August 1974
In This Issue
Explore the August 1974 print edition below. Or to discover more writing from the pages of The Atlantic, browse the full archive.
Articles
Computers Aren’t So Smart, After All
During the "computer craze" of the 1950s and 1960s some people envisioned the machine replacing the human brain. It hasn't happened and, says the author, it probably never will. So we must still think for ourselves
The "Today" Show
Innocent Bystander: Last Tango in London
Jerry Ford: The Eisenhower of the Seventies?
Don’t he fooled by all those patronizing remarks about the Vice President’s intelligence, say two veteran Washington reporters. Inside that oxhide resides a fox.
Nakedness
Whispered Into the Ground
The Editor's Page
Folk Song: Based on the First Law of Thermodynamics and Job 28:18
The Golden Silence of Ballyfungus
Of a poetry festival that never took place, but could have, in a place that doesn’t exist, but might. Come to Ballyfungus, where silences are like the pauses in Beckett plays, some more significant than the dialogue, and the booze flows faster than the river Fung.
France
The Gourmet Plague
Yes, the French love good eating. . . . Their skill in combining simple raw materials to produce superlative dishes grows out of the idée fixe that anything eaten, even the daily potato, humble carrot and turnip and less tender cut of meat, must be well prepared. Gourmets are not made by eating occasional party fare or company meals or by infrequent excursions to famous restaurants. Good food must be eaten every day, every meal with each dish carefully prepared and suitably seasoned.
—Louis Diat in French Cooking for AmericansThe Girl With the Sun in Her Eyes
In Memory of w.h. Auden
White House, Jailhouse, Oyster House: Notes on Some New Mobilities
The Mathematics of Slavery
The Purple and Gold
The Parallax Candidate
The Peripatetic Reviewer
The Dogs of War
Wilhelm Reich vs. The u.s.A
The Unknown Soldiers
All Creatures Great and Small
Spreading Fires
Seven Long Times
The Gooseberry Fool
Goodbye Lizzie Borden
The Infernal Grove
Strindberg in Inferno
Death of a Schoolboy











