Gibson’s controversial film “The Passion of the Christ.” Now that the movie is out and the rest of the press has weighed in, David Gates reports on what the public thinks. He finds a fierce divide between believers overjoyed to see a hit film reflecting their faith, and those, religious and secular, deeply disturbed by the movie’s graphic violence and finger-pointing at Jews. And reflecting on her own Catholic upbringing, Anna Quindlen wrestles with a question that hangs over hot topics from “The Passion” to gay marriage. Does–or should–any party have a monopoly on the politics of faith?

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-15” author: “Kenneth Mccullough”

For our cover story this week, our reporters around the country talked to consumers, business people and scientific experts to explore what lies behind the new environmentalist vogue, and how big a difference it will make. In the Midwest, Karen Springen spoke with everyone from farmers converting their fields to corn for ethanol to planners who helped turn Chicago into a green city. In Silicon Valley, Brad Stone interviewed engineers and venture capitalists betting on environmentally friendly technologies. And in New York, Jerry Adler, who wrote the story, traced the political and cultural debate stirred by Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and checked in with experts he has talked tofor pieces over the years about the threat of global warming. Our folks came away bemused by some of the trendiness behind all the greenness, but, as Karen put it, also “proud that we can make a difference by getting out the message of people like NYU physicist Marty Hoffert, who makes a compelling argument that the United States should take an Apollo-like approach to developing renewable-energy technology.”

In the wake of the Supreme Court’srebuke of President Bush on prisoner treatment at Guantánamo Bay, Michael Isikoff and Stuart Taylor Jr. explore how the ruling could affect the rest of the president’s blueprint for fighting terror, and talk to administration officials who tried to warn the White House about the potential for trouble. Dan Ephron and Christopher Dickey examine how Israel’s new prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is using the latest Middle East crisis to prove his toughness, while Michael Hirsh analyzes the diplomatic dust-up over North Korea’s latest missile test. And as one product of the ’60s who dropped out and tuned in (before becoming an acclaimed critic and novelist), David Gates delivers the latest “Boomer File”–on how rock and roll shaped his life, and the life of his generation.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-02” author: “Amy Cook”

For most of the year, our job involves reporting on war, terror, hardball politics and social and cultural trends that we cover from a dry-eyed remove. But as the Fourth of July approached, we decided to devote this special double issue to an avowedly admiring tribute to Americans–rich and poor, young and old–who use their talents and fortune to benefit others. Every reporter who worked on the project was moved by the people they met: When Peg Tyre interviewed Margaret Ross, a Good Samaritan from rural Mississippi, about 35 neighbors showed up to welcome her with lemonade. Claudia Kalb wept after she saw the kids whom Dr. Fred Kaplan treats for a rare childhood disease. And as you’ll see on a pullout gatefold, we discovered more worthy candidates after inviting readers to submit nominations at NEWSWEEK.com. “It has been so much fun to work on this project–an antidote to bad news and New York cynicism,” says Lisa Miller, who oversaw the cover package. I think she speaks for all of us.

In the rest of the issue, Jonathan Darman , Jonathan Alter and George Will weigh in with different perspectives on how the war in Iraq is rippling through American politics, dividing Democrats as it bedevils the Bush administration. Ellis Cose meditates on how Latino power is complicating relations between blacks and Hispanics. Devin Gordon takes you on a 160-mile-an-hour ride through the wild world of NASCAR broadcasting. And Sean Smith talks to Bryan Singer, the latest director to take on the Superman epic. Here’s hoping that your Independence Day is full of fun and generosity, and we’ll see you in two weeks.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-11” author: “Betty Starks”

The struggle for the hearts and minds of worldly Lebanese like Kevin’s friend was only one element at stake in the widening violence across the Middle East. In Lebanon, what began as a retaliation for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers escalated into a deadly exchange of bombing raids, with Israel debating how far to go in punishing Hizbullah and the Islamists seeing an opening to strengthen their hand against Lebanon’s elected government. But as Christopher Dickey writes with reporting from Peraino and Babak Dehghanpisheh in Beirut, the crisis also fed into the larger power struggle playing out in Iraq and elsewhere between moderates backed by the United States and radicals supported by Iran and Syria. From Washington, Michael Hirsh analyzes how the law of unintended consequences has increasingly darkened George W. Bush’s dreams of spreading democracy through the Arab world. And Robert J. Samuelson weighs the odds that the mayhem could spark a new oil crisis, pushing gas prices even higher and threatening America’s economic expansion.

If you have kids between 5 and 14, or are that age yourself, you already know that “High School Musical” is the surprise hit of the year–as a cable TV show, DVD and top-of-the-charts CD. But as Johnnie L. Roberts reports, it’s a fascinating business story as well. At a time when the “studio system” is dead everywhere else in Hollywood, Disney has leveraged a stable of wholesome young stars across a host of TV and other media platforms to build a $100 million empire. Call it the Mickey Mouse Club for the multimedia age.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-21” author: “Josephine Jones”

A day after Bush left Washington, the Middle East exploded, and Richard and Charles were there to observe–and photograph–as the president and his team juggled schmoozing with world leaders and responding to a savage tit for tat between Israel and Hizbullah radicals that threatened to escalate into all-out war. In our cover package, Christopher Dickey and Babak Dehghanpisheh chronicle the latest violence and bewilderment in the Arab world about why America, after pushing for free elections in Lebanon, has allowed Israel to attack the new government’s armed forces and destroy much of the country’s infrastructure in its bid to cripple Hizbullah. Meanwhile, Richard and Charles take you inside the room as the president and his team scramble to come to grips with the mayhem. In addition to playing fly on the wall, Richard interviewed Bush four times over four days, getting an up-close sense of his views and his mood. “Bush now versus Bush then?” Richard reflects. “He’s still an open book–there’s no hiding what he’s thinking or feeling. He can be pensive and playful, force-ful and stubborn, charming and dismissive. You see the experience of six turbulent years in office, and the impatience of a man who never had much time for diplomatic niceties.”

Is there a distinct “female brain” that causes women to see and feel the world in a fundamentally different way from men? Peg Tyre and Julie Scelfo talk to a psychiatrist who has published a provocative book making just that case. And over a banana split in Los Angeles, Christina Aguilera talks to Lorraine Ali about the singer’s transition from pop princess to sex bomb to her latest incarnation–adecidedly un-Britney throwback to the glamour of Jean Harlow and the classic American standards of jazz and blues.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-06” author: “Crystal Mcloughlin”

As Jon, the author of this week’s cover story, slowed down, Ford worked the Confederate caucus with hugs and high-fives–an interesting encounter, to say the least. The news at the time was President Bush’s proposal to lease the management of some American ports to a Dubai company–a plan Ford opposed. Amid the locals, Ford declined to wear a Confederate battle-flag sticker, but listened happily as one voter said, “Boy, I know who you are–you’re the one who doesn’t want to sell our ports to the Arabs.” The scene, which Ford recounted to NEWSWEEK editors in an interview, illustrates what he has to do to win: convince enough voters in a generally Republican state that he is, as we say in our cover line, not your daddy’s Democrat. Ford’s hope? That voters will see him as a pragmatist who has moved beyond the liberal orthodoxy that has tended to consign the Democrats to defeat in the South, and nationally, since 1968. Not so long ago, 2006 looked to be a year of lefty anger; as the seasons shift and autumn comes, however, many of the most competitive House and Senate candidates, in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Missouri and elsewhere, are the ones who are stressing their centrism.

Whether the Democrats would govern from the middle or swerve left, burying the Bush administration with subpoenas, is another question, and Michael Isikoff and Holly Bailey try to answer it. Richard Wolffe profiles Ford’s opponent Bob Corker, and Ellis Cose weighs in on the “Bradley Effect,” the phenomenon named after the late L.A. mayor Tom Bradley, who led in the polls only to lose on Election Day.

From Iraq, where U.S. forces are facing their deadliest month of 2006, Christian Caryl reports on the snipers and sectarian violence confronting soldiers on a base they call “the Alamo.” Mark Hosenball and Christopher Dickey tell the tale of a shadowy probe into the world of nuclear proliferation, and in Washington, Dan Ephron explores the changing rules of interrogation.

In business, Keith Naughton assesses Wal-Mart’s big gamble in China, and Johnnie L. Roberts chronicles the end of prime-time TV as we know it. In a conversation with the journalist Alex Kuczynski, Barbara Kantrowitz learns how Kuczynski’s personal experience with cosmetic surgery helped inspire a new book–and a pledge to swear off further enhancements.

I grew up in Tennessee, so I confess that I have followed the Ford-Corker race with the enthusiasm of a native. Reading Darman’s piece on the campaign, though, I think you will agree that, come election night, Ford’s fate will tell a larger story, signaling what kind of Congress the president will face in the twilight of his term.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-07” author: “Suzanne Sieberg”

That hope–and hope is an elusive but essential element in international affairs–has been tested anew inside the “Hermit Kingdom” of North Korea. Kim Jong Il’s secretive regime announced that it has now exploded a nuclear device; while there is debate about the scale of this particular experiment, the global community is in agreement on a grim truth: North Korea is a nuclear threat. The scientists who were warning Roosevelt on the brink of world war in 1939 were right: once such technology exists, powers driven by the intrinsic political hunger for respect will do what they can to master that technology for their own purposes. And so, seemingly inexorably, the Nuclear Club grows ever larger.

In our cover story, Michael Hirsh, Melinda Liu and George Wehrfritz draw on decades of reporting to reconstruct the bizarre history of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Lally Weymouth interviews the new secretary-general of the United Nations, South Korea’s Ban Ki Moon, and Fareed Zakaria assesses America’s options, arguing that sanctions tend to work only when the rogue power believes we are trying to change its policies, not its regime.

On the home front, Karen Breslau, Eleanor Clift and Daren Briscoe profile Nancy Pelosi, and Jonathan Alter separates fact from fiction in the race to win the “values” voter. Many of you have read our coverage of the toll Iraq is taking on military marriages. (Our NEWSWEEK.com series on the subject is called War Stories.) Last week we posted such a strong piece about a war-torn family that Catharine Skipp, Dan Ephron and Michael Hastings updated the story for this issue of the magazine.

In the debut of her BeliefWatch column, Lisa Miller explores the curious backlash against Pastor Rick Warren. While Johnnie L. Roberts profiles Max Siegel, the new business impresario of gospel music, Sean Smith spends quality time with Annette Bening, and David Ansen interprets Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” through the prism of Afghanistan and Iraq. We are also pleased to offer an exclusive excerpt from Steven Levy ’s new book on the iPod, “The Perfect Thing.”

After his October 1939 conversation with Sachs, FDR set America’s atomic research in motion. On April 11, 1945, the day before he died and three months before the Manhattan Project proved successful at Alamogordo, New Mexico, Roosevelt worked his last speech, one he would not live to deliver. “Today,” FDR said, “science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another.” Roosevelt’s answer? “We must cultivate the science of human relationships.” Wise words then–and now.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-27” author: “Mario Digeorgio”

Little did I know then that 10 years later, I would get a college internship at NEWSWEEK, and that two decades later, I would be given the high privilege of editing this great publication. In the eight years since, my colleagues and I have put out 400 issues. We have worked hard to push the magazine to new levels in investigative reporting (from exposing how the CIA let two 9/11 hijackers get away to our recent scoop on Hewlett-Packard’s spying on its own board), news analysis (including Fareed Zakaria ’s brilliant essays on the roots of terror) and smart, forward-looking coverage of politics, social issues and popular culture. This is my last issue as editor, before I turn over the reins to my deputy, Jon Meacham, and begin a new job creating Internet ventures for our parent, The Washington Post Company. The latest of 30 covers we’ve done on the Iraq war, this edition includes a 6,000-word excerpt of Bob Woodward’s book, “State of Denial,” on how George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld have misled Americans about the war’s progress, and an analysis of how the mounting record of failure could affect next month’s elections.

For a weekly up against 24/7 competition in the age of cable and the Internet, we’ve had a pretty good run. We’ve won more awards than ever in our history, including two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence for coverage of the biggest stories of our time: September 11 and the Iraq war. We’ve rethought the look and voice of the magazine in ways our competitors are now said to be imitating. We’ve created strong new franchises devoted to personal issues like health, technology and religion. And we’ve become a tireless daily on NEWSWEEK.com.

