From American Journalism Review, a look at what the mainstream media can learn from Jon Stewart: No, not to be funny and snarky, but to be bold and to do a better job of cutting through the fog; is Keith Olbermann the future of journalism?; a review of No Questions Asked: News Coverage Since 9/11 by Lisa Finnegan; newspapers should be planning for a print-free future; Gannett and other media companies are embracing “hyperlocal” Web sites as a new way of engaging fleeing readers; an article on the continuing excellence of The New Yorker; and is there a role for the weekly newsmagazines and their Web sites in a 24-7 news environment?
From Columbia Journalism Review, Meghan O’Rourke on why you should trust the literary critic John Leonard on the coarsening of our intellectual culture; a review of Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media by Eric Klinenberg; a young reporter winces when his big story lands on the Dr. Phil show; fifteen months after he enraged the Muslim world, Danish editor Flemming Rose's conscience is clear; Graydon Carter’s political outrage has fueled a resurgence in Vanity Fair’s serious journalism. But how far can he push the signature high-low mix of this Conde Nast cash cow?
From Opinion Journal, an independent newspaper: An article on the Bancrofts and a century of "free people and free markets". The Wall Street Journal's Murdochian Roots: Clarence W. Barron, the founder of the Bancroft dynasty, would have loved Rupert Murdoch. A review of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of America by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff. From Socialism and Liberation, a special section on Media and Class Society, including an article on the capitalist media and the growing mass movement, and an essay on revolutionary journalism.
From Extra, Obamamania: How loving Barack Obama helps pundits love themselves; an article on the Trials of Air America and the unlearned lessons of right-wing radio; can you hear us NOW? Anti-war march gets more coverage—but the message is still muted; and from self-censorship to official censorship: Ban on images of wounded GIs raises no media objections. Good To Go: A military-run course designed to prepare reporters for combat raises some thorny questions about journalistic ethics.
From Bad Subjects, a special issue on Intermedia, including an editorial on how for all its usefulness and currency, the word "media" conceals as much as it reveals; is the Internet a portal to Hell? A look at the assumptions behind Christian attacks on various configurations of sexuality on the internet and considers the potent combination of anxieties about sexuality with anxieties about new media; and a review of Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You.
From Policy Review, a review of Will the Boat Sink in the Water? The Life of China’s Peasants by Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao; and a review of The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression by James Mann. Karl Marx is back in China, and the philosopher is arguably bigger than ever. A review of Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan; and Washington's China: The National Security World, the Cold War, and the Origins of Globalism by James Peck. As threat documents go, the latest version of the Pentagon's annual report, "Military Power of the People's Republic of China", released last month, is actually a fairly reassuring document.
From NYRB, Pankaj Mishra reviews The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future by Martha C. Nussbaum. They won history's biggest gamble: A review of India After Gandhi: the History of the World's Largest Democracy by Ramachandra Guha (and more). A Business School for the Indian Poor: An innovative business school gives new hope for downtrodden rural women. "Gary, man, Iraq's a real downer, why don't you write about fun wars for a change?" A look at the slow, quirky, curry cookin' in Sri Lanka. A war strange as fiction: An opportunistic president and a dyed-in-the-wool rebel appear to have ended Sri Lanka's best-ever hope for peace.
From Prospect, what Luttwak didn't say: Edward Luttwak is right that the Middle East is not important enough to fight over. That's why the US should withdraw from Iraq and stop providing aid to Israel. A review of Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and Its Impact on the Middle East by Nicholas Blanford; Hezbollah: A Short History by Augustus Richard Norton; Hizbullah: The Story from Within by Naim Qassem; Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam Among Palestinians in Lebanon by Bernard Rougier. Here's an open letter by 139 writers, including scholars of Iran and the Middle East, protesting the detention of Halef Esfandiari by the Iraninan government.
What the new U.S.-Russia fight is really about: The dispute over missile defense reflects a deeper conflict over influence in Eastern Europe — and the need to take Russia seriously again as a regional power. Is Russia our enemy? These days, it's not so simple. Amitai Etzioni on Dealing with Russia: The Wrong Priorities. Adam Michnik on how two Polands confront each other. A Poland of suspicion, fear, and revenge is fighting a Poland of hope, courage, and dialogue.
From TLS, a review of Over to You Mr Brown by Anthony Giddens and Yo, Blair! by Geoffrey Wheatcroft. A review of A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr. Sweden’s economic and social system, sometimes called the “Swedish Model,” is often depicted either as an ideal or an abnormality. But Sweden’s system has varied considerably. The truth is that Europe is back and very much so. Consider these facts.
