We’re proud of every issue we publish, but it’s nice when that sentiment is confirmed independently now and then—a bit like having one’s lovely child complimented by someone outside the family circle. This year we are delighted that S. Frederick Starr’s essay “Rediscovering Central Asia,” which appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of the WQ, has been reprinted in The Best American Essays 2010. Starr’s essay, a comprehensive and highly readable history of Central Asia’s glorious past that charts the way for the future, attracted notice when it was published, but we recognized that its appeal would necessarily be limited to those who, in this age of Web-inflected attention spans, still want to sit down and read an essay of nearly 6,000 words. It was nice to see that Christopher Hitchens, the guest editor for this year’s Best American Essays volume, recognized our dedication to running long (sometimes long-long) narratives. In his introduction, he remarked that he was impressed “by the staunch way in which publications like Missouri Review, Wilson Quarterly, American Scholar, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Oregon Humanities continue to trust authors to write at length, and readers to take the trouble to repay that trust.”

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Robert Croma, who took the photograph that appears on the cover of our Autumn 2010 issue, came to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in late May 1989 drawn, like many other photojournalists and members of the international media, by a growing sense that something historic was underway. What had started the previous month as a memorial gathering for Hu Yaobang, a leader of a Chinese reform movement during the 1970s, had become the most significant political protest in communist China’s history, with more than a million demonstrators crowding the square, many of them students unhappy about the slow pace of political and social reform. Their number included such leading dissidents as Liu Xiaobo, the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

For the WQ and its parent institution, the Woodrow Wilson Center, this autumn brings a landmark event. President and director Lee Hamilton is stepping down after 12 years at the Center’s helm to return to Indiana, whose Ninth District he represented in Congress for 34 years. Lee departs with the profound respect and affection of all those who had the privilege of serving with him at the Center and sharing in its growing achievements and recognition under his leadership.