Yet long after our Alexander Calder “Ellies” are rusted over, what I will cherish most is the chance I’ve had to work with such passionate, committed journalists. I’ll remember Howard Fineman running into my office at 3 a.m. on election night 2000 to tell me to hold the cover because Al Gore’s campaign manager had just called his cell phone to say Gore had retracted his concession to Bush. I’ll remember our photo editor, Simon Barnett, sleeping in his office for four days straight after 9/11, as photographers caked in debris and shaking with emotion trooped in and out. I’ll remember Melinda Liu, our veteran foreign correspondent, demanding to stay in Baghdad for the “shock and awe” bombing attack, when most U.S. reporters had pulled out, and writing such powerful e-mails that I made her personal diary the heart of our cover package.

Most of all, I will remember how my colleagues performed while under relentless assault for breaking some of the talked-about stories of the past decade. When our investigative ace Michael Isikoff learned that the president was having an affair with a White House intern, we were pilloried both for pursuing the story and for holding it until we were sure of its accuracy. But we went ahead and published definitive accounts of Bill Clinton’s transgression and Ken Starr’s overreaching that won us a National Magazine Award for Reporting. We became just as unpopular with the Bush administration for our prescient covers on Iraq–on the spinning of prewar intelligence, financial waste and abuse of prisoners. Last year, some in the administration leapt at the chance to come after us when we had to retract a Periscope item about prisoner mistreatment at Guantánamo Bay because our source backed away from the story. Yet we kept on reporting the torture story, and today there is bipartisan outrage over the troubling issues we helped raise.

Our greatest and most controversial moments have flowed from the same commitment: to tell-it-like-it-is reporting. We do it with no political agenda, but because we believe the mission of a free press is to shine light into corners the powerful would keep dark. We also have been lucky in our courageous owners– Katharine Graham and her wise son Don –and business side led by Rick Smith. Sadly, however, we live in a time when more and more people seem interested only in news and opinion that supports their pre-existing beliefs. I hope this is a passing symptom of today’s angry political climate, because for all the flaws of the “mainstream media” I think we would all find that, like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” this country would be a lot worse off without it.

My final thanks go to you, our readers. I know from talking to so many of you, and from your letters, e-mails and (bless you) renewal orders, that you still value a magazine that strives to be tough and independent, that takes the world but not itself seriously, and is filled with writers who talk up rather than down to you. It’s been an honor bringing this publication into your homes, and I hope to meet you again soon–on the Web.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-21” author: “Patricia Conner”

In a candid talk with Cathleen McGuigan, Leibovitz discusses her decision to offer intimate glimpses of her longtime relationship with writer Susan Sontag, including powerful pictures of Sontag as she was dying of cancer. Cathleen also got a sense of the work ethic that has produced so many iconic images. Interviews were sandwiched between back-to-back shoots in Los Angeles, including a session with Angelina Jolie that started at 5 a.m. and stretched until 7:30 at night. Leibovitz also reflects on how her work and life have been changed by becoming a mother in her 50s. She now will go on location only for three days, and recently made two trips to Colorado for her Vanity Fair cover of Suri Cruise. “I am so happy I did this,” she says of having children, “and it is definitely the hardest thing I have ever done.”

Visiting the White House last week, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf again insisted he is doing everything he can to pursue Osama bin Laden on the mountain border with Afghanistan. But on the ground, Sami Yousafzai reports that the area could be better described as “Jihadistan,” given how totally Qaeda chiefs and local warlords now control it. Allan Sloan assesses the damage from the collapse of one of America’s biggest hedge funds. And now that Dame Helen Mirren has an Emmy for portraying Elizabeth I and is generating Oscar buzz with her new film on Elizabeth II, Barbara Kantrowitz asks the incomparable British actress just how good it is to be the Queen.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-26” author: “Joseph Taylor”

Just tell the damn truth : sound counsel for anyone, but especially for those of us who make our living in journalism, then and now. The magazine you are holding is my first as editor of NEWSWEEK. I have been privileged to serve as National Affairs editor for the late Maynard Parker and, for the past eight years, as managing editor under Mark Whitaker. And through both eras everyone at NEWSWEEK has been fortunate to work for Rick Smith, our chairman and editor-in-chief, who has, as he likes to say, been here since dinosaurs roamed the earth (or at least since Richard Nixon was in the White House). Maynard, Mark and Rick all taught us that while journalism is, as our late owner Philip Graham said, the first rough draft of history, one of the joys of NEWSWEEK is that we not only write history but make it–by breaking news, by advancing arguments and by telling you things you do not know but should.

Now, as we open a new chapter, we know that we can take nothing for granted. Given the kudzu-like universe of choices you have to get your news, we must repay your time and your trust every day on NEWSWEEK.com and every week in the pages of the magazine. You may not always agree with a certain columnist or approve of that week’s cover choice. But taken all in all, hour by hour online and week by week in the magazine, you will never find reason to doubt that we are trying to do the best we can to produce honest reporting and present diverse voices on the things that matter most.

With the midterm elections less than 30 days away, what matters most in the political world at the moment is the fallout from the sordid Mark Foley scandal. As Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball, Holly Bailey, Debra Rosenberg, Richard Wolffe, Jonathan Darman, Arian Campo-Flores, Catharine Skipp and Carmen Gentile report in a story written by Evan Thomas, the revelation of Foley’s secret life–one that included instant messages to young House pages–sheds light on the larger culture of Washington and raises questions about the Republican leadership’s competence and accountability. And in the debut of his new reported column, Living Politics, Howard Fineman explores another GOP dilemma: unease with the party among politically conservative evangelicals.

In this week’s Health for Life offering, edited by Alexis Gelber, David Noonan and Barbara Kantrowitz, we go inside an often-overlooked story: the crisis in America’s hospitals. Elsewhere, Susannah Meadows reports from the scene of the terrible schoolhouse massacre in the Amish enclave in Nickel Mines, Pa. And in entertainment, Devin Gordon explains how the gonzo British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen got people to play along as he filmed his new movie, “Borat,” the story of a fake foreign journalist touring America.

A few weeks ago I received a note from an old NEWSWEEK hand–a man who, like Bill Emerson, helped shape the magazine. “The form has been rumored repeatedly to have been past its on-sale date,” he wrote, “but if we ever needed a great newsmagazine, now is the time.” That is, as Emerson might say, the damn truth–and all of us here promise to do what we can to be that great newsmagazine for all of you.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-15” author: “Michael William”

This year we devote the issue to the next generation of women leaders. For an opening collection of oral histories, Barbara Kantrowitz, Holly Peterson and Karen Breslau interviewed dynamic pioneers from sports and popular entertainment to classical music, medicine, politics and technology. Barbara also profiled several leaders who are defying stereotypes about women and science, while Daniel McGinn reported on what companies are doing to build new “on ramps” for talented women who take time off to raise children. And we close with life lessons for younger women from some wise leaders who have made it to the top. Alexis Gelber conceived and oversees this series, Kantrowitz and David Noonan edited the package and Susanne Miklas produced the photography. At our conference this week–organized with the aid of Mark Block, Lia Macko and Elaine Parker –female leaders from several generations will gather to assess how far they’ve come and what remains to be achieved.

In our Sept. 18 issue, we profiled the 172nd Stryker Brigade’s 4-23 infantry battalion, an elite unit of U.S. soldiers in Baghdad. In more than a year of fighting, the 4-23 had not suffered a single combat death. But on Sunday, Sept. 10, shortly after that issue went to press, an enemy sniper shot and killed Cpl. Alexander Jordan, 31, while he was on patrol in the Shaab neighborhood. Our condolences go out to his family and comrades. Updates on Jordan and his unit are available in a weekly feature called War Stories at NEWSWEEK.com. You can also now get that or other content from our Web site downloaded to your cell phone or PDA by going to mobile.NEWSWEEK.com.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-27” author: “Preston Watson”

Last week, however, HP itself started leaking details of the controversy to the media to get out ahead of the SEC filing. Perkins released Kaplan from his promise, and David broke the blockbuster scoop on NEWSWEEK.com. By the weekend, HP’s board was meeting in emergency session to decide Dunn’s fate, and talk of a criminal investigation was in the air. In his cover story, Kaplan offers a blow-by-blow account of the scandal that has rocked the venerable technology firm, while a sidebar probes the not-so-fine art of “pretexting,” the ruse that a private investigator employed to get access to the phone logs of HP’s directors. And whether Dunn goes or stays, we look at how the controversy will continue to dog the company and raise fresh concerns about privacy and corporate governance in boardrooms across America.

How will public angst over the Iraq war shape the outcome of the November midterm elections? Jonathan Darman and Evan Thomas report on an emblematic Senate race in Virginia, where GOP incumbent George Allen finds himself on the defensive over Iraq even as his challenger, former Navy secretary James Webb, struggles to shake the lingering perception that Democrats can’t be trusted on defense and fighting terror. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Jonathan Alter ponders what might have been had George W. Bush taken a different approach to fighting back. And in our ongoing Boomer Files series, we look at the long, strange trip the ’60s generation has taken in matters of religion, from Hare Krishna to the Promise Keepers.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-24” author: “Mirian Evans”

How did we get to the point when we are pushing so many young kids so hard, so fast? Peg traces the trend to everything from George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, whose original aim was to raise literacy and math skills among underprivileged children, to the more middle-class mania for early preschool, tutoring and Baby Einstein learning aids. While scores have gone up in early elementary school, she concludes, the result has been a disturbing rise in overstressed kids and lack of follow-up that often allows those gains to erode later. Yet for all the alarming signs, Peg still found scores of educators trying to make the best of the new grind while keeping kids sane. “The best part about reporting this story was getting to talk to so many principals and teachers around the country,” she says. “Each one spoke about the complexities and challenges of working with kindergartners and first graders with sensitivity, intellectual rigor and tremendous passion.”

On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, as the Bush administration tries to convince the public yet again that the Iraq war is central to the war on terror, Karen Breslau profiles a program that helps some of the thousands of soldiers who were severely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan recover physically and psychologically. Ellis Cose travels to Kenya with Barack Obama, and ponders how the Illinois senator rose so quickly from obscurity to be greeted like a head of state. Keith Naughton talks to Bill Ford Jr. about the painful steps he is taking to address the decline of America’s second largest automaker, while Jerry Adler meditates on how all the religious talk in our politics and foreign policy has given rise to an uptick in atheism. And in a candid interview with Rosie O’Donnell as she prepares to return to daytime TV, Marc Peyser asks whether the “good Rosie” or the “bad Rosie” will stand up–or sit down–on “The View.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-28” author: “Caroline Price”

Pluto’s fate provided us with a chance to check in on what science is learning about the universe–which is a lot, and at a very rapid rate. In a cover story by Jerry Adler, reported by Mary Carmichael,A. Christian Jean and Nomi Morris, we explain how astronomers are rethinking the origins and nature of planets as they probe deeper into the mysteries of space.

This week marks the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. To tell the story of New Orleans’s halting recovery, Evan Thomas,Jonathan Darman and Sarah Childress profile Ray Nagin and his stormy year. A complicated figure, the mayor faces one of the most significant tasks in American history: rebuilding a fabled city amid crosscurrents of money, politics, race and culture. Meanwhile, Jonathan Alter assesses President George W. Bush’s feeble follow-through on the promises he made to the poor in Katrina’s wake, and in a column on NEWSWEEK.com (highlighted on the bottom left of this page), Julia Reed reports on the storm’s effects on the mental health of a citizenry coping with life in the ruins.

In an exclusive report from a new book he coauthored, “Hubris,” Michael Isikoff details how Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of State, helped provoke the CIA- Valerie Plame scandal by passing Plame’s identity along to columnist Robert Novak. Claudia Kalb and Debra Rosenberg evaluate news of a possible way of extracting stem cells without destroying or harming the embryo–a potential development, Michael Gerson writes, that divides the pro-life movement but would meet the standards Bush has set.

Whether your taste runs to James Bond or to Robert Fagels’s translation of “The Aeneid,” our Fall Arts Preview, edited by Jeff Giles and anchored by pieces from Marc Peyser and Lorraine Ali, is a must-read. From “Casino Royale” to the founding of Rome, here’s to an eclectic and entertaining season–even if poor Pluto is sulking in the sky as the days cool and autumn comes.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-08” author: “Ji Bullock”

Taken aback, Charles had a quick moment of panic (“Oh God,” he thought to himself, “how am I going to make myself interesting?”), and told a rushed version of his life: his move to America from the United Kingdom in 1997, his assignments covering George W. Bush, his life on the road for NEWSWEEK. Graham, who is now 87, listened, then said how important he thinks it is to sit still for a few minutes a day and not to take yourself too seriously. “Clearly,” Charles says, “he had picked up that I work in a business that doesn’t often involve being still for any length of time–and which isn’t exactly overrun by the self-effacing.” It was a quiet moment, and a quiet exchange: a man in the twilight of life advising a man in the midst of his.

