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ATOP A HALF-MILE-HIGH MOUNTAIN DEEP IN THE HEART OF THE A Shau Valley in central Vietnam, a poisonous worm snake winds itself onto the edge of a spade. After a [...]

I SCRAMBLE GLEEFULLY UP A CONCRETE INCLINE six feet above the cobblestone road, but Hal Jackson saunters. We stand in the ruins of what was once a large house 20 [...]

The sun scorches down on the car, baking the black vinyl seats. They feel pliant as new tar. Tank top and shorts--the uniform of choice--offers no respite, and my bandanna [...]

The article focuses on the effort to reunite the U.S. military and American families with their missing soldiers. This search is one of more than 15 that take place annually under the charge of the Department of Defense's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii--400 military personnel and civilian anthropologists and archeologists who so far have conducted more than 80 Prisoners of War/Missing in action operations in the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, North Korea, Burma, and many other places.

The article author describes her experience of traveling on Camino Real, America's first highway. Pánuco is the birthplace of Juan de Oñate, the last of the Spanish conquistadors, whose hand likely had more influence on the American Southwest and northern Mexico than that of any other single explorer. In 1598 Oñate blazed the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, a trail that became the most used and most significant route of commerce and culture for 300 years. At its peak the Camino Real ran 1,800 miles from Mexico City north to Santa Fe. Spaniards used the trail to settle towns and villages all along the way, Franciscans used it to spread their gospel, troops from the U.S. and Mexico used it for waging battles and building forts, Indians used it to fight the swelling tide of foreigners, and traders used it for commerce.