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In his offices overlooking Lake Washington, just east of Seattle, Bill Gates grabbed a legal pad recently and began covering it in his left-handed scrawl. He scribbled arrows by each [...]

About two weeks after Bill Clinton left the White House, in 2001, I went up to Chappaqua, New York, in hopes of getting a sense of his new life, for [...]

YOU COULD LOOK AT MICHAEL BLOOMBERG--astringent, profane, irritated by small talk, impatient with the politics of empathy-and see a plutocrat whose billions have given him the freedom to say and [...]

NOT SINCE THE GILDED AGE has our politics been opened so wide to corporate contributions and donations from secret sources. And the new era of big money has just begun. [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry, detail from the north wall, Detroit Institute of Arts/The Bridgeman Art Library 'What's your idea?' reads a plaintive sign on the [...]

Byline: James Bennet B.F. Skinner and his wife observe their daughter in a 'baby tender,' a crib with a controlled environment, which Skinner invented to keep babies safe. (Associated Press) [...]

Byline: James Bennet It was really not all that long ago that a 'brand' was just a useful symbol for purposes of distinguishing the ownership of one cow from that [...]

Byline: James Bennet Paul Sancya/Associated Press In the early days of the Republican primary season, during the politically bewildering scramble for advantage in which casino winnings bankrolled 'conservative values' and [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Kevin Kolczynski/Reuters One Sunday morning in August 1996, the political strategist Dick Morris picked up the telephone and called his boss, Bill Clinton, to raise [...]

Byline: James Bennet The building that today houses the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery-and many of the images in this special issue of The Atlantic-was originally the U.S. Patent Office, and [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: The Moviestore Collection Late last summer, late one night, I was midway through Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel, Super Sad True Love Story, when I had [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: James Bennet It is an eerie, even ghoulish, sight: a sleek black signpost bristling with brushed-steel arrows that point helpfully in Chinese and English down [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos On September 11, 2001, I was on the telephone with the first editor on hand that morning at the New York Times [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Bob Winsett/Monsoon/Photolibrary/Corbis Little League baseball was not, for me, an exercise in stoking self-esteem. I hated myself for striking out, and I hated myself even [...]

Byline: James Bennet Headline from the Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1986 Matthew McGough wanted to write about art theft, not homicide. That’s why he drove down to Los Angeles [...]

Byline: James Bennet Almost four years ago, in The New York Times Book Review, a celebrated writer lamented the decline in the publication of short stories, and with it, a [...]

Byline: James Bennet The Android Trademark is a Registered Trademark of Google, Inc. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, likes to say we are approaching an age of 'augmented humanity,' [...]

Byline: James Bennet Stephen Voss We are presenting, in our annual State of the Union issue, two very different faces of the Republican Party, which emerged from the midterm elections [...]

Byline: James Bennet and Ron Fournier So when is the next economy going to emerge? Later rather than sooner, it seems, judging from the depressing economic indicators of late. Which [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images In one of the comic strips Garry Trudeau drew shortly after graduating from Yale 40 years ago, the everyman, Mike Doonesbury, is [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Alain Keler/Sygma/CORBIS 'I swear I believe Armageddon is near,' Ronald Reagan confided to his diary on June 7, 1981. He had just learned that the [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: John Springer Collection/Corbis It’s been much noted that over the past decade, most of our big institutions, private and public, have not exactly covered themselves [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Swim Ink 2, LLC/CORBIS We have a collection of pieces in this issue that approach from very different angles what we are calling 'The Future [...]

Byline: James Bennet I have some good news. Next month, The Atlantic will once again send fiction home to our subscribers, in a special supplement that will accompany our May [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: Comstock/Corbis Immense Numbers of Visitors Oration by Hon. Edward Everett -- Speeches of President Lincoln, Mr. Seward and Governor Seymour So read the headline in [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image Credit: Mai/Time & Life/Getty Images When he first ran for president more than 10 years ago, George W. Bush talked a good deal about restoring honor [...]

Byline: James Bennet Image credit: David Freers/Transtock/Veer Saturn always seemed like Exhibit A of the magnificence of General Motors, and of its folly. Here was a corporation of such scale [...]

EVEN BY THE comic-book standards of American politics, this presidential campaign is presenting fantastical accounts of America's power to bend the world to its will: A little carpet bombing here, [...]

It's A bit startling how suddenly mass incarceration has come to seem like a really bad idea. There have been stubborn opponents all along, of course--and no doubt the incarcerated [...]

IN this issue, on page 92, we've published the winner of the annual high-school essay contest that The Atlantic is conducting with the College Board. Nicolas Yan, who is 17, [...]

FRANCE, FOR THE ANTI-SEMITE, has long occupied a particular place in hell. It was France, the thinking has gone, that laundered the Jew, turned him into a human, a creature [...]

IT'S happened by this point in every modern two-term presidency: If we weren't sick of the guy to start with, we certainly are by now. What once seemed like roguish [...]

'In 1857 the printed word was unopposed,' the editors of this magazine mused, a bit wistfully, in 1957, on the 100th anniversary of the founding of The Atlantic. 'Books and [...]

'WHAT WE SEE hints at the existence of beings who are in advance of, not behind us, in the race of life,' Percival Lowell wrote in The Atlantic in 1895, [...]