This elegiac Graham is the subject of our cover this week. One of the most influential figures in the history of American religion, Graham is often either exaltedas a saint beyond reproach or vilified as a celebrity-obsessed preacher to the powerful. What I found in a series of conversations with Graham, however, was a more complicated figure than either caricature would suggest. As the years fade away, he has reflected on both this world and the next. With the passage of time he has come to a broader appreciation of the complexities of faith and of the possible dangers of mixing organized religion with politics.

As war continued in the Mideast, Kevin Peraino , Babak Dehghanpisheh and Christopher Dickey go inside Hizbullah in a bid to understand the conflict from the ground up, while Dan Ephron and Michael Isikoff assess the group’s connections inside America. On the diplomatic front, Lally Weymouth interviews Shimon Peres, whose steely tone about the war offers a window into the thinking at the highest levels in Israel. In Cuba, as Joseph Contreras and Arian Campo-Flores report, Fidel Castro’s illness prompted him to hand over power to his brother Raúl, a move that ignited speculation about the future of America’s storied neighbor. And in an engaging personal essay, Mark Starr chronicles the baby boomers’ long love affair with sports: think of the piece as Proust meets Red Barber.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-11” author: “Blaine Lohr”

As we left the screening room, we noticed a couple in the lobby, awaiting another showing of the new movie: the real-life John McLoughlin with his wife, Donna. Charmingly diffident, the McLoughlins wanted to make sure we understood they were not seeking glory. The true heroes, McLoughlin said, were the rescuers who dug them out. In an interview later with our Jeff Giles, Jimeno echoed the point: “We’re just one small slice of thousands of stories from that day.” Their modesty becomes them, but McLoughlin and Jimeno’s story, which moved so many of us, will, we suspect, soon move millions of others.

This week’s cover, edited by Giles and Tom Watson and written by David Ansen, explores the complex issue of how artists from Stone to Alan Jackson to John Updike have commemorated and interpreted 9/11. As Evan Thomas and Andrew Romano explain, the making of myths, always important, is especially so in America given our tendency to understand history either as the victory of the common man or of mysterious forces beyond our control. That Stone–of all people–chose courage over conspiracy suggests the nation has decided September 11 does not belong to the political provocateurs.

This issue is, sadly, about more than the memory of war. Christopher Dickey and Rod Nordland report on the wider implications of the war between Hizbullah and Israel for America and for the broader Middle East. And Scott Johnson tells the chilling story of an IED attack in Ramadi, the center of Iraq’s Sunni insurgency.

Reflecting on Stone’s movie, Will Jimeno told us, “The main thing is that when you leave the theater, you leave with a sense of hope and love.” There is little of either in the news, but the stories of men like Jimeno and McLoughlin should keep us searching for light amid the darkness.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-05” author: “Pam Morissette”

Evan Thomas probes the plot and sifts through the war on terror for lessons learned. The story weaves together the reporting and expertise of our global team: in the U.K., Mark Hosenball,Rana Foroohar,Emily Flynn Vencat,William Underhill, Ginanne Brownell and Silvia Spring ; in Washington, Michael Isikoff,John Barry,Dan Ephron,Eleanor Clift and intern Johannah Cornblatt ; in Texas, Holly Bailey ; in Baghdad, Scott Johnson ; in Jerusalem, Christopher Dickey ; in South Asia, Zahid Hussain,Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai ; in Europe, Stefan Theil and Tracy McNicoll . Daniel Klaidman, Daniel McGinn,Tara Weingarten,Ken Shulman,Jamie Reno,Hilary Shenfeld,Jennifer Ordoñez and Sarah Childress pitched in from their U.S. postings. In New York, Nancy Stadtman,Andrew Romano and intern Lee Hudson Teslik provided key research support. Michelle Molloy and Myra Kreiman led the photo team, along with Bija Bociek in London. Weston Kosova, Bonnie Scranton, Kevin Hand, Therese Shechter, David Gerlach and Marc Bain produced our graphics, and Dan Revitte designed the package.

While Jonathan Darman reports on Sen. Joe Lieberman’s defeat and the London plot’s political fallout, Jonathan Alter weighs in on airline security and Robert J. Samuelson looks at terror’s impact on the global economy.

We are pleased to welcome the former Bush speechwriter and adviser Michael J. Gerson to our pages. Now a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Mike is joining us as a NEWSWEEK contributor; he will write occasional essays drawing on his experience at the highest levels.

In a package adapted from the 2007 NEWSWEEK-Kaplan “How to Get Into College” guide (on sale next week and produced in partnership with Kaplan, Inc., which, like NEWSWEEK, is owned by The Washington Post Company), we identify 25 “New Ivies,” go inside the testing wars and offer tips about how to play the admissions game. Edited by Alexis Gelber and David A. Kaplan, the special report is illuminating and fun. And so, amid tumult and the threat of terror, life goes on. You are holding our August double issue; the next NEWSWEEK will be published on Aug. 28. We’ll see you then.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-11” author: “Laura Lee”

Tragically, answers to the Hudkinses’ questions are not coming as quickly as the anxieties and the fears. In our cover package this week, edited by David Noonan, Julie and Barbara Kantrowitz explore a new frontier in the story of autism in America–what happens when kids with autism grow up. Simply put, the numbers are stunning: autism is estimated to affect from one in 500 to one in 166 children. As Mary Carmichael reports, there is much debate about causes and cures: Do environmental toxins play a role? How significant are genetics?

There is no debate, however, about the fact that thousands of children with autism are getting older. “Who’s going to care for these kids when they grow up?” asks Bob Wright, the NBC Universal CEO and chairman who cofounded, with his wife, Suzanne, the advocacy group Autism Speaks. “What is the role of the states, of the federal government? These are real issues. Looked at one way, it’s a burden on society. Looked at another way, it’s an obligation.” One piece of counsel Wright offers: parents should secure legal guardianship so that they’re still able to take care of adult offspring in medical and legal situations.

We are publishing these stories at a fraught moment in the politics of autism. The Combating Autism Act, which unanimously passed the Senate, has been held up in the House by Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who chairs–until January–the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The battle over the legislation reached a national audience when radio host Don Imus, who is a friend of mine and of others at NEWSWEEK, took up the cause, regularly flaying Barton forobstructionism.

With the Democrats coming to power in a matter of weeks, Barton is now moving to pass a House bill in the lame-duck session of Congress. One important issue: the Senate version mandated specific sums of money to be spent looking into environmental factors, but the House bill does not assign dollar amounts to any single area of inquiry. Some in the activist world worry that less specificity may mean more years of frustration for families. The political struggle will go on; meanwhile, the advocacy community’s next legislative focus is expected to be on the needs of adults with autism.

For Susan and Jeff Hudkins, that day cannot come soon enough. They are now trying to prepare their older son for what lies ahead. “Life is not static,” says Susan. “Life is unpredictable, constantly changing. My hope for him is that he’ll not only be able to handle changes but see how wonderful life can be when changes happen and uncertainty occurs.” A difficult task for any parent–and an especially hard one for parents of children with autism. Major diseases require epic measures, and only when enough people–from lawmakers to taxpayers–recognize the dimensions of the autism crisis will families like the Hudkinses find the help they need.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-28” author: “Sandra Cooksey”

On a windy, overcast day last week, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where the sounds of the 21-gun salute and the bugler’s taps broke the solemn silence. It was a noble farewell for a noble man: the son of a Vietnam veteran, Chavis was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for valor. The son his parents left in the ground was 21 years old. “Arlington was just so final, it was really it,” his mother, Jacquelin, said. “It is really an honor to have him laid among so many other heroes, but he is my son and he is gone.”

Now in its 44th month, the war in Iraq is about many things–the threat of terror, the balance of power in the Middle East, the promise of democracy–but it is also about men and women like Airman Chavis, men and women who are dying or suffering grievous wounds. (I am grateful to our Catharine Skipp for reporting Chavis’s story for me.) To say that America is currently losing in Iraq–failing to subdue hostile forces militarily and falling short of creating an Iraqi-run democracy–is not unpatriotic. Far from it: finding a safe and workable solution is perhaps the best memorial to the more than 2,800 American soldiers who have died. And on a geopolitical level, it is the most sensible way to advance the larger mission of building a peaceful post-Saddam Iraq.

In this week’s cover essay, Fareed Zakaria undertakes to do just that by charting a path forward–a path between the unhelpful extremes of “stay the course” and “cut and run.” The human face of war is clearly evident in a story by Dan Ephron and Christian Caryl about Capt. Robert Secher, a Marine who wrote candid e-mails and letters home before he was killed in Iraq on Oct. 8.

As voters prepare to go to the polls, Jonathan Darman , Arian Campo-Flores , Debra Rosenberg , Karen Breslau and Bill Harlan explore the divisive issues before the country, from the ugly ad war over Michael J. Fox’s spot supporting embryonic-stem-cell research (and Rush Limbaugh’s subsequent attack on the Parkinson’s-stricken actor) to gay marriage, abortion and the right to die.

We are in the midst of a wartime midterm election in the tradition of the Vietnam-era races of 1966 and 1970–campaigns that cost Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon seats in Congress. For all the ads about Playboy parties (Tennessee) or the attacks over fictional sex scenes (Virginia), Americans understand that much of the late campaigning is sound and fury: in our new NEWSWEEK Poll, a strong plurality (29 percent) say Iraq is the most significant issue in the campaign.

And Iraq is no abstraction. Thinking about his son after the service at Arlington last week, Airman Chavis’s father, Michael, said: “He loved God and he loved people, and if they didn’t love him back, he was going to love you until he wore you down and you did.” In his memory, the work of resolving Iraq goes on, however wearing it may be.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-22” author: “Sarah Whitley”

The words were an instinctive defense of a son he loves and respects, and the former president is right: a change in Iraq–something between “stay the course” and “cut and run”–could in fact stabilize the chaos. But if there is resolution, it may come in large measure not from Bush 43’s world but from his father’s, through a commission chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton–and whose members included Robert M. Gates, a Bush 41 hand who is replacing Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of Defense.

It was a seismic week in American politics, and our 31-page cover package explores the midterm election’s aftershocks. For Republicans, the news from the polling places could hardly have been worse: the Democrats took both houses of Congress back for the first time in a dozen years, sweeping Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to power. The vote did not seem to be a call, however, for a new liberal order; the message, it appeared, was that the great American center, which is often written off, reasserted itself.

It was fitting, then, that the results prompted Rumsfeld’s removal and brought renewed attention to the work of the Baker-Hamilton group, which is due to make its recommendations next month. As Evan Thomas reports, the return of men like Baker and Gates to prominence suggests that Bush 43 has at least partially gotten the message–at last–that the neocons are simply not up to the task of fixing Iraq.

As John Barry and Michael Hirsh deconstruct Rumsfeld’s reign and Dan Ephron and Mark Hosenball profile Gates, Jonathan Darman goes behind the scenes of the Democrats’ congressional rout, and Richard Wolffe explains why Karl Rove wrongly believed he knew more than the pollsters–or, in the end, the people. Fareed Zakaria,Howard Fineman and Jonathan Alter offer perspectives on the road ahead, from Iraq to the 2008 presidential campaign. Michelle Molloy and Beth Johnson did heroic photo editing; Nurit Newman handled the cover; Alex Ha, Dan Revitte and Robin Brown-Friedel designed the package, and the graphics were produced by Bret Begun,Kevin Hand,Bonnie Scranton,Therese Shechter,Jessica Ramirez,Marc Bain and Lee Hudson Teslik.

When he was president, Bush 41 sometimes brushed off questions with three words: “Watch and learn.” As the more pragmatic politicians and diplomats converge on a new way forward in Iraq, we are all watching, and are eager to learn what light the wisdom of years can shed on the gloom of a war gone wrong.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-29” author: “Laura Stevens”

In the middle of the 1970s, however, many American evangelicals decided the world required their attention. In 1965, after Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala., Jerry Falwell advised ministers to stay away from civil-rights marches, but he soon came to see things differently. “I preached in my early ministry that involvement should be shunned, and urged the pastors not to march, just to preach the Gospel, because that is what I was taught in an evangelical college,” Falwell told me in an interview last summer. “It was only after the early ’60s, with the court rulings outlawing voluntary Bible reading and school prayer, and [then] Roe v. Wade, that I became convinced that my position was now wrong … and I did an about-face and spent the last 30 years forming the religious right.”

