From NYRB, the dreamlike paintings of the German artist Neo Rauch are as mystifying and enigmatic as those of any artist at work today, although his figurative scenes, carnivalesque in their rich, surprising colors and tricky shifts from the real to the fantastic, are also among the likeliest to grab the attention of twelve-year-olds. From Forward, an article on Pissarro’s Unquiet Pastoral. A review of Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, ed. Sherry Turkle.  And God created the artist... or was it the other way around? Ever since the dawn of civilisation, artists have been in competition with the gods. The hand-made tale: In cultural terms, authenticity is all-important. But it has always been a tricky notion, a blurry concept even more complex in the contemporary art world. Culture, done right, can be a cash cow for cities: A review of The Warhol Economy by Elizabeth Currid.

From PopMatters, an article on Peter Lunenfeld’s MediaWork Pamphlets.  The legacy of the auteurs: Filmmakers like Bergman and Antonioni have taught us to think in pictures. Truls Lie on the two recently deceased film greats (and more from LRB). Killer Films: Why the new vigilante movies are a lot like the old vigilante movies. Why "Torture Porn" Isn't: Notes on the contemporary horror movie. Portrait of the President as a Skin Mag: After his commission for an official presidential portrait was revoked, artist Jonathan Yeo decided to create a montage of Bush using shots from porn magazines. But does it work as political critique? The Spire of Dublin: A modern monument that points up what's wrong with the World Trade Center Memorial. A New Social Construct: Modernism may be dead, but the world desperately needs radically new ideas about living, working, and governing in the 21st-century city. 

From Radar, Google controls your e-mail, your videos, your calendar, your searches—What if it controlled your life? A story by Cory Doctorow. The man who found himself: In a moment of crisis, Jim Killeen decided to Google himself, coming up with a wide assortment of identically monikered men around the world. So began his very own journey.  Here’s looking at us: Facebook’s appeal lies in the architecture that lends itself so easily to voyeurism and exhibitionism. If anything, the latest social craze may just be sucking us into a false sense of comfort and popularity. Can a social network become Silicon Valley's next multi-billion-dollar profits machine? The buzz around Facebook is increasingly reminiscent of that surrounding Google in the days before the internet search company went public in 2004. Wikipedia doesn't distinguish "need to know" from "didja know?" — and it's lousy for browsing. That's why there's Wired Geekipedia.

From The New Yorker, a review of Edward McPherson's The Backwash Squeeze & Other Improbable Feats: A Newcomer’s Journey Into the World of Bridge. A review of Under the Boards: The Cultural Revolution in Basketball by Jeffrey Lane. Why We Love Football: Grace and idolatry run crossing patterns in the new American pastime. A review of Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport by Michael Oriard. Which sporting event is the best attended? The Numbers Guys finds out. Sex Scandals, Stadium Sponsors, and National TV: Just three of the reasons to boycott big-time high-school football. [The most recent issue of Bookforum includes a review of Michael G. Long’s First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson and a review of Mark Maske’s War Without Death: A Year of Extreme Competition in Pro Football’s NFC East.]

Black Sheep Squadron: Is Switzerland Europe's heart of darkness? Fadela Amara, France’s urban minister, is passionate about helping the banlieues. A review of Azouz Begag's Ethnicity and Equality: France in the Balance. A review of The Discovery of France by Graham Robb (and more and more). Form New Statesman, the gagging of the mandarins: How the Foreign Office systematically silences critical civil servants and does Britain really understand its true position in the new world order? Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's former ambassador to the UN, gives a controversial analysis. A review of Politics & the People: A History of British Democracy Since 1918 by Kevin Jefferys. A review of From Anger to Apathy: The British Experience Since 1975 by Mark Garnett. A look at how the Iraq War is responsible for Scottish independence. Really.  

The General in Our Labyrinth: David Petraeus and grandiose failure in the Middle East. The No-Exit Strategy: He broke Iraq. Why trust Bush to fix it? More False Optimism on Iraq: How many mulligans should we let Iraq war boosters take? Sunni World: Marc Lynch on how the cheerleaders for the surge have constructed a Disney-esque fantasy of Iraq which might as well be in Orlando for all it has to do with the grim reality on the ground. And Abu Risha's assassination isn't likely to dim that fantasy.  Deceptive or Delusional? Fred Kaplan on Bush's appalling Iraq speech and Dennis Ross on Bush's sad, ignorant Iraq speech. Why It’s So Hard to Win: As we’ve seen in Iraq, premodern enemies have become more effective in insurgencies against postmodern societies. Victor Davis Hanson tells why. The Missing Measure of Our Outrage: If most of us can agree the Iraq War is a colossal failure, why aren't we doing much about it? 

