Jack Snyder and Robert Shapiro (Columbia) and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon (Bar Ilan): Free Hand Abroad, Divide and Rule at Home: The Domestic Politics of Unipolarity. The Utter Uselessness of the Petraeus Report: If you think the White House-penned report on Iraq will be anything other than a validation of "the surge" and the Bush administration's larger strategy, you haven't been paying attention. This war is not like the others — or is it? The problem with using historical analogies to make foreign policy. The Decline and Fall of Declinism: Some people don’t want to admit it, but America is in great shape. The waning power of the War Myth: As Iraq dies, Bush is falling back on his old standby: Patriotic blackmail. But this time it won't work.
A review of The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. A review of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite by D. Michael Lindsay. Evangelicals Turn Toward ... The Orthodox Church? What their flight says about the relationship between Evangelicals and the modern world. There is an angle to contemporary Christian progressivism which thus far has gotten too little attention: shareholder activism.
A review of Richistan: A Journey Through the 21st Century Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich and Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class, by Robert H Frank; The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture, by Brink Lindsey; and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, by Bill McKibben. How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves: A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effects. Global capitalism will survive the current credit crisis. But in the long term, a system that depends on extracting every last cent from the poor cannot hope for a healthy prognosis.
A review of On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt. A review of Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy by Steven D. Hales. A review of Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy by John Rawls. A review of The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling by Gertrude Himmelfarb. A review of Simplexity: The Simple Rules of a Complex World by Jeffrey Kluger. A review of Smoot's Ear: The Measure of Humanity by Robert Tavernor. A review of The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon. A review of The Threat to Reason: How the Enlightenment Was Hijacked and How We Can Reclaim It by Dan Hind. A review of Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays by Frederick Crews.
From TNR, an interview with Peter Singer on the ethical difference between hunting and dog fighting, and why both of those are minor cruelties in the scale of things. What is disadvantage? How should we treat those in society who are most disadvantaged? An interview with Jonathan Wolff. Battle lines being drawn for new war over stem cells: With restrictions in countries such as the US, Germany and Australia nearing an end, research floodgates seem set to spring open and with them a whole new set of quandaries for patients and doctors. Rapid advances in genetic testing promise to transform medicine, but they may up-end the insurance business in the process. Public fears aside, scientists mimic nature’s genetic scrambling to bolster fruits and vegetables, as well as beer and whiskey.
A review of Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World, by Chris Frith. Sex, shopping and thinking pink: The brains of men and women are, indeed, different. Through analysis, gut reaction gains credibility: In a conversation with Gerd Gigerenzer, this German psychologist looks at intuition and how we use it. A review of The Top 10 Myths About Evolution by Cameron M. Smith and Charles Sullivan. Head Case: Two fossils found in Kenya raise evolutionary questions. A review of Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith by Philip Kitcher.
Susan P. Crawford (Cardozo): The Radio and the Internet. Eric Barbry (CAB): Web 2.0: Nothing Changes... but Everything is Different. From n+1, the whole thing is painful all around. And this, finally, is what must be understood: email, which presents itself as a convenience, a breeze, is in fact a stern disciplinary phenomenon.
The elegant assassin: How James Wood, an Englishman in Somerville, is becoming the most feared man in American letters. In Clive James world everything is connected, from the internet to the pre-war cafes of Paris and Vienna. Don't mistake long novels for deep ones: Slim, artful volumes are so much more profound than fashionably "epic" doorstoppers.
Five months after David Halberstam’s death, Joan Didion, Seymour Hersh, Bob Woodward, Anna Quindlen, Alex Kotlowitz, Paul Hendrickson, Samantha Power and Bill Walton are going on Mr. Halberstam’s book tour for him. Her Journey, All True: In the last two years Laura Albert has lost, in no particular order, her livelihood, her boyfriend, a piece of her identity, quite possibly her apartment and a civil fraud trial in Manhattan. O.J.'s Victims' Families Slug It Out: One wants to publish If I Did It; the other doesn't. When Booksellers Lie: "O.J. will never sell" is the new "Your check is in the mail".
