I have this uncanny experience with the Sunday New York Times Magazine. Invariably, a given Sunday has got either absolutely nothing that interests me in the least or it’s bursting with interesting pieces. This week it’s the latter:

• Bring It All Back Home: “McVeigh, the sniper — the gulf-war vet seems ready to supplant his Vietnam counterpart. But then maybe the postmodern war has made unstable vets of us all.”
• Fierce Entanglements: “For years, prompted by feminists, the strategy for dealing with domestic violence has been to get the men out of the women’s lives. But that’s not what all women want. How is anyone to understand the toughest love?”
• Preschool Meds: “The first clinical trial examining the effects of generic Ritalin on 3- to 5-year-old subjects raises questions not only about the safety of the drug but also about the ethics of testing on ever younger brains.”
• Who Needs the U.N. Security Council?: “1) The Bush administration, seeking international cover to do what it wants, and 2) everybody else, seeking to rein in the United States. Welcome to the New World Order.”