On the fiftieth anniversary of the greatest waterborne invasion in history, we remember the stakes and the costs. Maurice Kidder went ashore at Omaha Beach, and his grandson, Nathan Ward, tries to retrieve the actuality of that experience; Charles Cawthon, who also landed on Omaha, looks at what he and his comrades accomplished; the letters of a young married couple offer an intimate glimpse into the courage and longing of those days; and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., assesses how clearly the Commander-in-Chief saw the world that the Allies were struggling to bring about.

The evolution of wetlands in the public imagination from fetid swamp to natural paradise … the lonely passion of Typhoid Mary … baseball comes to Vassar … and, with the vernal force that through the green fuse drives the flower, more.