America isn’t Conservative: As Karl Rove exits stage right with his ruined dreams of rightist hegemony, all the political signs and portents tell us that America is turning the other way. Santorum Against the World: The former senator abandons the Culture War for global revolution. Jonathan Chait on the thuggery of William Kristol. Where did it all go wrong with Joe Lieberman? His drift to the right seems to accelerate with every passing week and his public pronouncements become ever more bizarre.
The Perils of Rudy's 9/11 Strategy: Despite the contrast between Mr. Giuliani's swift moves to decontaminate and rebuild the site and the inaction since he left office, his 9/11 record may prove his undoing; and is Rudy's teflon gone? Immigration backlash hits Giuliani right in the solar plexus; a Romney spokesman calls his record "abysmal". Fred Thompson's revealing back story: In his Watergate memoir, the would-be president is remarkably honest about his conflict as a loyal Republican confronted with his president's perfidy. Imagine such a Republican today.
A review of The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics by Matt Bai (and more and more). How mighty is the Penn? Is there another Karl Rove waiting in the wings? Here's why the Dems can't get anything done. Barack in a Box: His advisers are at pains not to let Obama peak too soon. But if he doesn’t let loose, he loses. Peter Beinart on the netroots' missed opportunity.
From Newsweek, a special report on the Ongoing Hunt for Osama bin Laden. A review of Globalisation, democracy and terrorism by Eric Hobsbawm. The Unintended Consequences of Promoting Democracy: A review of Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy by Amitai Etzioni. An interview with Dennis Ross, author of Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World.
Cass Sunstein (Chicago): The Complex Climate Change Incentives of China and the United States; and Climate Change Justice. Climate change and the threat to Pacific island nations: An interview with Espen Ronneberg of the Secretariat of the Pacific Program on the Environment. An excerpt from The Middle Path: Avoiding Environmental Catastrophe by Eric Lambin. Is everything we're told about saving the planet wrong? Bradford Plumer wants to know.
From Mother Jones, the idea that punishment can be therapeutic is not unique to the Rotenberg Center. In fact, this notion is widespread among the hundreds of "emotional growth boarding schools," wilderness camps, and "tough love" antidrug programs that make up the billion-dollar teen residential treatment industry. An excerpt from Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration by Devah Pager. The Lost War: We've spent 36 years and billions of dollars fighting it, but the drug trade keeps growing.
Christopher Dawes and James Fowler (UCSD), Tim Johnson (Stanford), Richard McElreath (UC-Davis) and Oleg Smirnov (SUNY): Egalitarian Motives in Humans. James Folwer and Christopher Dawes (UCSD) and Laura Baker (USC): The Genetic Basis of Political Participation. A review of Comrades: a world history of communism by Robert Service. A review of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray.
A review of Love, Sex & Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives by Simon Goldhill. A review of Alexander's Coins and Alexander's Image by Carmen Arnold-Biucchi. A review of The Impact of Imperial Rome on Religions, Ritual and Religious Life in the Roman Empire. A review of Roman Women by Eve D'Ambra.
From Seed, seeing the unseeable: The limits of our senses confront the limitlessness of the universe. The ideal of scientific objectivity has been subverted — even in the world's most prestigious universities — by the pernicious and pervasive influence of postmodernism. A review of The Threat to Reason: How the Enlightenment Was Hijacked and How We Can Reclaim It by Dan Hind.
From PopMatters, a review of Hitchcock and Philosophy: Dial M for Metaphysics, ed. David Baggett and William A. Drumin. A review of Woody Allen: An Essay on the Nature of the Comical by Vittorio Hosle. Which New York–subculture films get the details right? From Nextbook, Brooklyn Follies: In Williamsburg! The Musical, Hasids and hipsters find common ground. The hipster doesn't exist. It's an imaginary scapegoat, a convenient target for our disapproval and ridicule.