A look at why the GOP's '08 candidates can't keep dodging Iraq much longer. From Reason, an article on The Unbearable Lightness of Fred: The Big Voice announces for president. America’s Mayor Goes to America: Rudy Giuliani has staked his campaign on the idea that he will keep America safe from terror the same way he kept New York City safe from crime — with ruthless efficiency. Is there a method to his relentlessness? The Looming Republican Delegate Disaster: Think the GOP nomination will be sewn up by the convention? Think again. The Conditional Retirement of Chuck Hagel: The dream of a Bloomberg-Hagel presidential ticket next year, as far as the Senator is concerned, is very much alive. From Slate, The Great Presidential Mashup: What the Democrats have to say about health care, Iraq, and more. The Legacy Problem: Hillary and her rivals take on the Clinton Administration. Hillary's Enforcer: Meet Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign's consigliere.

From Discover, an article on The 9/11 Cover-Up: Thousands of Manhattan residents were endangered by WTC debris—and government malfeasance; and World Plague Center: Philip Landrigan tracks the massive health fallout from breathing NY air after 9/11. From The Village Voice, Clearing the Air: Sorting solid claims about the 9/11 toxic cloud from the obscuring haze of uncertainty. The Girl in the 9/11 Bubble: How Emma Rathkey, the teenage daughter of a man who perished in the Twin Towers, finally found solace in the company of those who’d suffered the same loss. From Mother Jones, Too Little, Too Late? Six years after 9/11 and three years after the 9/11 Commission, Congress has just started to do what's necessary to protect us from the next terror attack. But have they done enough? And is time running out? 

Martha Minow (Harvard): Tolerance in an Age of Terror. Fighting at a Disadvantage: Bad cultural habits plague the West in the War on Terror. Martin Amis on 9/11 and the cult of death: Our response to September 11 has been deficient. A review of The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis. Radical Islam must be recognised as a fanatical death cult, such as Nazism or Bolshevism. Islamism Goes Mainstream: Christopher Hitchens meets Tariq Ramadan. Islam Dunk: Six years after 9/11, the shelves creak with racist panic books; and on The Myth of Separation: An American travels to the Muslim world looking for more than just a 30-second soundbite. Divided we stand: It's common to blame the end of post-9/11 unity in the US on the invasion of Iraq. But it was really down to the political misuse of 9/11 by people like Karl Rove.

The first chapter from Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 by Amy B. Zegart.  Conscience of a Conservative: When Jack Goldsmith took over as the key constitutional adviser for the Bush administration, he soon found himself at odds with the White House, and a review of The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration (and more). Learning to Love the Imperial Presidency: How conservatives made peace with executive power. What's so nefarious about Jews exercising their right to speech? More and more and more and more and more and more on The Israeli Lobby. A review of World War IV by Norman Podhoretz and The Iranian Time Bomb by Michael Ledeen. A review of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas P.M. Barnett. Oh! What a Lovely War on Terror - - it's the number the arms dealers love: The biggest threat to our freedoms comes not from al-Qaida but from the security bureaucrats and their cronies. Fading superpower? Like all empires before it, the U.S. will slip from the top of the heap. Let's start getting ready.

A new issue of Econ Journal Watch is out. From Financial Times, a review of Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas K. McCraw; John Kenneth Galbraith: A 20th Century Life by Richard Parker; The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business by Johan Van Overtveldt; and John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman by Robert Skidelsky. An interview with Tyler Cowen, author of Discover Your Inner Economist, on the economics of parenting, reading, dentistry, art museums and education. 

Defender of the Faith? In old age, Sigmund Freud, committed atheist, began to see what’s so great about God. The rise and possible fall of unbelief: A review of A Secular Age by Charles Taylor (and more). From Edge, Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, on moral psychology and the misunderstanding of religion.  A review of Plotinus and the Presocratics by Giannis Stamatellos. A review of Metaphysics and Method in Plato's Statesman by Kenneth M. Sayre. A review of The Socratic Paradox and Its Enemies by Roslyn Weiss. A review of Confronting Aristotle's Ethics: Ancient and Modern Morality by Eugene Garver. A review of Violence in Late Antiquity. A review of The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Re-Enchantment by Costica Bradatan. The introduction to Nietzsche's Political Skepticism by Tamsin Shaw.

No matter what your politics, UC Irvine's treatment of legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky was wrong; he says his ordeal is a lesson in academic freedom, and Chancellor Michael Drake on why he let Chemerinsky go. Donald Rumsfeld has been appointed to a one-year stint as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Peter Berkowitz on Our Compassless Colleges. Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson's Until Proven Innocent reads like a legal thriller and exposes deep problems with America's legal system and academic culture. Clarence Page on what the Duke lacrosse case has taught us. A review of Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War over College Affirmative Action by Peter Schmidt. A look at why Harvard wants you to be unhealthily thin. A review of God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America by Hanna Rosin (and more and more and more).