This Week:

1. Timeline: March 2003
2. Places & Culture
3. March Book Blog

TIMELINE: MARCH 2003

After months of buildup, the United States government's plan to strike Iraq changed at the last minute. One day after Saddam Hussein defied President Bush's 48-hour ultimatum, intelligence officials gathered in the Oval Office to discuss what the CIA director George Tenet called some "pretty darn good intelligence" that Saddam was sleeping in a bunker in a Baghdad suburb, giving the U.S. a chance to strike that seemed "too good to be true." After a two-hour discussion, the president made the call to strike the bunker, and the war was suddenly on. The next day, while Saddam's fate remained in doubt, U.S. forces marched across the Kuwait border into Iraq, and missiles and bombs battered Baghdad. Advancing troops were welcomed in some liberated Iraqi towns, though as forces pressed on toward Baghdad, they were restrained by surprising resistance in the south, including some Iraqi soldiers who pretended to surrender before opening fire. Scenes of war were broadcast in blurry pictures by reporters "embedded" with U.S. troops as they advanced.

The war stirred a variety of passions in the U.S. The House of Representatives served "freedom fries" in their cafeterias instead of "french fries," such was their displeasure with France's opposition to the war. Protests across the country harkened to the days of Vietnam. In Philadelphia, meanwhile, the FBI found a written reminder of the freedom the President said we were fighting for, recovering one of the thirteen original copies of the Bill of Rights.

Earlier in March, the U.S. marked a major victory against Al Qaeda with the arrest of a key plotter of the September 11 attacks, whom authorities found sleeping in Pakistan. Evidence of Osama bin Laden emerged in Pakistan, while bin Laden's niece emerged in Britain aiming to launch a pop music career. U.S. officials dismissed a report that Al Qaeda planned to attack Pearl Harbor. While the world pondered the fates of bin Laden and Hussein, it remembered another tyrant on the 50th anniversary of the death of Stalin.

In March we learned that more than 300,000 Americans lost their jobs in February. At least three gained employment, as Bill Clinton and Bob Dole revived the point-counterpoint segment on "60 Minutes," while Chelsea Clinton also found work in Manhattan as a consultant. The value of making an honest buck was tainted by one British contestant who was discovered to have cheated on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." But Broadway musicians returned to work after a strike that shut down Broadway. They surely knew the power of art to awaken us, which is what a Bryan Adams concert did to a woman who had been in a coma for seven years.

Other wonders unfolded in March. Scientists found a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a distant star and more evidence of a meteor collision with the Moon observed 50 years ago. People in four Midwestern states saw a meteorite explosion light up the night sky. But the most unlikely discovery may have been of 15-year-old Elizabeth Smart, who was still alive and returned home after nine months with the delusional self-proclaimed prophet who abducted her.

Few people lived as full a life as F. William Sunderman, who died in March at age 104 in Philadelphia. Sunderman, at one time or another in his life, was medical director for the Manhattan Project, president of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, developed the Sunderman Sugar Tube to measure glucose in the blood of diabetics, saw Halley's Comet twice, discovered lost chamber music by Rachmaninoff in Moscow, played his Stradivarius at Carnegie Hall at age 99, and was honored as the nation's oldest worker at age 100, when he still drove to work and put in eight-hour days editing a medical journal at Pennsylvania Hospital. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served in the U.S. Senate with erudition and a sense of humor, died in March at age 76. Edward Rogers advised Richard Nixon to make his career-saving "Checkers speech" in 1952. Elliott Jaques coined the term "midlife crisis." Adam Osborne's portable computer was the talk of Silicon Valley in 1981. Brooklyn Dodger Al Gionfriddo robbed Joe DiMaggio of a game-tying home run in the 1947 World Series. George Bayer was the only person to play both in the National Football League and golf's PGA Tour. Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American, was crushed by an Israeli Army bulldozer while protesting in the Gaza Strip. Dennis Williams, whose exoneration after 18 years on Illinois' Death Row inspired a statewide overhaul of capital punishment, died of unknown causes at age 46.

MARCH 2003 IN HISTORY
Saturday, March 1, 2003
U.S. captures Al Qaeda leader Khaild Shaikh Mohammed

Wednesday, March 5, 2003
50th anniversary of death of Stalin observed

Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic assassinated

Friday, March 14, 2003
New York City subway tokens discontinued

Wednesday, March 20, 2003
U.S. attacks Iraq

• Timeline: February 2003
• Timeline: January 2003

Latest War links:
• The New Yorker's Jon Lee Anderson and Newsweek's Melinda Liu with firsthand accounts of the first week of the war from Baghdad.