TELEVISED DEBATES still rely on lights instead of boxing bells, and they rather heartlessly lack corners for the likes of Rick Perry to collapse into--to get toweled off and receive [...]

'WHAT'S YOUR IDEA?' reads a plaintive sign on the chain-link fence surrounding Michigan Central Station, in Detroit. The train station, designed by the same firm that designed Grand Central, but [...]

THE PSYCHOLOGIST B. F. Skinner was shouted down in an era whose mix of fears was different from our own. His theory of 'operant conditioning'--known as behavior modification--seemed, in the [...]

IT WAS REALLY not all that long ago that a 'brand' was just a useful symbol for purposes of distinguishing the ownership of one cow from that of another. But [...]

IN THE EARLY days of the Republican primary season, during the politically bewildering scramble for advantage in which casino winnings bankrolled 'conservative values' and voters struggled to parse who would [...]

ONE SUNDAY MORNING in August 1996, the political strategist Dick Morris picked up the telephone and called his boss, Bill Clinton, to raise the question of how history would rank [...]

LATE LAST SUMMER, late one night, I was midway through Gary Shteyngart's 2010 novel, Super Sad True Love Story, when I had to take a break. For all the book's [...]

IT IS AN eerie, even ghoulish, sight: a sleek black signpost bristling with brushed-steel arrows that point helpfully in Chinese and English down tidy pathways toward devastation--the crumpled remains of [...]

LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL was not, for me, an exercise in stoking self-esteem. I hated myself for striking out, and I hated myself even more for weeping after I struck out. [...]

MATTHEW McGOUGH wanted to write about art theft, not homicide. That's why he drove down to Los Angeles police headquarters one afternoon three years ago and met with two detectives, [...]

ALMOST FOUR YEARS ago, in The New York Times Book Review, a celebrated writer lamented the decline in the publication of short stories, and with it, a decline in the [...]

ERIC SCHMIDT, the chairman of Google, likes to say we are approaching an age of 'augmented humanity,' in which computers, by doing what they do well, will help humans do [...]

WE ARE PRESENTING, in our annual State of the Union issue, two very different faces of the Republican Party, which emerged from the midterm elections with new power but no [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I HAVE SOME GOOD news. Next month, The Atlantic will once again send fiction home to our subscribers, in a special supplement that will [...]

Immense Numbers of Visitors Oration by Hon. Edward Everett-Speeches of President Lincoln, Mr. Seward and Governor Seymour SO READ THE headline in The New York Times after the Gettysburg Address, [...]

WHEN HE FIRST ran for president more than 10 years ago, George W. Bush talked a good deal about restoring honor to the Oval Office. He was never very specific, but he didn't need to be. The name Monica Lewinsky was still on everyone's lips, and on the subject of honor, Bush seemed to know what he was talking about. The man's grandfather had been a senator and his father had been president, and his own Prince Hal story of rebellion and redemption suggested he had tested, and then more consciously embraced, the moral lessons of his aristocratic breeding. His competence was questioned in the 2000 campaign, but though his character came under fire as well-remember Karla Faye Tucker and the Texas Air National Guard-those attacks didn't dent him. "The Bush I knew was part scamp and part bumbler, a timeless fraternity boy and heedless cutup, a weekday gym rat and weekend napster," wrote Frank Bruni in Ambling Into History, his knowing account of that campaign and the first eight months of Bush's presidency. Yet Bruni also saw in Bush a sense of wonder about the office and "a profound sense of responsibility." On the morning Bush was reading The Pet Goat with a roomful of children in Florida, history so dramatically engulfed the president that scholars will surely debate for generations how America, and he, were transformed on his watch. But right now, that basic framework-dubious competence, decent character-looks to stand a chance of enduring. And if it does, George W. Bush could come to be seen in part as a tragic figure. His desire to do right-to fulfill the responsibilities of his office as he saw them, and to spread democracy around the world-was undermined by policies he set in motion in the hope of doing right. "Our greatest export is freedom, and we have a moral obligation to champion it throughout the world," Bush wrote in his 1999 campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep. "This will be an age of liberty here and across the world," he promised in his address to the Joint Session of Congress after the September 11 attacks. And later, as things became more complicated: "This government does not torture people." In this issue of The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan sets legalisms aside to give an unblinking tour of the Bush administration's systematic torture program. He is not attacking the former president; he is reaching out to him, on the basis of their shared view of the threat posed by terrorism and their shared devotion to the principles of American democracy. He wants not to indict Bush (or to urge others to do so), but to persuade him of the scope of the torture program, of the damage that it did, and of the way forward, for Bush and for the country. An unambiguous statement from the former president that the policy was wrong would reassure the world that the United States is indeed committed to an age of liberty, and it would guard future administrations, in times of national pain, against the temptation or political compulsion to resort to the same tactics. Mr. Bush, and some readers, may regard this appeal as presumptuous. But there is nothing cynical or glib about Andrew's request: he knows he is not asking the former president to do an obvious or easy thing. Indeed, the difficulty of the step, if Bush took it, would give the measure of the man's character, and of the sense of honor and public responsibility of the Bush family. "America is the land of the second chance," Bush said once. Over to you, Mr. President.