Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. PREFACE v
3. CONTENTS vii
4. Beauty for Ashes 1
5. A View of Mountains 9
6. The Boat 11
7. Josephine Guezou 18
8. Twentieth-Century Odyssey 22
9. A Farewell to Hue 29
10. Looking for Trouble 36
11. The Forthright Estate: In Praise of the Newspaper Column 41
12. Code of Ethics 46
13. Father of His Country 51
14. Workplace Discrimination 59
15. Harassment by Kids: Are More Lawsuits the Answer? 62
16. Driver's Education 66
17. People and Character 72
18. Saving The Nation 75
19. Faith, Sex, Mystery 87
20. My Own Vox Pop 94
21. Stardom? They'd Rather Pass 95
22. Space Invaders 97
23. The Country Is at Crisis Point 99
24. Memo to Conservatives: Family Ties Are the Strongest Values of All 104
25. All Sentient Beings 107
26. When Worlds Collide 114
27. First Born, Fast Grown: The Manful Life of Nicholas, 10 117
28. Massacre at Columbine High School 123
29. Gender in the Classroom 126
30. Cop-Out on Class: Why Private Schools Are Today's Draft Deferments 131
31. It's a Wonderful Legacy 133
32. The Era of Bad Feeling 134
33. Two of a Kind 137
34. Truly a Nation . . . 139
35. A Little Homer at the Beach 140
36. Why I Can't Write Fiction 143
37. On Robert Lowell 147
38. The Miss Dennis School of Writing 151
39. Meeting Mahfouz 156
40. Critic's Notebook 163
41. L'Atalante 166
42. Annie of Corsica 170
43. Two Deaths—One Then, One Now: On Losing a Father, a Newspaperman 176
44. Heavy Lifting 179
45. Lenin Peak 193
46. From So Simple a Beginning 198
47. Pioneer 10 Pushes Beyond Goals, Into the Unknown 204
48. Get Set to Say Hi to the Neighbors 207
49. Left the Light On, But Nobody Came 209
50. The Invisible Flying Cat 210
51. At Least the Monsters Survive 212
52. Beauty, as Scientists Behold It 213
53. Manual Labor 216
54. Maintenance Not Included 218
55. At Last, Shout of "Eureka!" in Age-Old Math Mystery 221
56. Scientist Reports First Cloning Ever of Adult Mammal 223
57. What If We Succeed? 225
58. Deus Conservat Omnia 234
59. Introduction to Morgan, American Financier 242
60. Down Twenty-Three Steps 249
61. The Forest Coup 252
62. Pictures from the Rubble Patch 259
63. A Corner of Russia 264
64. Goodbye to Rafah 268
65. Mock Democracy 272
66. The Big Barbecue 281
67. The Rope Line 289
68. Nixonland 298
69. Consultants: The Men Who Came to Dinner 306
70. Class Act 316
71. The New American Heartland 321
72. The 1950s 325
73. Jazz: Music Beyond Time and Nations 330
74. Miracle Kid 335
75. Travels of the Rock 351
76. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 369
77. INDEX 373