After Carter helped make “evangelical” a mainstream term, the movement Falwell was talking about accelerated with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. But for many Americans, the presidency of George W. Bush has generated the most sustained fears of theocracy, as though the White House were plotting to plant Gideon Bibles in every home.

What’s the truth? In a cold-eyed survey, Debra Rosenberg reports on what conservative Christians have gotten for their votes, from abortion rights to federal judgeships. The verdict, as you will see, is mixed–findings that may surprise those on both ends of the political spectrum.

There are other new forces at work, too, among the nearly one third of American adults who, according to the NEWSWEEK Poll, call themselves evangelical Christians. As Lisa Miller reports, the traditional religious right is being threatened by emerging tensions between those who emphasize sexual morality and those who are looking more to poverty and global health.

The politics of Jesus is, naturally, a complicated thing, and there is always a risk when either liberal or conservative Christians begin to think that their answer to the question “What would Jesus do?” is the only answer. Self-righteousness can be the enemy of the good, whatever our faith, whatever our doubts.

Faith and doubt inform two important pieces in the Special Report. One, by former Bush speechwriter and adviser Michael Gerson, lays out a new, broader vision for conservative Christians. To offer a radically different view, we invited Sam Harris, an atheist who is the author of “Letter to a Christian Nation” and “The End of Faith,” to offer his perspective on mixing politics and religion. I suspect many of you will find much to argue with in both pieces.

In 1983, three years after defeating Carter, President Reagan delivered a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando. The speechwriter’s first draft was on the harsh side, and as Reagan edited the remarks, he added the following in his small, neat handwriting: “The commandment given us is clear & simple–‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’.” It is indeed clear, but hardly simple, and how well we fulfill that injunction, believer or no, is perhaps the most consequential question of our time, or any time.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Kevin Mcmorris”

Later, as a religion reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Lisa learned, too, that faith, like politics, is often shaped early on. “Everybody has a story about religion, and their stories are, for the most part, about their families,” says Lisa, who is now our religion editor. “They’re either moving toward or away from the religion of their families–rebelling, reframing or embracing those beliefs.”

In this week’s cover, Lisa explores how the values of first-century Jewish families shaped Christianity. The world of the Nativity was suffused with a reverence for family. In his public ministry, however, Jesus preached a revolutionary message, one that emphasized the family of man more than any one man’s family. His vision of the coming kingdom of God was one in which the customs and connections of ordinary life would be radically transformed. He spoke in immediate, apocalyptic terms–but as the years went by and he failed to return on what he had called “clouds of glory,” his followers had to figure out how to live as they watched and waited.

Their decision was epochal: by choosing the values of first-century Jewish culture rather than the pagan rites of Rome, the early Christians helped promulgate an essentially Jewish vision of life and law far beyond Judea.

We are often asked how we decide what goes on the cover. Since the first week of October, we have featured either the waror politics, except for one week when we published a story on autism; last week we previewed the Baker-Hamilton report. Given both the season and the substance, the time felt right to feature Lisa’s essay (which is accompanied by a guest piece from Susannah Heschel , who teaches Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College). For us, pieces about religion–or about health, or science, or business, or technology, or culture–are cover-worthy because our mission, as we see it, is to bring readers the world in full.

NEWSWEEK has a long history of writing about faith. The first such story to be mentioned on the cover came in the May 19, 1934, issue, 16 months after the magazine’s debut in January 1933. (It was an account of Adolf Hitler’s influence over the 300th anniversary of the controversial Oberammergau Passion Play.) By July 7, 1934, we were writing about the culture wars: churches were protesting Hollywood’s trend toward the “torrid,” and our editors put Mae West out front. The holiday season of 1951 brought our first Nativity cover.

We report, write and edit pieces on matters of faith in the hope that readers from all religious viewpoints–or none at all–will find the coverage illuminating. Lisa Miller puts the matter well: “Covering religion allows me to call people up and ask them serious questions about what matters most to them–their faith–and I believe that if we can listen to those stories with the skills of a journalist, with both skepticism and compassion, we can tell the most satisfying and provocative stories of all.” You will find just that kind of satisfying and provocative story in the magazine this week.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-18” author: “Frances Orgain”

This week, he, along with his Democratic co-chairman, Lee Hamilton, will deliver the Iraq Study Group’s report to the 43rd president. As Evan Thomas writes in this week’s cover, though, the real work will begin after the cameras leave the room. The key issue: is Bush going to listen to counsel (from both outside and inside the government) to change course, including pursuing a regional diplomatic strategy involving Iran, or is he going to carry on as the last of the True Believers–a kind of neocon in chief?

By most accounts, Bush is not big on either introspection or retrospection, preferring to be “the decider,” a figure of strength who rarely looks back. Still, history suggests that leaders can learn from mistakes in order to fight the next battle armed with the lessons of the last. Acknowledging that things are not as they should be, and taking steps to try to set them right, is part of the art of leadership. No president relishes admitting error–I don’t know anyone who does; do you? (But humility can be the beginning of wisdom.)

As the sectarian bloodshed continues, there is no spiffy three-point plan for peace and harmony; as Fareed Zakaria explains, even a much-discussed solution, the “Afghan model,” is deeply flawed. “There are only bad options,” a member of the Baker-Hamilton panel recently told a friend of mine. (Both are anonymous because they do not wish to be identified discussing sensitive matters.)

“But we’re counting on you to find the least bad option,” my friend said.

There was a pause. “We’re trying,” the panel member replied.

Even the most optimistic of scenarios envision a long, bloody struggle between Shiites and Sunnis–one that could last years. Ultimately, however, the president believes that a democratic Iraq that poses no terrorist threat to its neighbors or to us will vindicate his decision to go to war. The prospects for such a result look bleak, but in the end, history may well cooperate.

You will also find a Health for Life package in this issue. Edited by David Noonan and Barbara Kantrowitz and produced with Harvard Medical School, the report is anchored by Claudia Kalb ’s story on genetic testing. Elsewhere there are also pieces from Sean Smith and David Ansen on “Dreamgirls” and “Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto,” and an all-too-timely TIP SHEET Money Guide from Jane Bryant Quinn about taxes.

In December 1862, Abraham Lincoln told Congress that “we must think anew and act anew.” With the Baker-Hamilton report arriving, the moment at hand gives President Bush a chance to think anew. Whether he acts anew is another question, and much blood and treasure depends on the answer.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-03” author: “Irma Carskadon”

Around the same time, in the late 1990s, Jon met a young Illinois state senator, Barack Obama, while visiting a cousin in Chicago. “Even then he was obviously someone with a big future if he could somehow work his way through the byzantine world of Chicago politics without any money or family connections,” Jon says. Obama pulled it off, winning a U.S. Senate seat in 2004, and Jon profiled the young star for our year-ender cover two years ago.

Even the most enthusiastic of Hillary and Obama watchers, however, would have been hard-pressed to predict the subject of our cover this week: an emerging race between the two for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

As Jon writes, Americans are grappling with the question of whether they are ready for a female president or a black president, both in the abstract and in particular. It is possible, of course, to be in favor of a woman or a minority for president but to be against Senators Clinton and Obama; many Republicans will soon find themselves in that position.

As the first truly competitive female and black candidates, Senators Clinton and Obama are substantially raising the stakes of an already historically noteworthy campaign: 2008 marks the first time since 1952 that neither major-party ticket will feature an incumbent president or vice president. The field is open, the issues–chiefly about our engagement with a threatening world–crucial. Every campaign is important, but some are more important than others, and the 2008 race is one of those.

Republicans are also pondering the possibility of a “first.” As you will see in the Who’s Next package–our annual list of familiar and unfamiliar faces who will be doing interesting things in the year ahead–Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, a Mormon, is now thought to rank with John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in the top tier of Republican candidates. The list of people to watch, supervised by Alexis Gelber, is eclectic, opening with Romney and closing with Jerry Seinfeld, who is releasing an animated movie in 2007. The photography was produced by a team led by Simon Barnett, Susanne Miklas and Paul Moakley.

Michael Gerson, Fareed Zakaria, Robert Samuelson, Ellis CoseMelinda Liu.

This is our year-end double issue; we will not publish again until Jan. 1, but will be posting news and analysis on NEWSWEEK.com through the holidays. We will see you back here in our pages in the new year. Until then, all our best to you and yours.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “Janis Goodwin”

Even in those early days, however, the reality on the ground could feel very different. NEWSWEEK’s Babak Dehghanpisheh remembers Friday prayers in eastern Baghdad in the weeks after Saddam’s overthrow. Organized by followers of the young Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the service drew thousands. Many spilled out of the mosque into dusty streets and fields, where young men armed with AK-47s patrolled the perimeter. “All other clerics, whether Shia or Sunni, were holding civilized prayer sessions inside mosques,” Babak recalls. “And here was this upstart young cleric with a crowd of thousands willing to pray outside under a brutal sun.” The message that day, delivered by a Sadr ally: “We want an Islamic government elected by the people,” he shouted; the crowd roared back, " Allahu akbar! " (“Allah is the greatest!”)

In this week’s cover story, written by Jeffrey Bartholet with reporting from our correspondents around the world, we tell Sadr’s story–one rife with personal drama and important implications for the safety of America’s troops and for America’s interests in the Middle East. In our view, Sadr is now the most dangerous man in Iraq, a potent leader who can channel the religious sentiments, economic resentments and sectarian passions of the Shia majority into bloody action. Sadr is an emblem, too, of one of the war’s tragedies: the broad American failure to fully grasp the cultural intricacies of Iraq or of Islam.

There was confusion from the start. Kevin Peraino remembers being with the Third Infantry Division in April 2003 when the soldiers noticed black flags on farmland around the Shia holy city of Najaf. The soldiers’ commander told his troops–incorrectly–that the black flags signified the homes of Baathists. In fact, the flags were planted in commemoration of Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the prophet Muhammad and one of the most revered figures in Shia tradition. It is a small but telling story; as Kevin says, “Back then, even the basics of the Shia Muslim faith were misunderstood by Americans on the ground.”

Sadr emerged slowly, but inexorably. In March 2004, Daniel Klaidman was on the telephone with a source inside the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. The official, Danny remembers, “was almost hysterical” about Sadr. The fear was that, if left unchecked, Sadr and his militias could grow into a force beyond America’s control. That is essentially where we stand today. Driven by the most fundamental of human impulses–religious fervor and temporal ambition–Sadr holds the future of Iraq in his hands. No political solution can work without him, and there can be no peace unless he works to rein in Shia radicals bent on shedding more Sunni blood.

War, politics and religion are intimately connected in Iraq. In August 2005, Michael Hastings was inside the National Assembly Hall in the Green Zone, where the new Constitution was being finalized. It was a quiet evening–until, Michael recalls, about 40 young men, followers of Sadr, began jumping and chanting in the lobby. “Yes to Sadr,” they yelled. “Yes to Islam, Iraq is for Islam … If the Constitution is drafted wrongly, it will be corrected in blood.”

What happens next is still obscured by the fog of battle. But one thing is clear: the more we understand about the players and the passions shaping the struggle, the better equipped we will be to judge events in Iraq–events that appear likely to unfold far into the future.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-29” author: “Frank Nolen”

I was told the story in the way of warning: depression ran in the family. And as Julie Scelfo writes in our cover this week, men need all the warnings about mental health they can get. As remarkable as it seems in the age of Oprah and Dr. Phil, we remain reluctant to confront the possibility that our irritability, dark moments and even despondency are not random feelings but may be symptoms of clinical depression, and are thus treatable if diagnosed. What William James called “a positive and active anguish” is yielding, slowly but in significant ways, to scientific analysis and medical treatment.

For many Americans, depression lost its stigma long ago, but our reporting shows that men are still much less likely than women to seek help. It is a kind of self-defeating machismo: what matters more, feeling engaged and connected to the world, or appearing tough when you are secretly miserable? The answer seems pretty clear.

For those inclined to dismiss talk of depression as self-indulgent or driven by a late-20th- and early-21st-century tendency toward victimhood, it is worth noting that melancholia, later commonly referred to as depression, has been viewed as a medical condition for 2,500 years, from Hippocrates to Aristotle to Galen to Robert Burton’s landmark 17th-century treatise. Dante acknowledged–today we would say “opened up” about–his depression in the first verses of his “Divine Comedy,” telling readers that his imaginative journey to hell (and ultimately to heaven) began when he “found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right path.”

