CURRENT ISSUE

January 2005

Features

rangers apprehend a suspect in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park

Stop the Carnage

A pistol-packing American scientist puts his life on the line to reduce "the most serious threat to African wildlife"

Paul Raffaele

Rethinking Jamestown

America's first permanent colonists have been considered incompetent. But new evidence suggests that it was a drought—not indolence—that almost did them in

Jeffery L. Sheler

Return of a Virtuoso

Following a debilitating stroke, the incomparable jazz pianist Oscar Peterson had to start over

Marya Hornbacher

James Boswell's Scotland

The author of the Life of Samuel Johnson spent much of his own life trying to escape the country of his birth

Tom Huntington

Cabin Fever in Russia

As Muscovites get rich on oil, dachas, the rustic country houses that nourish the Russian soul, get gaudy

Craig Mellow

Washington Takes Charge

Confronting the British in Boston in 1775, Gen. George Washington honed the qualities that would carry the day in war and sustain the new nation in peace

Joseph J. Ellis

Departments

Indelible Images

Coming Home

To a war-weary nation, a U.S. POW's return from captivity in Vietnam in 1973 looked like the happiest of reunions

Carolyn Kleiner Butler

Digs

Ahead of Its Time?

Founded by a freed slave, an Illinois town was a rare example of biracial cooperation before the Civil War

Dana Mackenzie

The Object at Hand

Freeze Frame

Beginning in the 1880s, amateur photographer Wilson A. Bentley considered the endlessly varied crystals "miracles of beauty"

From the Secretary

Tiny Treasures

From mosquitoes to mementos, the smallest items in the Smithsonian's collections can be the most useful

Smithsonian magazine

Lewis and Clark

Dangerous Liaisons

Severe cold and fraternizing with the Mandan keep Meriwether Lewis' doctoring in demand

Smithsonian magazine