From Vanity Fair, George W. Bush defended harsh interrogations by pointing to intelligence breakthroughs, but a surprising number of counterterrorist officials say that, apart from being wrong, torture just doesn’t work; and here are four letters you won't find in the George W. Bush Library. From ResetDOC, Mahmoud Belhime on the slaves of oil. Lessons from the Great Inflation: Paul Volcker and Ronald Reagan's forgotten miracle created a quarter century of prosperity — and a dangerous bubble of complacency. A review of The Gentle Art of Domesticity: Stitching, Baking, Nature, Art & the Comforts of Home by Jane Brocket. Can the ho’s speak? Black sex workers and the politics of deviance, defiance and desire. How to land a job in Obamaland: TNR's guide to beating the Washington feeding frenzy (and more on climbing the social ladder in Obama's Washington). Christopher Hitchens on the moral and aesthetic nightmare of Christmas. Dahlia Lithwick on Dick Cheney's unique gift for making hard questions easy and vice versa. Good readers are cannibals: Kurt Flasch's Kampfplatze der Philosophie strides across the battlefields of philosophy from Augustine to Voltaire. From Secular Web, from fundamentalist to freethinker: It all began with Santa. Group Think: Tel Aviv professor Yuval Shavitt melds math and sociology of the Internet to predict the next big thing in music.