There are, as our piece notes, many ways out of the forest–but you have to want to make the trip. “Instead of recognizing their problem and seeking help, men drink, gamble, overeat and have affairs,” Julie says. “They can be irritable, short-tempered and angry–basically act like jerks, lashing out at their wives and children–when really those behaviors are coping strategies to deal with enormous stress and anxiety inside.”

Six million American men will be diagnosed with depression this year, and doctors believe millions more are still in the shadows. As Julie worked on the story, she says, “I began to realize I had been seeing depressed men all my life: the father of a high-school friend, who spent every night drinking alone in an armchair; the college companion who confided that his parents had each lost a brother to suicide.”

There is more at stake than just one’s own mental well-being. As Barbara Kantrowitz writes, the effect on families can be devastating, and lasting. We hope this story helps a bit–that male readers and the women in their lives will keep an eye out for the warning signs. My grandmother, a cheerful woman, grew up to teach English at the university in our hometown, and loved Shakespeare. Her life, I now realize, was a long campaign to survive the “sea of troubles”–the phrase is Hamlet’s–that had consumed her own mother. The lesson of our cover is that no one has to carry on the fight by himself.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-29” author: “Richard Mclennan”

As the new century began, then, Tehran and Washington did not enjoy the cheeriest of connections. When Osama bin Laden struck America, however, Iran saw a chance to build up some good will by reaching out. For a few months in the autumn of 2001, we were allies in the war against the Taliban. But by January 2002, when President Bush decided to link Iran to Iraq and North Korea in the Axis of Evil, we were back in the twilight and now, in the early months of 2007, we are in the midst of a hidden war not only in diplomatic terms but on the ground in Iraq.

As our cover story, written by Michael Hirsh and Maziar Bahari with reporting from a team that included Babak Dehghanpisheh, Christopher Dickey, Mark Hosenball and John Barry, explains, the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions and its alleged role in arming militants in Iraq are elements in a compound of emerging conflict. Drawing parallels with the administration’s drive to depose Saddam, skeptics worry that Bush is secretly planning to attack Iran. In fact, our reporting suggests that the truth is more unsettling than the conspiracy theories. According to our team, it is likelier that the two mutually suspicious nations will stumble into bloodshed in some kind of unexpected clash that could speedily spiral beyond our control and, like so much else in the region, prove impervious to our will.

By now it is a cliché in Washington that the war on terror will not end, as World War II did, in a clearly defined way, with the signing of a surrender aboard a warship. But the reality of our dangerously tense relationship with Iran underscores another fact about warfare: armed conflicts do not always begin in clearly defined ways, either. Politics and culture often create an atmosphere of fear, distrust and menace in which skirmishes–frequently murky and sometimes manufactured–take on disproportionate, and deadly, dimensions. The Gulf of Tonkin is a classic example, and the risk of a similar flash point with Iran appears real, and growing.

Historically, it would not be surprising if the Iraq war were to lead to conflict between the Americans and the Iranians. The wars of tomorrow often grow out of the wars of the moment, sometimes sooner (World War II almost immediately gave way to the cold war) and sometimes later (Hitler invaded Poland two decades after the armistice ended World War I).

But the past five years also offer us some hope. The shadowy war of the hour was not inevitable. There have been chances, and presumably will be again, for diplomatic progress. “The Manichaeans may have come from Persia,” says Chris Dickey, our Mideast regional editor, “but in dealing with today’s Iranians, nothing is clearly black or white.” It is not easy, especially in the Middle East, to detect shades of gray, but on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the short-lived “Shock and Awe,” a lot of Americans are looking for the administration to do just that.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-27” author: “Benita Holland”

Of course, that is not the whole story. Many Muslim Americans were subjected to heavy-handed scrutiny after 9/11. Throughout the country there are significant pockets of discontent that, if left to fester, could lead to deeper alienation and radicalism. But still, compared with countries like France and Britain, where many Muslims live in ethnic ghettos and lead lives isolated from the wider society, America’s Muslims are thriving.

Why that is—and the opportunities and challenges that face these vibrant and hugely diverse communities linked by a common religion—is the subject of our cover story this week. Religion Editor Lisa Miller and a team of NEWSWEEK reporters trace how U.S. Muslims are forging a uniquely American brand of Islam—embracing many new traditions while remaining faithful to those of their religion. In Silicon Valley, Karen Breslau found CEOs, scientists, lawyers and social activists who are deeply rooted in their American lives and who say they are practicing a “purer Islam” here because so many different nationalities worship together. At the same time, Sanhita Sen reports that some of the American-born children of Muslim immigrants feel caught between worlds. While they grow up with a sense of entitlement as Americans, they believe they are not accepted as Americans by non-Muslims, and many are turning inward.

Elsewhere in the cover package, which was edited by Nisid Hajari, Middle East Regional Editor ChristopherDickey investigates how radical imams are using the Internet to recruit new jihadists and how we risk losing the cyberwar of ideas. And a U.S. imam and his wife argue that America, because of its diversity, is the most likely place for a renaissance in Islamic thought. Director of Photography Simon Barnett and Director of Covers Bruce Ramsay sought to capture that remarkable variety with the striking group portrait that is our cover image this week.

In conjunction with our Special Report on Islam in America, On Faith, a joint Washingtonpost.com and NEWSWEEK.com blog, is hosting “Muslims Speak Out” this week, a first-of-its-kind online dialogue to explore Islam and its intersection with culture and politics. NEWSWEEK Editor Jon Meacham and The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn will moderate a discussion among 20 of the world’s leading Islamic scholars and thinkers. They will address tough questions: What would you tell suicide bombers who invoke Islam to justify their actions? What are the rights of women in Islam? Is it permissible for a Muslim to convert to another faith? We hope you log on early and often, and participate by posting your own comments in order to address some of the most pressing questions of our age.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-25” author: “Donald Lindauer”

Shortly after the piece appeared, a relative of Dr. Becker’s found herself in a Colorado hospital at her husband’s side as he lay comatose after suffering cardiac arrest. His prognosis was poor. But nearby was a copy of NEWSWEEK. She showed Jerry’s piece to the ER doctors and asked them to try Becker’s technique. It worked, and her husband made a full recovery.

Jerry’s initial reporting convinced him that there was a lot more to say about the science of death. In this week’s cover story, he looks at how a treatment as simple as lowering body temperature seems to forestall cell death. Reporters Matthew Philips and Joan Raymond interviewed patients who were treated this way and in a real sense cheated clinical death. Correspondent Julie Scelfo talked to a man who underwent a classic near-death experience, the kind of thing that is helping to break down the conceptual boundary between life and death. As Jerry observes, so much of what we think of as “medicine” is now subsumed under the rubric of “health” that we forget that people do get sick and die, and that “there is no form of doctoring quite so basic as pulling people back from death.”

In Washington, the White House, and Democrats and Republicans in Congress, all say they’re searching for a way out of the morass in Iraq. But the grim realities of staying or getting out leave neither side with much maneuvering room. As Evan Thomas and Eve Conant report, President Bush is trying to stay the course while holding his increasingly rebellious party together. In an exclusive interview, Michael Hirsh catches up with the mysterious figure at the center of a diplomatic confrontation between the United States and Iran, Mohammad Jafari, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards. And Babak Dehghanpisheh profiles Amar Hakim, the young new leader of Iraq’s most powerful political party.

For those in need of a little summer escapism, Jennie Yabroff takes us on a tour of cross-dressing actors, from the days of Shakespeare to John Travolta—who puts on a wig, a dress and a fat suit in his new movie, “Hairspray,” reviewed here by David Ansen.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-14” author: “Glen Brokaw”

But can Obama sustain that easygoing confidence over many months under the glare of a national campaign? And can he appeal broadly to both blacks and whites, as he’ll need to do in order to win? That’s what Richard Wolffe and Daren Briscoe set off to find out for this week’s cover story, which was edited by Bret Begun and Jeff Bartholet. What they learned says a lot about both Obama and America. Richard found a candidate who was refreshingly anxious to take on the toughest questions of racial politics. Even after our interviews had ended, he insisted on offering unprompted views about the scale of the challenge. Daren was struck by the willingness of ordinary people—African-Americans and whites—to shelve their assumptions about race when assessing Obama. “For all our sordid past, all of our clumsiness and apprehension in dealing with questions of race,” he says, “people are still willing to set aside what they think they know and listen to each other.” If Obama can inspire a more open, honest national conversation about race, we hope to be part of it.

Barack Obama is not unique in his approach to politics. Elsewhere in the package, we profile a new generation of black politicians who emphasize consensus and competence over traditional wedge issues. And Ellis Cose takes a look at whether Obama can successfully reach out to other minority voters, including Hispanics and Asian-Americans.

One American institution that has forged little consensus in recent years is the Supreme Court. In the term that just ended, 19 cases split down the middle along ideological lines. Justice Anthony Kennedy broke the tie in each of those cases. In an exclusive interview with Stuart Taylor Jr., Justice Kennedy talks about being the man in the middle.

The attempted terror attacks in Britain were a reminder of how little we understand about people who volunteer to kill innocent civilians. Mark Hosenball and Evan Thomas take a close look at the Iraqi doctor at the center of the plot. On a much lighter note, Brian Braiker takes us on the road with some graying stars of country music who are defying their age, and attracting younger audiences to their age-old artistry.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-09” author: “Carolyn Baker”

While this is our third annual cover focused on Women & Leadership, the issue you are reading has a special resonance in the context of the Clinton campaign. We have long struggled with whether discussing “women and leadership” is anachronistic. (We would probably not, for instance, undertake a series on “Men & Leadership.”) Our reporting has consistently shown, however, that many women at the highest levels of political, corporate, professional and academic life have unique stories to tell, lessons to teach and issues to face that raise questions about the nature of power in America.

Which brings us back to Hillary Clinton. Would she, because of her gender, rule differently in the White House than a man of similar ideology and background might? (Assuming, for the sake of argument, that such a man existed, which he does not, since no other man was ever the spouse of a president and then won election to the Senate.) Are women really more nurturing, or better consensus-builders? Or do they have to be tougher than they might otherwise be to show they can play the game the way men do? And, while we are on the subject, who says that the way men play the game is so great? History pretty clearly suggests that men are quite skilled at making messes of things.

“Perhaps we should have reached a point where highlighting successful women seems anachronistic, but we haven’t,” says Barbara Kantrowitz, who helped edit the package and wrote its lead essay. “Although you can find female role models in many fields, women still struggle to find their place in business, academics, medicine, science, even the arts. Many of the women told us they felt they had to make up their own rules for success because there was no path laid out for them—as there usually is for men.”

Our cover subjects, shot in three different settings by Nigel Parry, are women who found their own paths to the pinnacles of different worlds. Arianna Huffington is a leading figure in the blogosphere; Shirley Franklin is the first female mayor of Atlanta, and Rachael Ray has turned herself into a brand of her own. Led by Alexis Gelber, a team including Barbara, Holly Peterson, Susanne Miklas, Karen Breslau and Allison Samuels produced a cover package that features a series of oral histories and lessons told in the first person. (Allison also contributes an essay this week on how the Madison Square Garden sexual-harassment case should lead to a more candid conversation about how black men treat black women.)

“Women are now reaching positions of real power in many fields, but the ways they got there haven’t always been smooth or predictable, and many have had to make it up as they went along,” Alexis says. “Does an unorthodox path to power make them better leaders? Our readers seem to find our first-person accounts (in oral histories and leadership lessons) instructive. They want to find out what it’s like—and what skills it really takes—to become a leader.” This issue is a good place to begin.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-14” author: “Morris Wheeler”

Point taken, Governor. Another different life experience, one that separates Romney from the other major presidential contenders, is his particular faith. Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a religion established in the 19th century in America by Joseph Smith, who Mormons believe received a new revelation from the risen Son of God. Known as Mormonism because the angel Moroni, who appeared to Smith in Palmyra, N.Y., in the 1820s, gave him a scripture called the Book of Mormon, this indigenous American religion emphasizes what might be called clean living—no alcohol, no tobacco, no coffee or tea—and focuses so intensely on the nuclear family that the church believes earthly kin will be attached to one another for eternity.

Our cover this week is not just another look at what Mormons believe or a speculative piece about whether a Mormon can win national office. It is, instead, a reported account of how the church helped make Romney the man he is—a man who, in a special NEWSWEEK Poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers, is leading the GOP field with 24 percent, followed by Fred Thompson (16 percent), Rudy Giuliani (13 percent) and Mike Huckabee (12 percent).