From The New York Observer, will Wallpaper founder’s new venture get burned? In the opinion of Tyler Brule, the ever-stylish Wallpaper founder, the suits are looking at today’s media landscape completely backwards. Why is Condé Nast's Portfolio so bad? Elizabeth Spiers investigates. The dark world of lads' mags: The worst crime of lad culture was it took old-fashioned chauvinism and served it up in the same format.
Land of the book-free: America's obsession with making money is turning reading into a minority interest in the US. Time to shelve the idea of libraries' decline: The popular notion that people don't want to borrow books any more is well overdue for revision. More Britons dream about becoming an author than any other job, according to a new poll. Sometimes, dreams should stay as just that. So you want to be a writer: They say everyone has a story, but how hard is it to get yours out onto the bookshop shelves? Clare Kermond talks to authors and publishing industry insiders about the tricks of the trade.
Michael Hogan (Sydney): Anti-political sentiment in contemporary liberal democracies. From ARPA, a review of The Government Giveth and the Government Taketh Away: Tax-welfare Churning and the Case for Welfare State Opt-Outs by Peter Saunders; and Cutting greenhouse emissions—What would we do if we really meant it? A review of Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy.
From New Statesman, still the lucky country: A special report on Australia. A review of Kevin Rudd: An Unauthorised Political Biography by Nicholas Stuart. Understanding Scoresgate: Don't dismiss the impacts of the Kevin Rudd stripper scandal too quickly. The man tipped as next Aussie prime minister was asked to leave a New York City strip club. It's a fact universally acknowledged that "Rudd and the strippers" is not the headline any aspiring prime minister wants to see splashed over the Sunday newspapers (and more).
Children of the Enlightenment: It’s not surprising that the cultural warriors see schools — and particularly public schools — as the perfect battleground for their campaign. A river ran through it: The Murray is the lifeblood of Australia's farming country, a legendary river that thundered 1,500 miles from the Snowy Mountains to the Indian Ocean. Now, it's choking to death. A review of The Minefield: An Australian Tragedy in Vietnam by Greg Lockhart. A review of American Notebook: A Personal and Political Journey by Michael Gawenda. A review of Prince of the Church, Patrick Francis Moran by Philip Ayres.
From the Claremont Review, American public diplomacy is in disarray. We are not winning the war of ideas, and it is vitally important that we do, because in our war against the radical Islamists the final victory will take place not on the battlefield but in the minds of men. A review of Winning the Right War by Philip H. Gordon. A review of Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways by Alan Dershowitz. In the Sweep of History: Anatol Lieven on where realists and progressives can meet.
From American Diplomacy, After Iraq: Why conceding defeat would be good for American foreign policy. The Magnificent Seven: Soldiers pen a jaw-dropping NYT op-ed about the war in Iraq. Sir, Can I Publish This, Sir! Do soldiers have free speech rights? A review of Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts by Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule. A review of Arbitrary Justice and the Power of the American Prosecutor by Angela J. Davis.
Gummed-Up Gatekeepers: Despite years of attempted fixes, the process for getting a security clearance from Uncle Sam is tedious, slow, and antiquated. And evidence suggests that the background investigations aren't very thorough. Could a terrorist get hold of national secrets? Everything We Know About Security Is Wrong: So says counterterrorism contrarian Bruce Schneier. And the transportation security administration is listening.
From Boston Review, The Curse of Modernity: George Scialabba on Philip Rieff’s problem with freedom. D aron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson (MIT), James A. Robinson (Harvard) and Pierre Yared (Columbia): Reevaluating the Modernization Hypothesis. James H. Fowler (UCSD) and Cindy D. Kam (UC-Davis): Beyond the Self: Social Identity, Altruism, and Political Participation.
A review of The Truth About Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy by Catherine and Michael Zuckert. A review of The Chicago School: How The University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business by Johan Van Overtveldt. More on Discover Your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen.
From the Canadian Journal of Sociology, a review of Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict by Larissa Remennick; a review of The Intellectuals and the Flag by Todd Gitlin; and a review of Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age by Toby Miller.