A special Missing Pieces issue of the Annals of Improbable Research is now online. Julie C. Suk (Cardozo): The Moral and Legal Consequences of Wife-Selling in The Mayor of Casterbridge. From TLS, a review essay on Western ideas of beauty. The art of the review: An interview with Bookforum editor Michael Miller. Forty years of folly: Philip K. Verleger, Jr. on the failure of U.S. energy policy. The blurred reality of humanity: Do we really even exist? Fooling ourselves into thinking we do is the one thing that makes us who we are. After years of browbeating, conservatives have succeeded in convincing Americans that Social Security is in trouble, but that doesn't mean it is. A review of Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law. Gustavo A. Solimeo on the dictatorship of equality: A Catholic perspective. Mat Iredale asks, is political evolution like biological evolution? The Power of Ruins: Nuclear power plants are an uncanny presence in the built environment. A review of Niche: Why the Market No Longer Favours the Mainstream by James Harkin. A review of An Unprecedented Deformation: Marcel Proust and the Sensible Ideas by Mauro Carbone. So bad you just gotta be good: Those tone-deaf belters humiliating themselves for our amusement help explain why we think we’re better than the experts. From Alternative Right, James Kalb on Alternate Modernities: A Retrospective (and three responses). A quest called tribe: What we call a group could diminish the people within it. Do you have free will? Yes, it’s the only choice. Long Live the American Dream: Why India and China have nothing on America. A review of Nicholas Delbanco's Lastingness: the Art of Old Age. DIY dictionary: A new guide to the world of words. Five fun facts about the $14 trillion national debt: They say China is our banker, but did you know it holds less than a tenth of our outstanding debt?
