The magazine's front section features national and international news and commentary. Investigative articles appear on an irregular basis -- not often enough, given their generally high quality. Some of The Nation's many star columnists also do investigative work. Christopher Hitchens, for instance, was an early theorist of a possible 1980 back-channel deal between Reagan insiders and Iran (the famous "October Surprise").
Like other left publications, The Nation goes in for long-running controversies that often turn personal. (See, for example, the flap over Oliver Stone's film "JFK" that began with attacks by Hitchens and fellow columnists David Corn and Alexander Cockburn.) The magazine's ample "Books and the Arts" section has its loyalists (I'm one, I guess), but probably strikes many readers as infuriatingly specialist.
-- Steve Badrich
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