Theodore Roosevelt and the politics of personality…

In an age in which most of the world had never even heard the term “charisma,” T.R.—ebullient, vigorous, articulate—was the living definition of the word. In a witty and provocative essay, Edmund Morris (whose The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the Pulitzer prize for biography in 1980) gives us a telling glimpse of a President who loved his job and was “so good at it that the … people loved him for loving it.”

The promise and the peril…

While Americans have come to accept it—or reject it—as a commonplace of modern life, only a generation has passed since we entered the age of nuclear power. In a special three-part portrait, Richard Rhodes reminds us of the complex and sometimes controversial events which led to the construction of the first nuclear power reactor in the United States in 1957; Larry L. Meyer tells of the great uranium rush of the 1950’s—during which more man-hours were spent hunting that precious element than were spent seeking all other metals since man fashioned his first pick and shovel; and Professor David Rose offers energy lessons to be learned from history.

The brink of war…

In a very special portfolio of photographs, many of them never before published, we present a selection of scenes of a nation moving toward tragedy: Union and Confederate troops in training, camp life on both sides, intimate glimpses of the men who are about to do the killing—and dying. All these pictures have been culled from a collection painstakingly gathered over the past six years.

Plus…

Wallace Stegner on the rise and fall of a Utah pleasure dome; Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., on I wo Jima; the very first American sex survey; and much more, all of it richly illustrated.