Time Magazine Contents Page

16

COVER: Mr. Consensus -- how George Bush performs as President

A careful, pragmatic politician, he seeks opinions, relies on advisers and likes to split the difference on difficult choices. An inside look at how this White House operates. -- The hostages are still a long way from home, but the bazaar is open. -- Do guns save more lives than they lose? The National Rifle Association says so. See NATION.

28

WORLD: Nationalist fervor sweeps the Baltic states

The republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania push for ever greater and ever faster reforms. -- Central America's leaders tell the contras to disband, but will they go?

40

BUSINESS: The bulls of summer are setting records

Yet woozy Wall Streeters are asking, Can a crash happen again? Is this boom any different from the last one? Despite such fears, investors have been looking on the economy's bright side.

48

LAW: Taking aim at fedoras and pinstripes

Designed to go after mobsters, the catchall federal RICO law is being used to track down racketeers from Main Street to Wall Street.

50

LIVING: Zoogoers are heeding the call of the wild and finding that today's menagerie is a cageless wonderland

Here is a Himalayan highland full of red pandas, there a tropical jungle where it rains indoors eleven times a day. As American zoos are renovated and redesigned -- at a cost of more than a billion dollars since 1980 -- hosts of once jaded visitors, some even without children, are flooding through the gates. Inside they find education, entertainment and an urgent mission.

54

CINEMA: Dreaming the Viet Nam nightmare again

Based on a real-life incident, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War, starring Sean Penn and Michael J. Fox, performs a gritty diagnostic test on the national conscience.

56

MUSIC: Working weird wonders on old Irish airs

Full of spunk and sass, the Pogues, a loud and adventurous punk band, are electrifying folk music with a heady lash of hard rock.

62

INTERVIEW: Adviser to the lonely hearted

Ann Landers patiently gives guidance to her millions of readers on everything from marriage and life to toilet paper.

64

EDUCATION: The search for minorities

Colleges come courting, but high prices, poor preparation, cultural barriers and a resurgence of campus bigotry keep minorities, especially blacks and Hispanics, away.

66

BOOKS: Tom Clancy looks beyond best sellers

His thrillers -- of which the latest, Clear and Present Danger, is out this week -- have made him the military's minstrel. Now the ex-insurance man longs to live the life he writes about.

4 Letters

10 American Scene

49 Press

49 Religion

54 Milestones

58 Behavior

58 Travel

61 People

Cover: Illustration by Seymour Chwast