December 1998

Should our leaders say they’re sorry about slavery? About Indians? About their personal behavior? Such questions are hardly new; public contrition has been a national preoccupation for centuries.

Reflections on the Rat Pack
Everybody knows what they did. This is what they meant.

The head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee explains why it has always frustrated Presidents—and why it doesn’t have to

Half a century after his father’s death, he struck up an extraordinary friendship with a man who had been there

From law officer to murderer to Hollywood consultant: the strange career of a man who became myth

Twelve classic holiday movies worth seeing when you can’t sit through It’s a Wonderful Life one more time

You’ve likely never heard of her

Connections with childhood, with a way of looking at life, and with a generation that remade our world