NEIL LEIFER
The Dec. 7, 1981, cover of TIME

“Garfield and his top-selling feline pals are but one example of the cat boom in the U.S., which now goes well beyond book and comic pages. There is, for example, Cats, an opulent, energetic rock musical adapted from T.S. Eliot’s volume of poems Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The production has been a smash hit in London for nine months and will stalk onto Broadway early next year…cats are even gaining on dogs. Thirty-four million cats—often in multiples—inhabit 24% of America’s households, an increase of 55% in the past decade.”

London Express/Editorial Enterprises
The Dec. 3, 1990, cover of TIME

“Even the funny old world’s leaders were taken aback at the spectacle of a head of government being challenged, then brought down by her own party. When she arrived in Paris for the summit on European security on Sunday, Thatcher was a virtual institution, the doyenne of chiefs of state and the longest- serving British Prime Minister in more than 160 years. There were rumblings of discontent within the ruling Conservative Party, but she was confident she could keep them muffled. Within three days, however, Thatcher rushed back to London bearing fatal political wounds inflicted in her absence by her party.”

TIME
The Dec. 2, 2002, cover of TIME

“Our fascination with science fiction reflected a deep collective faith that technology would lead us to a cyberutopia of robot butlers serving virtual mai tais. With The Two Towers, the new installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, about to storm the box office, we are seeing what might be called the enchanting of America. A darker, more pessimistic attitude toward technology and the future has taken hold, and the evidence is our new preoccupation with fantasy, a nostalgic, sentimental, magical vision of a medieval age. The future just isn’t what it used to be–and the past seems to be gaining on us.”