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“Gone Time” Lives Anew in Alabama
MARION, Alabama – Reese Billingsley, insurance salesman and member of the county’s tiny black middle class, eased his Model-T Ford off the dirt road into the cotton field, and blew the horn. “You see, she told me not to come up to the

Revisiting The Appalachian Coalfield
What began in 1968 as a ten-day trip became fourteen years of visiting and photographing in coal mines,miners’ homes, and communities in the hills and “hollers” of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. I was attracted by a rich cultural

America’s Young Detainees
Three boys stumble out of the back of a border patrol van. Their sweatshirts, jeans, and boots are filthy, and their lips are flaky. One boy has red cheeks, chapped by the cold desert wind. The boys each clutch a small bag. They

A Citizen On Paper Has No Weight
Last week, I registered to vote. Yaser Esam Hamdi made me do it. Yes, the alleged Taliban fighter — who has been lingering in solitary confinement in a Norfolk naval brig for the past nine months — prompted me to take one more

The Blackfeet’s Lost Acres
A dozen Blackfeet Indians and one white man sit in an aspen grove up against the backbone of the world watching a horse die. This is a land of spirits and portents. Things that happen here take on a heightened significance. The slow,

The Challenges and Growth of Progressive Muslims
Astaghfirullah is an Arabic expression known to Muslims the world over, no matter what language they speak. Roughly translated, it means “I ask forgiveness from God.” Muslim parents employ it regularly to express exasperation with kids who sneak out on dates or go

Good Germs Gone Bad
To work in Abigail Salyers’ laboratory at the University of Illinois, is to play matchmaker to some unlikely couples. Standing at her laboratory bench, PhD student Kaja Malanowska lifts the cover from a petri dish to pick up a half a billion or

Sweeping out the Plains
Text and photos by Jack Coffman and George Anthan In 1890, the federal Census Bureau announced that the nation’s frontier was closed. It’s opening up again. The great wave of population, which swept homesteaders onto the Northern Great Plains with the promise of

Lives in Looting
How professional grave-robbers are destroying the past At 23, Robin is a huaquero, a professional grave-robber who has been digging up pre-Hispanic burial mounds known as huacas in his native Peru almost every night since his early teens. He and his buddies loot

When Conflict Focuses on Citizenship
War is all about taking sides – unless, of course, you can’t because you belong on both sides. That’s the sort of conflict that citizenship laws were intended to avoid. But that’s how Haider Thamir, a citizen of both Iraq and the United

Brother’s Keeper: One Family, Two Suicides
On the afternoon of Saturday, May 4, 2001, the cast of the Monadnock Regional High School production of “Ordinary People” gathered in the school auditorium in Swanzey, N.H., for its first dress rehearsal. Opening night was only four days away, and the mood

Classmates: Portraits of a Chinese Generation
Song Liming lost his virginity on a chilly day in February 1982 to an Italian temptress named Antonella in Building 10 of the Foreign Students Dormitory at Nanjing University, while Antonella’s ex-, an avuncular German named Uli, was knocking on the door outside.

Beyond Stereotypes: Globalization’s Winners and Losers
To discuss the winners and losers in globalization in developing nations such as India, most people reach for a cliché. “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is a widely held misnomer about globalization. Well-documented declines in poverty in poorer countries

Secret Land Swaps That Taxpayers Help Finance II
Across the West, a handful of environmental groups are persuading Congress to bestow wilderness protection on their favorite stretch of country by trading away public land. Such deals are the only way to protect the last unspoiled territory from development in the face

Aquaculture Moves Offshore
The white spires of the Algonquin Hotel towered above the coastal town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, the center of aquaculture development in Canada’s maritime provinces. Government officials and aquaculture industry representatives from Canada, Norway, and the U.S. met at the Algonquin to

The Work of a Pullman Porter
A Pullman porter was, before anything, a man who made beds. Or, as they said, made down beds, since the most taxing part was popping the upper berth from the ceiling. The lower was formed by folding down opposing seats, fastening curtains, affixing

The Mystery of Cancer in Alaska
Jennifer Probert poses in her home Tuesday evening, August 19, 2003. Probert has been compiling informal cancer statistics from Tok. (for Diana’s cancer series) Eric Engman/News-Miner Jennifer Probert has been wondering for several years now why she knows so many people with cancer.

The Cultural Broker in Refugee Resettlement
For Carol Russo, it all began in April 1975. Sitting in her living room, surrounded by her husband’s deer trophies and pictures of family, she watched the television news. Desperate Vietnamese trying to board overcrowded American helicopters. Thousands of refugees massed on the

The Fake Crisis over Lawsuits: Who’s Paying to Keep the Myths Alive?
Over the past two years, the average media consumer would be under the impression that the nation is awash with lawsuits, greedy trial lawyers and out of control juries eager to punish corporate America with million-dollar verdicts. The airwaves and newspapers have been

On The Americana Road Again
As a photographer and writer I have spent nearly 30 years crisscrossing the continental United States in search of unique and typical examples of roadside and Main Street architecture and design. In traveling over 100,000 miles in a long series of marathon automobile

The New Enemy in Guatemala


Forcing the Young into Nursing Homes

Importing Girls to Integrate a Connecticut Public School

Faces of the Anguished Middle East

Intolerance on Campus

Gay Politics

“The Gift of the Indus”

Hard Rows: The Amazon after Chico Mendes


Clearing a Path from the Ghetto to Choate

The Palestinian Revolt: New Miseries in an Endless Feud


Cold War Resartus

Gypsy Liberation In Hungary

A Contra Rampage–With Blessings from the United States

“A Flood From Below”: The Downfall of Irrigation

Coca, Campesinos, and a Controversial General

The Alarming Increase in Alcohol-Damaged Children


The Contras Murdering Their Own: A Grisly Retribution

Death Traps

From the Cold War to the Drug War

Crime and Impunity in Chile: Perverting the Law of a Legalistic Land

Beating Alcohol Through Tribal Self-Help

David Halberstam: The Making of a Critic

Growing Up: Solidarity’s Turbulent Times

Rebellion Among The Rebels

Mirage

Chile’s Lost Generation

The Economic Chaos In Mexico: A Primer

A Dam on the Danube: The Greening of Hungarian Politics


The Dictator

The Stale, Small War in El Salvador

Land Of Dreamers: What Haitians Want

America’s Little War Becomes A Nightmare

The Opposition Struggles In Mexico

The Age Of Electronic Government

Death In Haiti

The Wary Chronicler Who Inspired A Rebellion

The Fragile Peace

Building America’s Stone Wall

Proposition 65: California’s Controversial Gift

Death By Drink: The Sad Battle of America’s Indians


How America Eagerly Built Her Arsenal

Paradise Lost: Haiti Without Trees

When The World Began Watching

The Massacre in Mexico – Twenty Years Later

“Alex: From Showdown to Showcase?”

Your Right To Know What You Breathe And Drink–A New Law Emerges

A Chairman’s Glory and Pain

The Future

America’s Weapons Makers and How They Grew

Kids With No Childhood

The Plight of Public Housing

Powell and Eisenhower

How Government Regulates a Life
