Despite reported shortfalls in military recruitment, most experts think it unlikely that the draft will be revived.

The electorate may be evenly divided between the two parties, but the Republicans have a decided advantage in their national structure.

Jimmy Carter tapped evangelical support to gain the presidency, but lost the bloc to the Republicans because of his policies.

Could our genes determine how we vote?

America does have its fans around the world, and they are worth cultivating.

Many experts are questioning whether democracy will enhance or hurt America's interests in the Middle East.

A good map might go a long way towards solving some of the world's thorniest issues.

Huge federal deficits might not be such a bad thing.

Why we hate HR so much.

Teens are getting squeezed out of the job market by young college grads, women, and recent immigrants.

Why cricket never caught on in Canada and the United States.

The media's relentless opposition to the war in Iraq likely has little effect on public opinion.

The press probably is both more biased and more sensationalistic than it used to be...and the public is paying less attention.

Martin Luther King Jr. owed much to an earlier generation of black religious thinkers.

Today's Islamic terrorism fits into a long history of sacred violence.

The enviromentalism movement may be bringing about its own demise.

The medical community keeps reversing itself, and the reason seems equal parts bad science and the cost of good studies.

Harmful uncertainty surrounds the Kyoto Protocol

The virtues of literary exile.

"turning exile and alien- ty," Dickstein observes, "Nabokov shows us ation into a unique vantage point, an angle of the shock of alienation as effectively as his vision far interpreting the world." TheSound of SaIinger's Silence"Reading Salinger's Silence" Myles Weber, in New England Review, (Vol. 26, No. 2), Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt. 05753.(Often when people say they write only for writing. He refuses to talk to the press and lives themselves, eve...

this means he'd contrived to get extra supplies of both," Hamilton wrote. Others have theorized that Salinger withdrew because he knew he'd run out of talent or he couldn't stand criticism. Per- haps, as Ron Rosenbaum opined in Esquire inpublished work is probably "the only reliable source material" on him. In the story "Zooey," lie writes of a clear im- perative for the artist to keep performing- it's owed "to the Fat Lady, to the public, to Christ, to the God who...

Natan Sharansky, in Azure (Summer 2005), 13 Yehoshua Bin-Nun St., P.O. Box 8787, Jerusalem 93145 Israel. Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet re- believes, can be found in the neglected vision fusenik who earlier this year quit his Isr aeli of Zionism's principal founder, Austrian writer governme nt post as minister of Jerusalem ancl Theoclor I-Ierzl(1860-1904). Diaspora affairs, fears that his adopted coun try- Israel...

In Africa, smaller states are more likely to be democratic

Michael Malone on Eudora Welty

David M. Oshinsky on America's recent past

Richard Schickel on Stepin Fetchit

Graphic art from the heyday of newspapers.

The Irish immigrant experience.

The story behind one of the nation's most venerable summer theaters.

Our scavenger birds remind us of our ourselves.

We are what we eat, and that's not a good thing.

What rodeos reveal about the true West.

The bill that changed America forever.

A fresh look at the Founding Fathers.

On heroes and hero-worship.

The state of America's Protestant and Catholic clergy.