POET WITHOUT A HERO
Marjorie Perloff
on Anna Akhmatova

THE COWBOY IN THE LIBRARY
Pamela M. Lee
on Robert Smithson

SENSATION UNDER GLASS
James Gibbons
on Nathalie Sarraute

FINDING THE RIGHT WORDS
Morris Dickstein
on Irving Howe

Matthew Price
on Dissent at 50

ARTS & LETTERS

Benedict Anderson on Herman Lebovics¹s Bringing the Empire Back Home: France in the Global Age and Andrew Ross and Kristin Ross¹s Anti-Americanism

Jennifer L. Roberts on Michael Leja¹s Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp

David M. Lubin on David Rosand¹s The Invention of Painting in America and David C. Ward¹s Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic

Andrew Hultkrans on Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus¹s The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad

Tom Nawrocki on Bob Dylan¹s Chronicles: Volume One

Deirdre Bair on Suzanne Kirkbright¹s Karl Jaspers: A BiographyóNavigations in Truth

Choire Sicha on Pam Tents¹s Midnight at the Palace: My Life as a Fabulous Cockette

COLUMNS

BETWEEN THE LINES
Naguib Mahfouz, Three Tales of the Supernatural

Brooke Comer talks with Ali Salem
Ammar Abdulhamid on young Syrian intellectuals

James Surowiecki: A Fan's Notes

The Bookforum Question

Robert Polito: Shooting the Piano Player

Brian Thomas Gallagher on M.F.K. Fisher

Letters

LUXURY AND DEGRADATION
David Rimanelli on Fannie Hurst

INTERVIEW

Bookforum talks with Margot Livesey

FICTION

Art Winslow on Madison Smartt Bell's The Stone That the Builder Refused, Master of the Crossroads, and All Souls¹ Rising

Ethan Nosowsky on Svetislav Basara¹s Chinese Letter

Kathryn Harrison on Marilynne Robinson¹s Gilead

Lenora Todaro on Alice Munro¹s Runaway: Stories

Rick Moody on José Saramago¹s The Double

Bruce Hainley on William Corbett¹s Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler and Ron Padgett¹s Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard

Sven Birkerts on Imre Kertész¹s Liquidation

Kerry Fried on Michel Faber¹s The Courage Consort

MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGUES

Brandon K. Ruud, ed., Karl Bodmer¹s North American Prints

Malcolm Warner and Robin Blake, Stubbs and the Horse

Manfred Leve, Leve Sieht Beuys: Block Beuys Photographs

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, ed., Franz Kline 1910­1962

NOTED

Bryan Walsh on Ma Jian¹s The Noodle Maker

Gary Indiana on Robert Glück¹s Denny Smith

Max Winter on Marjorie Welish¹s Word Group

Nicole Rudick on Martha Kinney¹s The Fall of Heartless Horse

Amanda Schaffer on Patricia Fara¹s Sex, Botany and Empire: The Story of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks

Julia Bryan-Wilson on Jeff Kelley¹s Childsplay: The Art of Allan Kaprow

James Poniewozik on Chris Lamb¹s Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons in the United States

Marilyn Hunt on Terry Teachout¹s All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine