The New Yorker (February 27, 2006) Illustrated Watch Your Back Mountain featuring George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

Nowadays, news is covered instantly on the Internet and on the talk and news shows, and expanded upon in newspapers and newsweeklies, making it increasingly difficult for anyone to say anything original. Yet thats what Mark Ulriksen managed in this Watch Your Back Mountain cover. Published when the movie Brokeback Mountain was about to be released, Ulriksens image evokes both the smugness of a vice president implicated in catastrophe and the cluelessness of a president incapable of stopping him. The image shows a couple of hapless chaps, prisoners of their fate and unable to alter the course of events they have set in motion.

Newsweek (September 19, 2005) - Child victim of Hurricane Katrina crying

Chosen from hundreds of images from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, the face of a one-year-old storm victima single tear running down her facenot only pulled in readers emotionally but brought home the deeper issues of race and social justice addressed by Jon Alter in his cover essay. Designed by Cover Director Bruce Ramsay with a photo by Sipa Press Charley Varley, the cover provided an introduction to the entire special report, from Evan Thomas definitive account of bureaucratic bumbling to Barbara Kantrowitz and Karen Breslaus harrowing takes of children displaced by the storm.

Rolling Stone (May 4, 2006) Illustration of George W. Bush sitting on a stool wearing a dunce cap

At a defining moment in American history, this cover posed the provocative and unspoken question on the minds of many: Is Bush the worst president in history? The blend of humor and edginessto accompany a sobering and dispassionate assessment by Sean Wilentz, one of the nations leading historianstouched off a furious political debate and made this one of the most memorable and influential covers in the magazines history.