From The Situationist, an article on the situation of Interrogation and Marketing. Top government officials from several countries gathered in Italy in late May to discuss torture and rendition. In the background loomed the knowledge that CIA officers may soon be put to trial for seizing a terror suspect in Milan in 2003. If the Bush administration forces the CIA to drop "tough" interrogation techniques like waterboarding, the agency will probably fall back on a brutal method that leaves no physical marks. A review of Five Years of My Life: A Report from Guantánamo by Murat Kurnaz and Helmut Kuhn, and a review of Bad Men: Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons by Clive Stafford Smith. What kind of process is due detainees? Benjamin Wittes on terrorism, the military, and the courts. The introduction to Liberty Under Attack, published by The Century Foundation.
Spoils of War: Bush cronies are cashing in on terror. And so can you. More than 58 Arabic linguists have been kicked out since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was instituted. How much valuable intelligence could those men and women be providing today to troops in harm’s way? A review of Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy by Zillah Eisenstein. A review of Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games by Tennent H. Bagley (and more). A review of Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter & Vietnamese Communist Agent by Larry Berman. A review of Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans by Jean Pfaelzer. From Against the Current, a review of Max Yergan: Race Man, Internationalist, Cold Warrior by David Henry Anthony and Caribbean Crusaders and the Harlem Renaissance by Joyce Moore Turner; and a review of Afro-Orientalism by Bill Mullen.
From The Sun, The Unseen Life That Dreams Us: An interview with John O'Donohue on the secret landscapes of imagination and spirit; Nature-Deficit Disorder: An interview with Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder; and The Myth of Tough Love: An interview with Maia Szalavitz, author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids. Why are we such worried parents?
The Compulsive Philanthropist: Zell Kravinsky explains why he would have kept on giving, even after giving away $40 million to charity and donating his kidney to a stranger. Imagining the Future: Bruce Mau on why the cynics are wrong. Death Wish 7 Billion: Freud says we are all subject to the pleasure principle — which includes the death wish. Is he right? Evolution has made three attempts to create a hyper-multicellular organism: an ant-hill, communism, and the internet. The last attempt seems to be crowned with success. Can the Thing act? Why not? If I were in its place I would do three simple things.
From Daedalus, a special issue on the Body in Mind, including Antonio Damasio and Hanna Damasio (USC): Minding the body; Gerald Edelman (SRI): The embodiment of mind; Arne Öhman (Karolinska): Making sense of emotion: evolution, reason & the brain; Carol Gilligan (NYU): When the mind leaves the body... and returns; William Connolly (JHU): Experience & experiment; Jacques d'Amboise on the mind in dance; Roy Dolan (Wellcome): The body in the brain; and Jerry Fodor (Rutgers): How the mind works: what we still don't know. A review of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter.
From Daedalus, a special issue on Aging, including Chris Wilson (IIASA): The century ahead; Henry Aaron (Brookings): Longer life spans: boon or burden?; Sarah Harper (Oxford): Mature societies: planning for our future selves; Paul Baltes (Virginia): Facing our limits: human dignity in the very old; Linda Partridge (UCL): Of worms, mice & men: altering rates of aging; Hillard Kaplan (New Mexico): The life course of a skill-intensive foraging species; Dennis Selkoe (Harvard): The aging mind: deciphering Alzheimer's disease & its antecedents; Caleb Finch (USC): Aging, inflammation & the body electric; an essay by Kenneth Clark on The artist grows old; Jagadeesh Gokhale (Cato) and Kent Smetters (Penn): Measuring Social Security's financial outlook within an aging society; and Lisa Berkman and M. Maria Glymour (Harvard): How society shapes aging: the centrality of variability.
A review of The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century, by Nikolas Rose. According to transhumanist Michael Anissimov, there’s an even chance that we’re looking at immortality or existential destruction in the next 20-40 years. A review of The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering by Michael J. Sandel. The extra embryos: Be fruitful and multiply, even in the lab. A review of The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders by Peter Conrad. A review of Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver by Arthur Allen. A review of The Lonely Patient: How We Experience Illness by Michael Stein.
The Royal Society of Chemistry presents a visually striking online periodic table of the elements. A lithium imbalance: The universe's chemistry looks wonky. That may change the laws of physics. The Universe, expanding beyond all understanding: Our successors, whoever and wherever they are, may have no way of finding out about the Big Bang and the expanding universe. A review of Traveling at the Speed of Thought: Einstein and the Quest for Gravitational Waves, by Daniel Kennefick. An interview with Donal O'Shea, author of The Poincaré Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe (and a review).