From Mother Jones, Blackwater, Erik Prince's expanding global private army, is at your service—and the war in Iraq was just the beginning. A review of The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee. A look at how the desert metropolis Dubai is reinventing itself as an art center. Trade secrets: John B. Judis on the real problem with NAFTA. YouTube for Smart People: Big Think seeks to smarten up the Internet by getting up close and intellectual with the most creative thinkers alive. More and more on Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear by Dan Gardner and Panicology by Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams. A review of Princesses and Pornstars: Sex, Power, Identity by Emily Maguire. A review of Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America by Richard Zoglin. A review of Vanishing America: In Pursuit of Our Elusive Landscapes by James Conway. An interview with Immanuel Wallerstein, author of European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power. From The Root, an article on the perilous politics of hair. A review of The Language of Belonging by Ulrike Hanna Meinhof and Darius Galasinski. From Der Spiegel, a special report on the story of Curveball and how German intelligence helped justify the US invasion of Iraq.
