MER
July 1996
The Machine Starts Charging
Closed mid-June 1996 · On stands late June 1996
The Front
Index of the Summer Ahead
State-park camping permits sold, the going rate for a lake-cottage share in Michigan, drive-in theater attendance nationwide, the price of a share in a Hamptons summer rental
The Essay
What a Word Costs
The freelance rate is falling by the dollar, quietly, magazine by magazine — the case for naming the number in print before the trade press does
The Foreign File
Chechnya's Long Endgame
A dispatch from a war grinding toward negotiation as Moscow's re-election calendar bears down on the Kremlin
The City
Subject: The surcharge machines spreading from the avenues into the bodegas
The Back
Summer Reading, Early
A books column previewing the season's beach fiction