The last months of last year were a frightening time for this country. Former certainties seemed shifting and elusive, no more substantial than the dust of two towers once destined to stand for centuries. In their search for reassurance many Americans seemed to turn to the security of a sometimes imagined past, with all its perceived strength and sense of a now lost normality. Televised tributes to Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball were surprise successes, while the usually youth-oriented WB network enjoyed high ratings for a new show dedicated to a hero first spotted in a quiet town in Kansas [...]