The Romney story is the result of a joint effort by Jon, our political correspondent, and Lisa, our religion editor. “It wasn’t until I traveled to Salt Lake City recently for a Mormonism 101 press tour that I fully realized what a uniquely American religion Mormonism is,” Lisa says. “It is, to overgeneralize, a religion that values industry and optimism, frugality and self-reliance, and is born of the pioneer spirit. I had read much about its oddball theology, but never anything about what it’s really like to be a Mormon and to live Mormon values. All theologies (especially orthodox theologies) can seem oddball when you look at them closely, and Mormonism feels more eccentric, I think, in part because its history is so recent and its language is our own.” (A word of disclosure: Scott Romney, who is Mitt Romney’s older brother, is married to Lisa’s husband’s sister Ellen Rogers, and Scott Romney showed Lisa the Romney childhood sights in Michigan. The first time Lisa met Mitt Romney was last week, when she and Jon interviewed the candidate for NEWSWEEK.)

We have been particularly focused on the presidential race of late, with recent covers about Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Fred Thompson and Barack Obama, and major pieces about John Edwards, John McCain, Huckabee and others. We have devoted so much time and space to reported profiles because, to state the obvious, of the importance of 2008.

In the airborne interview, Romney said, “You’re shaped by the experiences you have.” And then he added: “Sometimes you learn from experience.” To know someone’s experience, then, is to glimpse, however dimly, how he was shaped, what he has learned—and how he might govern if he got the chance.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Bonnie Day”

One of our perennial dilemmas is when to go with news on the cover (in this case, the California fires) and when to showcase enterprise reporting (in this case, the spread of food allergies in children).

The honest answer is that it depends. (Not a stunning revelation, I know, but, in a phrase attributed to Henry Kissinger, it has the virtue of being true.) Here is how we came to decide this time. A news story—the fires—broke early in the week. Television, the Web (including Newsweek.com) and the papers provided saturation coverage, which raised a question for us: What could we offer our print readers next week (now this week) that they had not seen elsewhere? Would more people be engaged by a broader cover about health and science while still getting an inside package on the fires, based on reporting about the issue of arson?

In this case, we think the answer is yes, and that this is a more interesting issue with both stories. (And a lot of others: in addition to Evan Thomas, Karen Breslau and Andrew Murr on the arson question and Jamie Reno’s account of his family’s experience with the fires, see Michael Hirsh on Iran, Michael Isikoff on the release of a Qaeda bomber, Larry McMurtry’s essay for us on Cormac McCarthy, Ellis Cose on the outbreak of racially motivated noose incidents, the debut of N’Gai Croal’s American Geek column, Peter Plagens on Picasso and Cathleen McGuigan on Janet Malcolm, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.)

Finally, two dispatches from the fronts of our two major stories this week. After she closed her story about allergies, Claudia Kalb had this to say: “Reporting on the immune system is a little like trying to understand how the universe works. Both are vast, awesome, incredibly complex. I have to tip my hat to the scientists. Not only did they spend hours explaining the inner workings of the body’s defense system to me—what they know and what they readily admit they don’t know—they also got me excited about the prospect that, one day, they might be able to stop food allergies before they start, maybe even eliminate them altogether. No more sickness from scrambled eggs or peanut butter; no more fear. These are truly exciting times in food-allergy research—good for the kids in our story and, on a personal note, important for me as the mother of a 9-month-old baby. The more reporting I did, the more I appreciated the devastating impact allergies can have on children and their families. As I introduce my son to new foods, I’m watching for reactions—and feeling thankful when the worst thing that happens is he sticks out his tongue.”

And from California, Andrew Murr writes: “Between August and November, I listen closely to weather reports for the advent of the bone-dry Santa Ana winds that blow for days on end off the desert, a necessary first step to large fires. In just hours, a small spark can set off a fire that burns hundreds of acres and attacks neighborhoods at the urban edge. My foreboding isn’t personal. My family lives in the middle of the city, miles from the nearest chaparral country. (One exception: a quarter of nearby Griffith Park, L.A.’s large urban park, burned this summer, threatening the zoo and the Observatory.) It’s professional. I know I’ll probably find myself on a fire line. This year was bound to be particularly bad.” And it was.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-08” author: “Roger Mauldin”

This week’s cover should help many of us understand the place better. The question of Pakistan and its relationship to Al Qaeda and the Taliban was given new urgency last Thursday when terrorist bombs killed at least 134 people in Karachi in an apparent attempt on the life of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who had just arrived back in the country.

Though the attack provides the occasion for our report from Pakistan, the piece in this issue ranges far beyond the events in Karachi last week. Our reporters went into the field in Peshawar and the nearby refugee camps, in Afghanistan and in cities such as Quetta and Karachi.

The familiar story about Pakistan in the past few years runs something like this: radical elements in the country, particularly in the tribal regions, are a constant threat to the Musharraf government, a regime that could lose control of its nuclear arsenal if internal strife grows too fierce.

Driven by on-the-ground reporting, however, Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh found an even more complicated and disturbing story. The contention of our cover is that what some in Pakistan call “Talibanization” has moved from the distant mountains to the cities, and too many Pakistani officials are uninterested in cracking down on their Afghan kith and kin—kith and kin who were heroes of Islam when they were fighting the Soviets. That Americans and many others in the West are living in a different world, one whose daily reality seems shaped less by the cold war than by the attacks of September 11, does not appear to matter very much. Whether the Bush administration or its successor can change that is a critical priority that has understandably been overshadowed in the popular mind by Iraq (where, as Mark Hosenball reports in Periscope this week, unpublished military figures record a drop in the number of violent incidents of late).

The difference between Iraq and Pakistan—what makes Pakistan, in our view, more dangerous from an American perspective—is that while Iraq remains an open war zone, Pakistan is a nuclear state that is now host to some of the most radical jihadists in the world, jihadists who, as Ron and Mike note (with reporting from Mark), have access to airlines and clearer means to reach the West.

Ron arrived in Pakistan from his post in Southeast Asia soon after 9/11 and has since covered Afghanistan, Pakistan and India from his Islamabad base. He has, he says, monitored the events of the last six years with trepidation and fascination. “I have been amazed,” Ron says, “to watch as the war in Afghanistan escalated and inexorably spread into Pakistan. Now jihadists seem to be equally determined and deadly on both sides of the border.”

Determined, deadly—and dependent on the kindness, or at least the absence of active hostility, of the Pakistanis. An observation from our story this week: “Pakistan is like your shoulder that supports your RPG,” Taliban commander Mullah Momin Ahmed told NEWSWEEK, barely a month before a U.S. airstrike killed him last September in Afghanistan’s eastern Ghazni province. “Without it you couldn’t fight. Thank God Pakistan is not against us.” His prayer should give the rest of us pause.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-17” author: “Dina Windus”

And then came parenthood. Kathy, an assistant managing editor and the author, with Raina Kelley, of this week’s cover story, is the mother of Jing Jing, a 6-year-old who, like many young girls, is fascinated by the Lindsay-Paris-Britney celebrity axis. “One morning I was mocking Lindsay and Jing Jing got upset,” Kathy says. “I said in an offhand way that Lindsay, Paris and Britney are kind of bad girls. ‘They are not ,’ Jing Jing said. She was very indignant, took it very personally. All of a sudden I could imagine her teen-age rebellion, and it scared the hell out of me. I realized that I want her to someday have the beauty and independence of those girls, but still dress and behave the way I think she should–and definitely not have sex.”

The result of that unsettling–yet, among parents, common–epiphany is our cover story on the effect a sex-saturated culture may be having on young girls. Yes, parents have fretted about the declining morals of the coming generation from time immemorial, but the fact that concerns are ancient does not make them any less relevant to the present. While some social-science trend lines are moving in the right direction (teen pregnancy, for instance, is down), kids, educators and parents we talked to worry that there is a growing “Girls Gone Wild” effect–that, as one mother put it, we are at risk of raising “prosti-tots.” Many people clearly sense that something is afoot. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, 77 percent say celebrities like Hilton, Spears and Lohan have too much influence on young girls, and 84 percent think sex plays a bigger role in pop culture than it did 20 or 30 years ago.

I suspect that some readers will take a look at this week’s cover and think we have, in the language of media critics, “gone soft.” A quick, cynical interpretation might be: NEWSWEEK wanted to sell a lot of magazines, so we are playing the celebrity card with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears–an interesting interpretation, but an inaccurate one. First, our newsstand revenue, while important, is a very small part of our business, and I have no expectation that this issue will sell any more or any less than most issues do. Second, the story is not another celeb profile, nor are we pretending to have discovered that, hey, there is a whole lot of sex out there in the culture.

Our essay is, rather, a serious-minded attempt to figure out how the prevailing celebrity ethos of women behaving badly is–and is not–affecting girls. We cover the country in full, and little is closer to home than the impact the culture has on our families.

We know there is still a war on in Iraq; the issue is rich with coverage of the president, a Shiite death cult, China’s designs on the moon and Evan Thomas, Howard Fineman and Fareed Zakaria on Bush, 2008 and Islam’s civil war. Elsewhere, Debra Rosenberg has an exclusive interview with Sandra Day O’Connor, Susannah Meadows writes about Hillary Clinton’s spiritual journey, and Allison Samuels and Sean Smith ask whether the rising number of black nominees signals a new day for the Oscars.

On that morning when Kathy and her daughter were discussing Lindsay Lohan, Kathy was reminded anew of a truth about parenting: “This is really hard.” It is, and in the end, the answer almost certainly lies where it always has: at home, in the values we teach in word and in deed.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-03” author: “Kathleen Richards”

Tears seem an entirely understandable response to the complexities and role reversals that Clancy and millions of other Americans are confronting as the number of Alzheimer’s cases inexorably rises. Many readers are, I think, generally inured to what we sometimes call “coming crisis” stories. There is always something bad lurking just ahead, whether it is the cost of entitlements or a growing health problem. Such issues are important, and we take pride in covering them in order to draw attention to what must be done, but there is a tendency toward hyperbole in the media and political cultures that can be counterproductive. (If everything is a coming crisis, then it is hard to focus on the ones that really require the most attention.)

On the question of Alzheimer’s and caregiving, however, the crisis is not only coming, it is here. Five million Americans currently suffer from the disease, and 70 percent of them live at home. The number of Alzheimer’s cases could rise to 16 million in the next four decades. Two bills are pending in Congress: one to double the amount of money spent annually on Alzheimer’s research from $642.7 million to $1.3 billion, the other to provide tax credits for caregivers, a critical element for those who lack the necessary means to manage taking care of their parents. The disease is diabolical, stealing what makes you you, and the toll on the children who suddenly find themselves playing a parental role to the men and women who raised them is financially daunting and emotionally incalculable.

Our team reported and wrote the package, which was edited by David Noonan, through the prism of their personal experiences. With her sisters, Barbara Kantrowitz, Karen’s coauthor, took care of her mother, who died in March 2005 at the age of 88. Joan Raymond, who wrote our caregivers’ guide and a piece on the importance of having what is called “the conversation” about caregiving with your parents, remembers how much seemingly simple things mattered when it came to pre-paring for the end of her mother’s life. “At my request, she kept all of her personal papers (will, living will, house deed, cemetery info, etc.) in an old-fashioned brown accordion legal folder that she stored in her desk so I would know where everything was,” Joan says. “On the front of the folder she wrote, ‘Mom is pushing up daisies. Here is all my important stuff. I love you, honey’.”

The mother and son pictured on our cover capture the challenges and complications that many of us are confronting, or may ultimately have to. As Barbara and Karen write, Tim Kidwell, 56, is caring for his mother, Grace, who is 78 and whose husband, John, has leukemia. Creative director at an ad agency in St. Louis, Tim found the demands of the task so consuming that he quit his job and became a freelancer. It is not easy—far from it—and it has reshaped his life. His view, though, is a heartening and instructive one. “You do,” he says, “what you feel is most important.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-11” author: “Ursula Westfall”

The press is not a generally popular institution. Many conservatives find us to be hopelessly liberal; many liberals think we are beholden to the Bush administration (a view that no doubt comes as a surprise to the Bush administration). President Bush’s steadfast ally, Tony Blair, likened his nation’s journalists to “a feral beast”; in “The Assault on Reason,” President Bush’s staunch foe, Al Gore, argues that the media have been derelict in their duty to democracy.

Can the press be superficial, lazy or wrong? Of course. So can governments and political parties and congressional committees. Can we be probing, energetic and right? Absolutely. So can governments and political parties and congressional committees. For journalists, the key thing, it seems to me, is to collect evidence, weigh it in the light of history and experience, and come to as reasonable and responsible a conclusion as one can in what is by definition a provisional profession. NEWSWEEK’s late owner, Philip Graham, once said that we are writing the first rough draft of history, and some drafts can be rougher than others.

