The Number Going Down
Closed mid-February 1997 · On stands late February 1997
The Front
The Meridian Index: March
Ash Wednesday attendance, the price of a dozen roses on the 14th, pilot scripts optioned this cycle
The Channel That Never Signs Off
A home-shopping network reports its best quarter yet, moving cubic zirconia and countertop appliances to a national audience that never has to leave the couch
The Essay
After the Plague Years
A response to Andrew Sullivan's 'When Plagues End,' read alongside the magazine's decade of AIDS coverage and what it means to write the ending of a story your section has covered as an emergency
The Foreign File
The Long Illness Ends
Deng Xiaoping dies at 92; state television announces the death after a delay, and the capital's streets stay outwardly ordinary
The Feature Well
The Lampoon in the Writers' Room
A profile of the Harvard Lampoon-pedigreed writers — among them Meyer, Jean, Reiss, and Daniels — now running network animation
The City
Subject: The city health department reports a 30 percent single-year drop in AIDS deaths
The Back
Books: A review of the spring's memoirs from the AIDS years · Art: A gallery note on a photography retrospective · Film: The late-winter releases, briefly