COVER

Figure Skating: No Holiday on Ice (Cover Stories)

Dreams of gold and glory in figure skating are very elusive. To become a champion, start with talent, money, monomania and a top-ranked coach.

NATION

The Tangled Web (The Presidency)

As Reno chooses a special prosecutor, new questions arise in the Whitewater case

WORLD

Bear Hugs All Around (Diplomacy)

In the wake of Clinton's saxophone summitry, his advisers claim that everyone came away happy. But the President's work may have only just begun.

SCIENCE

Don't Tread on My Lab

Researchers brace themselves for a new era of tighter control and stingier funding from Washington

HEALTH & MEDICINE

Crisis? What Crisis? (Health Care)

As medical inflation eases, so does the sense of urgency that Clinton needs to push his revolutionary plan

SOCIETY

Mother-and-Child Reunion

Big-city hospitals have developed inventive programs to solve the tragedy of abandoned babies

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

EDUCATION

Semester Break

In a dustup over campus sexual politics, a collegian charged with intimidation is asked to study elsewhere

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Debra Winger: Dangerous Woman (The Arts & Media Cinema)

Hollywood's hardiest risk taker and troublemaker is back, with two powerful performances

For King and Country (The Arts & Media Television)

A wicked British mini-series imagines a political battle royal

Icons of Stalinism (The Arts & Media Art)

Soviet Socialist Realism portrayed a godlike Maximum Leader reigning over a communist heaven

Lost Chords (The Arts & Media Books)

A cellist with perfect pitch in a novel of somber dissonance

Return of the Slugger (The Arts & Media Television)

After a respite from Hollywood, programming whiz Brandon Tartikoff swings for the fences again

Speaking in Tongues (The Arts & Media Books)

Nonstop chatter makes light of the law's dark side

The Taut Wire of Childhood Memory (The Arts & Media Books)

Columnists Art Buchwald and Pete Hamill describe how their early lives were seared by the Great Depression

PEOPLE

TO OUR READERS

ESSAY