The lesson of Halberstam’s life and work is that what one sees and learns, not what the powerful say and assert, matters most. At the Riverside service, The New York Times’s Dexter Filkins talked about the shadow Halberstam cast over the reporters in Iraq. “If I could use a sports metaphor—and I think David would have appreciated that—David was the pulling guard, as in a football game,” Filkins said. “The pulling guard sweeps wide and clears the hole for the running back who runs through behind him. We reporters in Iraq were the running backs. David went first—a long time ago—and cleared the way. In Iraq, when the official version didn’t match what we were seeing on the streets of Baghdad, all we had to do—and we did it a lot—was ask ourselves: ‘What would Halberstam have done?’ And then the way was clear …

“David taught us a great lesson, and not just to the reporters in Iraq, but to anyone who has ever tried to hold his government to account. And that is, the truth is not just a point of view. Truth does not adhere to the person who shouts the loudest. And truth does not necessarily belong to the people with the most power. David taught us that the truth is real and that the truth is knowable—and most of all by the person on the ground who sees it up close.” When we are at our best, those of us in journalism are trying to live up to Halberstam’s example. We fail, often, but all we can do is something David, an inveterate baseball fan, understood: get back out there and try again.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-16” author: “Cathleen Conley”

I will let her explain: “Before I wanted to be a journalist,” Mary says, “I wanted to be a biologist. (It was my parents’ fault; they had hundreds of dusty old copies of National Geographic in the attic.) I also thought about being a doctor. But when I got to my senior year in high school, I started an AP biology project breeding sea urchins and promptly managed to kill 45 of them by mistake. As ?sea urchins die, their spines all slowly fall off. You can imagine how traumatic this was—for them, obviously, but also for me—why medicine really wouldn’t have been the right career path.”

The shift from possible practitioner to journalist is common in our world; Sharon Begley (who also has two significant offerings in the magazine this week: one a column on how climate change may affect our health, the other an essay on Dr. James Watson’s decision to have his genome sequenced) has a similar personal story, though Sharon, who considered becoming a physicist, will not confess to massacring any life forms.

The best journalists immerse themselves in their subjects; you cannot explain to others that which you yourself only glancingly understand. Among the lessons Mary and Sharon have drawn from their enduring fascination with science is an appreciation of complexity and of rigorous, empirical reporting.

Which brings us to Mary’s piece on doctors’ changing understanding of pain, a shift that has found its most dramatic expression in the cases of the wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq and which has implications for the estimated one in five Americans who suffer from some kind of chronic pain. Beginning at Walter Reed and focusing on the work of Dr. Trip Buckenmaier, Mary—who describes Buckenmaier as “a kind of pain czar for the Army”—explores how doctors in uniform and out are struggling to discover new ways to treat patients who desperately need innovative answers. In the same way MASH units in Vietnam led to new techniques in emergency medicine at home, the military’s mission to treat the veterans of the wars of the first decade of the 21st century may hold broader lessons.

“When I went to meet Buckenmaier’s team at Walter Reed, they were, of course, in the middle of running a pain-management clinic,” says Mary. “Our photographers were also there with lights and high-tech equipment, and the whole group, journalists and medical folks alike, ended up crowded into a tiny operating room in the back. Meanwhile, another group of docs and nurses was in the next OR, separated from us by only a thin curtain. They were implanting a pain pump into a soldier with a wounded leg, and they looked completely oblivious to the hubbub we were making. I was impressed until I remembered that these docs do the same thing in war zones, where the distractions come from explosions and bullets, not journalists and photographers. Then I was even more impressed.” As she should have been—and as we expect you will be, too, after reading about the heroics of military doctors and the light their work can shed on how to relieve the pain of soldier and civilian alike.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-04” author: “Brian Miller”

The America of 1982, Fareed says, was troubled but confident. The second and third years of Ronald Reagan’s first term were somewhat bleak. We were in recession at home; the Soviets were adventurous abroad, Israel invaded Lebanon and, in January 1983, Reagan’s approval rating stood at 35 percent. All this (except for the recession part) should resonate with readers in the early summer of 2007. President Bush is low in the polls and faces seemingly insuperable problems from Iraq to Afghanistan and beyond. The crucial distinction, Fareed argues, is that the Americans of 1982-83 were fundamentally optimistic, while today we are susceptible to fear—fear of terrorism, of what will happen in Iraq, of immigrants.

“Having spooked ourselves into believing that we have no option but to act fast, alone, pre-emptively,” Fareed notes, “we have managed in six years to destroy decades of international good will, alienate allies, embolden enemies and yet solve few of the major international problems we face.”

Some will disagree with this analysis, but Fareed is not simply bashing George W. Bush or making partisan points. He is, rather, suggesting that, in a curiosity of history, President Bush’s consuming desire to project strength has instead left many of his people feeling somehow weakened, trapped in a war in Iraq and worried about terror. In light of this, the next president, whoever he (or she) may be, of whatever party or inclination, should create a foreign policy foundedon hope—tough-minded hope, but hope nonetheless.

We are looking ahead to the world After Bush this week, but the world is very much with us in the here and now. In reporting on the gulf between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney over Iran—Rice is trying diplomacy; Cheney is said to tend toward a harder line—Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball learned that the vice president is growing increasingly interested in intelligence suggesting that Iran is allegedly supplying weapons to the resurgent Taliban. For students of the road to war in Iraq, the possibility that the vice president is pursuing reports that might bolster a case for isolating a regime—or worse—raises, to say the least, a number of questions.

“Some of foreign policy is what we do,” writes Fareed, “but some of it is also who we are.” At our best, we are a nation that has always tended to open doors rather than shut them, to speak softly rather than harshly, and to be strong rather than imperialistic. We have made our mistakes, but we have, by and large, acknowledged and learned from them. Fareed’s essay is a good place for this generation to begin doing just that.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-16” author: “Edmund Zhou”

I will let her explain: “Before I wanted to be a journalist,” Mary says, “I wanted to be a biologist. (It was my parents’ fault; they had hundreds of dusty old copies of National Geographic in the attic.) I also thought about being a doctor. But when I got to my senior year in high school, I started an AP biology project breeding sea urchins and promptly managed to kill 45 of them by mistake. As ?sea urchins die, their spines all slowly fall off. You can imagine how traumatic this was—for them, obviously, but also for me—why medicine really wouldn’t have been the right career path.”

The shift from possible practitioner to journalist is common in our world; Sharon Begley (who also has two significant offerings in the magazine this week: one a column on how climate change may affect our health, the other an essay on Dr. James Watson’s decision to have his genome sequenced) has a similar personal story, though Sharon, who considered becoming a physicist, will not confess to massacring any life forms.

The best journalists immerse themselves in their subjects; you cannot explain to others that which you yourself only glancingly understand. Among the lessons Mary and Sharon have drawn from their enduring fascination with science is an appreciation of complexity and of rigorous, empirical reporting.

Which brings us to Mary’s piece on doctors’ changing understanding of pain, a shift that has found its most dramatic expression in the cases of the wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq and which has implications for the estimated one in five Americans who suffer from some kind of chronic pain. Beginning at Walter Reed and focusing on the work of Dr. Trip Buckenmaier, Mary—who describes Buckenmaier as “a kind of pain czar for the Army”—explores how doctors in uniform and out are struggling to discover new ways to treat patients who desperately need innovative answers. In the same way MASH units in Vietnam led to new techniques in emergency medicine at home, the military’s mission to treat the veterans of the wars of the first decade of the 21st century may hold broader lessons.

“When I went to meet Buckenmaier’s team at Walter Reed, they were, of course, in the middle of running a pain-management clinic,” says Mary. “Our photographers were also there with lights and high-tech equipment, and the whole group, journalists and medical folks alike, ended up crowded into a tiny operating room in the back. Meanwhile, another group of docs and nurses was in the next OR, separated from us by only a thin curtain. They were implanting a pain pump into a soldier with a wounded leg, and they looked completely oblivious to the hubbub we were making. I was impressed until I remembered that these docs do the same thing in war zones, where the distractions come from explosions and bullets, not journalists and photographers. Then I was even more impressed.” As she should have been—and as we expect you will be, too, after reading about the heroics of military doctors and the light their work can shed on how to relieve the pain of soldier and civilian alike.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-21” author: “Anthony Santiago”

Exploring such connections between the human and the historical informs our cover, one built around Michael’s new book, “Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989,” which will be published this week. In Michael’s essay for us about presidents from Washington to Jackson to Reagan, and in an excerpt detailing Harry Truman’s decision to recognize Israel in 1948, he looks back with a searching eye.

History, though, can also be a way to look forward, to gauge whether its lessons might illuminate our time. And so Evan Thomas reflects on how to judge the current front runners’ chances of measuring up to figures like Truman, whom his aspiring successors tend to cite on the trail as a model of courageous, straight-talking leadership.

Unhappy with the Iraq War and with President Bush, the country is clearly anxious for something fresh. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 71 percent said they were dissatisfied with the way things are going, and only 29 percent approve of Bush’s performance—a figure that matches President Carter’s in June 1979. On Iraq, 62 percent believe Bush is being stubborn and unwilling to admit mistakes; half as many, or 30 percent, say his policy is the result of political courage.

History teaches us, however, that the line between courage and foolhardiness, between strength and stubbornness, is a narrow one. Winston Churchill was long seen as hopelessly inflexible, and often wrong, in the years before he became prime minister in 1940, when, suddenly, his vices of willfulness and defiance on issues such as India became virtues in the lonely stand against Hitler.

There are tragic counterexamples. Lyndon Johnson’s intuitive gift for discerning the thoughts and feelings of others, so important in enabling him to pass landmark legislation, also contributed to his belief that to draw down in Vietnam would lead others to think him soft—the first president to lose a war. And now Bush’s personal strength and certitude, essential to his giving up drink in midlife and rising to power, have led to his apparent denial of the realities on the ground in Iraq over the past four years.

Polls are snapshots, not enduring portraits. Interestingly, in the last year of his term, 1952, the vaunted Truman was even less popular than Bush is now, hitting 22 percent approval. So is Bush a Truman, or another Johnson? The prospects of a historical rehabilitation of the 43rd president do not look promising, but that will be sorted out in due course. What we do know is that we have not had enough of Truman’s spirit in our time, a spirit best described by a line of Mark Twain’s that Truman once quoted: “Always do right. It will please some people and astonish the rest”—sentiments it would be refreshing to hear in the campaign now unfolding.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-15” author: “Donna Jones”

Criner, a 22-year veteran chaplain, oversees the work of Capt. Roger Benimoff, the Baptist minister who is on our cover this week. Benimoff served two tours in Iraq, tours so turbulent that he very nearly lost his faith—and says he is not fully reconciled with the Lord even now. “I hate God,” Benimoff wrote in a January journal entry. How to worship a deity so many see as a God of love but who allows so much pain and horror in the world is an ancient question, and Benimoff’s battle to keep his religion in the face of reality illumines a widespread but little-noted struggle many soldiers face.

As the president and Congress battle over war funding and withdrawal proposals, our piece explores what life is like for the everyday warrior, men and women whose experiences in Iraq remain remote for many of us. To cope with combat, soldiers often turn to faith, only to find familiar convictions consumed by the fires of war. It is an ecumenical issue: Lisa Miller and Dan Ephron recount the controversial history of chaplaincies, including the challenges confronting Jews and Muslims in the military.

Historically, the most fervent of believers have often been the most bloodthirsty of warriors. Evan Thomas and Andrew Romano note that religion can be a dangerous element in the lives of nations. From Saint Augustine to Shakespeare to Lincoln, some of history’s most searching thinkers and politicians have wrestled with the question of God and war, of how we can know for certain that the blood we are spilling is being shed in a just cause. Religion can help inspire the noblest of human endeavors—the expansion of human dignity, the comfort of the weak and the protection of the innocent. There are secular sources for such undertakings as well, of course; one certainly need not be a religious believer to be a soldier of freedom and justice. Still, many wars for liberty have been framed in religious terms. John Quincy Adams said he was fighting for the abolition of the slave trade under “the standard of Almighty God.” Lincoln privately said he was issuing the Emancipation Proclamation because of a bargain he struck with God: if the Union won at Antietam, he would free the slaves.

