Personal Life Coverage: Designer/Builder, Sante Fe, NM. If you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of building a better school, or turning a moth-balled missile silo into a dream home, this monthly is a fascinating blueprint for a more constructive life. (Jerilou Hammett, editor, 505/471-4549)

Cultural Coverage: Gadfly, Charlottesville, VA. From James Dean to the I Ching and every hip roadside stop in between, Gadfly’s stupendous eclecticism makes this glossy bimonthly second only to the Library of Congress as a warehouse of American pop culture—and number one when it comes to fun reading. (Jayson R. Whitehead, editor, 804/975-1652)

Art and Design Excellence: Hopscotch, Durham, NC. Achieving a contemporary look with compelling black-and-white photos and graphics, Hopscotch, a Hispanic culture review from Amherst College, pairs imagery and text with a grace rarely seen even in big-budget ventures, let alone in scholarly journals. (Ilan Stavans, editor, 413/542-8201)

Political and Social Issues: The American Prospect, Boston, MA. A bimonthly that lifts political writing out of the mire of Washington gossip and scandal, The American Prospect offers instead a practical vision of public life and policy shaped by “the liberal imagination.” (Robert Kuttner and Paul Starr, coeditors, 617/547-2950)

Science and the Environment: The Sciences, New York, NY. Renowned for its lucid essays and gorgeous art, The Sciences, published bimonthly by the New York Academy of Sciences, is one of the few places where the scientific mind can be found thinking aloud with writerly grace. (Peter Brown, editor, 212/838-6727)

International Coverage: Transition, Cambridge, MA. Transition is a compelling quarterly collection of tough-minded yet beautifully written perspectives on international culture, shaped in part by an editorial board that includes Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Derek Walcott, and Cornel West. (Wole Soyinka, editorial chairman, 617/496-2847)

NOTE: Posters available announcing all winners and displaying covers from each publication.

Utne Reader is the nation’s leading digest of alternative ideas. Launched in 1984, the bimonthly magazine has a circulation of 225,000 and has been nominated three times for the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Café Utne (www.utne.com) is one of the nation’s most active online discussion communities.

1999 winners| 1999 nominees | 1998 | 1997 | 1996