• War and weblogs: The "warblog" getting the most attention is written by the presumably pseudonymous Salam Pax, a blogger in Baghdad. Fond of neither Saddam Hussein nor the U.S., he had been posting descriptions of the city up until one week ago. Then, either his Internet connection went down or the coverage of his blog in Western media (including particularly detailed accounts in the New Yorker and BBC), may have sealed his fate at the hands of Iraqi authorities. More about Salam's stardom and silence in the Philadelphia Inquirer and San Francisco Chronicle, and more about warblogging in the Washington Post.

Another pseudonymous blogger, Victor Eremita, traveled to Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War to work with Kurdish refugees. He says his time there changed him "from a humanitarian pacifist to a Bonhoeffer pacifist." He writes about his experiences, his views, and his response to Sojourners' "Third Way" at his weblog: obedienthound.blogspot.com.

• New York Times daily news overviews: March 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30

• Latest news from CNN, the BBC, NPR, NY Times, Wash. Post, and more.

• Last week: Iraq Digest

PLACES & CULTURE

From the New York Times:

ZOR ORGUN, Afghanistan—Nearly 20 years after the bombing, the town remains a jumble of broken walls and gaping craters. The weather has smoothed the jagged edges, and children now play among the rubble, but the horror and scale of the carpet bombing that demolished this ancient walled town of 2,500 homes remains vivid. … Now, in a testament to the extraordinary resilience of the Afghans, the old, ruined town of Zor Orgun is coming back to life. Hundreds of families have returned from Pakistan in recent years, the first few arriving seven years ago, and as many as 500 families coming in a rush in 2002. Many have opted to resettle away from the ruins and build new houses on surrounding open land, but among the rubble, newly smoothed mud-brick walls are redefining the streets and alleyways and are raising the town from the dead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/25/international/asia/25AFGH.html*

LORMAN, Miss., March 7—It is not easy getting white students to come here, to Alcorn State University, a tiny, historically black campus tucked away in the lush green isolation of southwestern Mississippi, 25 miles from the nearest McDonald's or movie theater. So when the new coach of the tennis team, Tony Dodgen, recruited a player from Russia back in 1998, no one had any reason to think that he had stumbled upon the way to make Alcorn more inviting to white Mississippians. How could one white face make a difference? But then the player, Mikhail Frolov, persuaded his girlfriend to join him. The two each brought more of their friends over from Russia. And Mr. Frolov's mother, a high school English teacher, began to tell her students about the university in America that was giving away full scholarships. Four and a half years later, Alcorn is home to a thriving pod of Russians.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/12/education/12COLL.html*

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MARCH BOOK BLOG

Book News:

Oprah's book club is back, but this time its choices are the classics, from the Washington Post.

McEwan's Atonement heads National Book Critics Circle winners, from the New York Times. Ceremony "charming," says the Christian Science Monitor.

Books are "world's primary cultural conduit," says the NYT's Martin Arnold in farewell column.

Barnes&Noble revamps name, marketing of Book magazine, from the NYT. B&N profit up 32 percent in fourth quarter, from the AP. Book's biggest reader plows through 20 books a week.

Dante as modern-day literary pop figure, from the NYT.

Can video game fans be hooked on science fiction books? From USA Today.

Sojourning author is founder of fledgling FaithWalk Publishing, from the Grand Haven Tribune.

Book Reviews:

Bevy of foreign policy authors have Kennan envy, while others weigh in on war, says the New York Review of Books.

George Marsden's Jonathan Edwards is "vivid and absorbing," says the Christian Science Monitor.

Religion plays starring role in new history of colonial colleges, from the Wall Street Journal.

Nietzsche's love-hate relationship with truth examined in massive new biography, from the New Statesman.

True story of World's Fair killer poorly paced, says the New York Times.

Eclectic survey of the "spell" of motherhood and "maternal feminism," from the NYT.

Coal as an icon of industrial life, from the NYT. Three more books on working class life past and future, from the Wash. Post.

John Dewey as the twentieth century's invisible philosopher, from the NYT.

The history of software, starting in the sixties, from the NYT. The history of mobile phones, starting in the fifties, from the London Independent.

A provocative history of postwar consumer society, from the NYT.

How the Krakatoa eruption shook the nineteenth century world, from the Economist.

A history of the sword, from the NYT.

Preserving 'fragile' Venice, from the Economist.

Susan Sontag's second thoughts on the morality of photography, from the NYT.

Case studies put school vouchers to the test, from the NYT.

John McWhorter speaks for 'black silent majority,' from the NYT.

Chicago Tribune copy editor's fiction is spare and rhythmic, from the Chicago Reader (second item here).

Melodrama and theology in World War II era Sydney from Schindler's List author, from the NYT.

Novel imagines the life of the biblical woman at the well, from the Christian Science Monitor.

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Nathan Bierma is editorial assistant for Books & Culture.