Contributors

DEBORAH TANNEN, who gained a national following with her book You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, this week examines the cultural fallout from the trial of the President. "What's happened to President Clinton is just an extreme example of forces in our society that have been troubling me anyway," says Tannen. "An adversarial culture has sprouted up, and the trial was the apex of that."

ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR., twice a Pulitzer prizewinner, could be called the nation's presidential historian. He also served as a special assistant to John F. Kennedy. This week he assesses Bill Clinton's potential legacy. "No one approves of his behavior," Schlesinger says, "but I think there is a difference between private misconduct and public misconduct, and the American electorate deserves great respect for its capacity to distinguish between the two."

NICHOLE CHRISTIAN last month returned to her native Michigan to become Time's Detroit bureau chief, leaving Manhattan, and the New York Times, behind. "It's an interesting time to be back here," she reports. "There actually seems to be momentum rather than just talk about rejuvenating the city." One of the companies contributing to that motion is Pro Air, an upstart airline that Christian profiles in this issue.

KARL TARO GREENFELD, one of our New York-based business writers, this week reports on the threat that computer-savvy college students are posing to the record industry. "Many people, but primarily students, have found a way to download free songs off the Internet, even though it's illegal," says Greenfeld. "The industry has not yet found an effective way to prevent it." Unless it does soon, a generation of kids will get out of the habit of buying CDs.