How can we tell when religion is playing too great a role in our politics, or in the decisions made by our leaders? Lincoln offers a useful test. He never presumed to understand the ways and workings of God. He prayed, rather, that he might see “the right as God gives to see the right,” which meant, in effect, that he would do the best he could according to his conscience. He resisted seeing any political course of action as divinely ordained. Lincoln’s humility is one of his greatest legacies, and we can usefully judge our current and future leaders by his example. Are they humble? Do they acknowledge their shortcomings? Are they curious and probing, believing, as Lincoln did, that “probably it is to be my lot to go on in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through life, as questioning, doubting Thomas did”?

Humility is not only a virtue for those at the highest levels. It is shared by Benimoff, who, while nervous about sharing his story, says that he lives in the hope that “if my experience can be meaningful to others, especially to soldiers, then that is my prayer.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-09” author: “Benjamin Gaither”

The 2008 race is the latest in a series of firsts for the Clintons. Bill Clinton was the first boomer to win the presidency (he was, in the biographer David Maraniss’s phrase, “First in His Class”); he was also the first—and only—20th-century president to be impeached. With her health-care initiative, Hillary Clinton was the first First Lady to lead an attempted major overhaul of domestic social policy in traditional political and legislative terms; she was also the first—and only—20th-century First Lady to win election on her own, as United States senator from New York. Separately they are fascinating; together they form one of the most intriguing couples in our history. Like the stories of Abigail and John Adams, or of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, the Clintons’ saga is at once personal and political, rich in affection and ambition.

What role is he playing in her campaign? What role might he play in her White House? Given that a Clinton or a Bush has been on every national ticket since 1980, how open will the country be to yet another chapter in what has become a kind of American Wars of the Roses between the two families? With reporting from Daren Briscoe, Karen Breslau, Sarah Childress, Mark Hosenball, Holly Bailey, Eleanor Clift, Jonathan Alter and Andrew Romano, Jonathan Darman explores these questions, detailing how Senator Clinton is handling her husband as the race unfolds. In a column, Jon Alter lays out some of the difficulties the new Clinton campaign faces—chiefly that the Clintons, like the Bushes at this juncture, may simply be too familiar to inspire. And in the last word this week, Anna Quindlen assesses the reality of Hillary against the idyllic hopes of women who have long harbored the dream of a female president.

Inevitably, some readers will feel that raising “The Bill Factor,” as we call it, is sexist. In 2000, one could argue, nobody talked about “The Laura Factor” or “The Tipper Factor.” (Though in 1992, the press, including NEWSWEEK, did talk a good deal about “The Hillary Factor.”) But asking about the former president’s role in the world of his wife, who is now asking us to make her the commander in chief, is reasonable and important, for politics is personal, and the advice flowing to the president, as we have seen in the case of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, has real-world implications. Bill Clinton is one of the most talented politicians of this or any age, the only Democrat since FDR to win two terms, a restless intellect and a man who has devoted his life to public service. A Hillary Clinton presidency would not amount to a third Clinton term—that is a sexist notion—but, as our reporting shows, he would again be a force at the highest levels, and voters need to begin to understand what shape that force may take. Unprecedented questions—and, like so much else about the Clintons, endlessly interesting ones.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-01” author: “Christian Mcguinness”

First, Steve Stanton, a city manager in Florida, was fired after it was revealed that he planned to live as a woman. Soon a male sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times told his readers that he was taking some time off and would return as a female. Then we discovered that a former NASCAR driver who had moved from male to female was at work on a book, “Dangerous Curves.” Nine states have passed antidiscrimination legislation, and the U.S. House has approved a hate-crimes bill that protects victims on the basis of “gender identity.”

All of which got the author of the cover, Debra Rosenberg, thinking: what is gender, anyway? What makes us characteristically male or female? Is gender grounded in biology, culture—or both? Our piece explores the tangled thicket of identity, and raises questions a lot of people probably never think to ask, but which remain fundamental. As Debra writes, there is a broad cultural tendency to refer the matter to Genesis (“male and female he created them”) and consider any variation unnatural. But history suggests that the mysteries of the human heart and mind will always elude conventional categorization.

To be a transgender person, it should be noted, is not the same thing as being transsexual. The latter is often defined by the desire to have what is called sex reassignment surgery or the taking of hormones to move from male to female or female to male. Transgender is a broader, more inclusive term that could involve such surgery or hormones, but need not. As our piece shows, old stereotypes and familiar caricatures really do not apply.

Edited by Julia Baird and reported by Julie,Lorraine Ali, Lynn Waddell, Karen Springen, Raina Kelley, Kurt Soller, Mary Carmichael, Samantha Henig and Matthew Philips, the essay is part of a long NEWSWEEK tradition of reporting on the social, scientific, political, corporate, legal, religious and educational aspects of a given issue in order to weave together essays that help explain the way we live now.

A word about the cover itself. When we were debating how to illustrate this story, we decided that an image of a beautiful child of indeterminate gender would work best. (All babies, it has been said, look like Winston Churchill, though my wife objected when I made that point about our two children when they were infants.) Once we chose the picture we ended up using—the baby is a model; the image was located by Sue Miklas—I conducted an informal survey in our offices about whether the child is a boy or a girl. It was a landslide for the male caucus, with 60 percent voting “boy.” (I was among the 60 percent.) The majority was wrong: if you are wondering, the child on the cover is an 8-month-old girl. What she will be in years to come is, our reporting suggests, a question that is more open than many might have thought.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-17” author: “Tracy Rivera”

Binka’s work is emblematic of a renewed global effort to discover and safely disseminate vaccines and other treatments across the planet. It is work that Bill Gates knows well. In the 1990s, Gates and his wife, Melinda, began traveling to countries in which it was assumed that, as Gates writes in an essay for us, “millions of poor people would die each year from diseases that are preventable, treatable, or no longer present in the developed world.” Temperamentally unsuited to allowing problems to remain unsolved, Gates, through his family foundation, has helped lead the effort to make vaccines and other medical advances more widely available. The result: one organization alone, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, is now saving 3,000 lives a day. (Melinda Gates is a director of The Washington Post Company, which owns NEWSWEEK.)

How seemingly simple things can make an enormous difference is the focus of our “Giving Globally” cover this week. The phrase may sound gimmicky—I can say that; I thought it up—and some of our readers may be suffering from what is known as “compassion fatigue.” From the environment to HIV/AIDS to Darfur, from Bill Clinton’s new book “Giving” to Rick Warren’s push to engage evangelicals on global health issues, there is no shortage of talk about good causes around the world.

Talk, though, is one thing, and action is another. By their very nature, problems of global scope often seem insoluble, and some may well be. Interesting people are doing interesting things, however, to try to make at least a few of those problems go away. The stories we tell this week are about the men and women engaged on the front lines, fighting the good fight day in and day out in new and creative ways. Edited by Nisid Hajari, David Noonan and Nancy Cooper,our pieces include offerings from Mary Carmichael (on vaccines), Steven Levy (on a $200 laptop), Christian Caryl (on clean water), Scott Johnson (on Africa) and a gatefold that looks at some of the most serious global challenges and what kind of funding they receive.

Elsewhere, we report on the still-mysterious Israeli raid in Syria, a military strike, shrouded in secrecy, that could well foreshadow a dangerous conflict, and even war, with Iran. In Israel trying to piece the story together, our longtime foreign correspondent Rod Nordland e-mailed some thoughts: “This is the first time in years that I’ve been to Israel to report on anything other than the Sturm und Drang of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and I was very struck by the intensity of feeling among Israelis of all descriptions about the Iranian nuclear threat and the need to do something about it. Even one Palestinian friend said, ‘You know, at the end of the day that is even more important than our conflict’—a tall admission from a Palestinian nationalist.”

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-21” author: “Tony Earl”

The ensuing interview was worth the wait. In it the source related the story that opens our Special Report: that early in the winter of 2004–05, a Qaeda sentry posted near bin Laden and his entourage in the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border spotted a patrol of American soldiers heading toward the man his followers call the “sheik.” Bin Laden will never be taken alive: his bodyguards are apparently under orders to kill him and take their own lives if capture is imminent. As the Qaeda guards weighed their options, the U.S. patrol changed course, unaware that the most wanted man in the world had been close at hand.

Six Augusts ago, in the now impossibly distant summer of 2001, bin Laden was a peripheral figure in the American mind. He was best known, if he was known at all, as the man behind the 1998 embassy attacks in Africa that prompted President Clinton to fire 80 cruise missiles into Afghan camps and an alleged chemical-weapons factory in Sudan. An important affair—it was, NEWSWEEK noted afterward, the largest military action ever taken by a state against a private individual— but bin Laden still did not loom large in the minds of most Americans.

Then came September 11. President Bush vowed to get him “dead or alive.” And then—nothing. Bin Laden escaped, disappearing into the mountains, and has turned out to be the most elusive of enemies, a fugitive figure of evil whose very existence is a disturbing illustration of the limits of our power.

Would bin Laden’s capture or death make the world safer? There is the view that Al Qaeda is now diffuse and decentralized; in this interpretation, bin Laden is interesting but not all that important. Alternatively, it is argued that even if Al Qaeda’s central command, such as it is, is relevant, then his deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is the real operational mastermind.

Neither view, however, is particularly convincing. The world will surely not be any worse off if bin Laden is captured or killed, and justice requires nothing less.

The administration says it remains committed to the hunt, and defines it as the search for bin Laden and his inner circle. “While he’s a priority … you’re tracking the leadership, the organization,” Frances Fragos Townsend, the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser, told Michael Isikoff. “It’s not just bin Laden. The hunt for him is the hunt for the leadership.”

The story of the hunt is detailed in the piece edited by Nisid Hajari and written by Evan Thomas with reporting from Sami, Mike, Ron Moreau,Zahid Hussain,Rod Nordland,Christopher Dickey,Michael Hirsh,Mark Hosenball,John Barry,Dan Ephron,Eve Conant and Roya Wolverson. And to illuminate the complex politics of Pakistan, Lally Weymouth interviewed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Last week, Rod Nordland hiked up to Tora Bora, where 500 jihadists had recently retaken residence before being ousted by U.S. and Afghan troops. Old leaflets were littered about. The word “Osama” was slashed through in red, a reminder of days when bringing the “sheik” to justice seemed well within reach.

title: “The Editor S Desk” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-27” author: “Craig Robinson”

My trepidation was short-lived. Long an enigmatic, purposely placid figure in the public imagination, Greenspan emerges from the book as a vivid and engaging man. An adviser to presidents from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, he has, in a way, been hiding in plain sight for 40 years, and is only now, at 81, really able to speak his mind to a broad audience.

In person he has a quiet charm, and his smile can be surprisingly delightful (Nigel Parry captured such a moment for our cover). His wit is more parched than dry. When asked what he would like history to make of his tenure at the helm of a period of prosperity and rising standards of living, he says, “I’d like very much for people to say, ‘Well, he caused all of that.’ But I don’t think the evidence holds up very well for that hypothesis.”

Aside from religion, economics is perhaps the most pervasive yet least understood force in American life. People understand their own pocketbooks and, one hopes, their own portfolios, but the connections between Chinese imports and how you are going to pay off your student loans are more obscure. Greenspan’s professorial book—detached and somewhat demanding, but accessible and sensible—is a good place to start grasping the inevitable links between the global economy and your own life.

Edited by David Jefferson, our package offers Daniel Gross’s assessment of Greenspan’s legacy, an interview with the former chairman and an excerpt covering what Greenspan thinks the economy may be like in 2030. As an author, Greenspan is no James Patterson—thankfully; who would want Patterson running monetary policy?—but he writes compellingly about globalization and the infinite complexity of the world in which we must now live and work.

Such talk of complexity is not hyperbole. Our era, he says, is complicated in ways unimaginable to those born before the Enlightenment. As Greenspan explained to NEWSWEEK, economic growth was virtually nonexistent for much of human history. It was only in 1820 that the numbers began to move straight up. According to Greenspan, we are still in the midst of similarly vast shifts that will shape the next quarter century.

Income inequality is an issue of consuming concern, and his suggested remedies defy conventional political categorization. He would not raise taxes on the wealthy but would, instead, reform American education and open the borders to highly skilled immigrants who would create competition for—and thus drive down, or at least control—top-level wages.

In this moment of mortgage crisis and new Fed moves, Greenspan’s historical perspective is reassuring—not Panglossian, certainly, but reassuring all the same. “Turbulence,” he told us last week, “is probably a necessary condition to maintain an economy worldwide as high-powered as the one that now exists.” Hearing the voice of that economy’s key architect is, we think, a necessary condition to looking ahead with reasoned confidence.