From The New Yorker, information isn’t necessarily making investors, or the market, any smarter — in fact, what’s driving the market crazy of late may be that it knows too much; and before the financial system went bust, it went postmodern. More pain to come: The financial crisis bolstered Obama's win — and could hasten his downfall. From Carnegie Council, a panel on The Shape of the World to Come: Charting the Geopolitics of a New Century by Laurent Cohen-Tanugi; and a panel on Ark of the Liberties: America and the World by Ted Widmer. A review of The Green-Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones. More on Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays and All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays by George Orwell. Here are 6 national anthems that will make you tremble with fear. From CT, a review of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North by Thomas J. Sugrue; and a review of Adam's Ancestors, Race, Religion and the Politics of Human Origins by David N. Livingstone. The prologue to The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate by David Archer. Improbable research into how to make a better, lighter hammer involved two mechanical engineering students carrying out a post-mortem on a dead woodpecker. 

From JASSS, a review of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott Page; and a review of Social Neuroscience: Integrating Biological and Psychological Explanations of Social Behavior. Two new proposals look to greatly increase the number of people who have adequate retirement plans, one by encouraging workers to save and the other by requiring them to. From New Internationalist, this is the eternal fate of taxation: to be the abused or abusive means towards noble or ignoble ends, never quite able to escape its association with extortion and war. A review of Soul of the Age : The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate. An interview with Herve Kempf, author of How the Rich are Destroying the Earth. From The Monthly, what sort of prime minister is Kevin Rudd? Rover stares up at you, apparently yearning for a pat on the head: Can animals escape the present? From New York, why an informant betrayed a lifelong friend to help catch fugitive murderer James Kopp. How geoengineering works: 5 big plans to stop global warming. From Reason, a review of Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal by Randall Kennedy and Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness by John L. Jackson, Jr.

From LiveScience, an article on solving the world's hardest problems. The world turned upside down: An article on understanding the Beijing Consensus; a look at why the centre won’t hold any more; and a review of Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. From MR, Istvan Meszaros on the unfolding crisis and the relevance of Marx; and Jay Rothermel on the end of the libertarian bubble. Five Days at the End of the World: Andrew Klavan visits Afghanistan, and the War on Terror movie that Hollywood would never make. Novels about nothing: Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s earliest books, newly reissued by Dalkey Archive, show a man devoted to the artistic possibilities of boredom and minutiae. What's the Matter with Greenwich? Why the rich voted for Obama against their own economic interest. How to build a legacy: An interview with William E. Leuchtenburg on FDR and President-elect Barack Obama. From TAP, Harold Meyerson on how the Democratic majority has emerged; Mark Schmitt grades election theories; and a round table on race, gender, and the election. Katha Pollitt on Sarah Palin as God's gift to journalism — and to feminism. From The Hindu, the public testimony of the nun is proof that even today rape is used as a weapon of war, around the world. The introduction to In the Moment of Greatest Calamity: Terrorism, Grief, and a Victim's Quest for Justice by Susan F. Hirsch. 

From New Humanist, banks collapsing, homes repossessed, jobs disappearing — no wonder the world is in despair; Steven Lukes turns to Durkheim to make sense of the real depression. A momentous election won't change the military-industrial complex: An interview with Eugene Jarecki, author of The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril (and a review). David Warsh reviews Robert Samuelson’s The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence. Now what? The country voted for change; the next step is to figure out what that means: Here are answers from some leading experts. Singing the Body Electric: An article on Barack Obama as Walt Whitman, incarnate. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity dive shamelessly in, talking about the "Obama recession" and other partisan lines. From Obit, Dick Polman on conservatism's grave; and it’s worth taking a minute to wonder why we let the election time-stealing beast into our lives in the first place. From Triple Canopy, was George Lucas a minimalist? Was Donald Judd a Jedi? The coincidences of Star Wars, minimalism, modernist architecture, and urban planning; and The Noble Lie: An artist project examining the symbiotic relationship between the works and lives of Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss, and the visions they've spawned.