From Workplace, a special issue on mental labor, including David B. Downing (IUP): Autonomy vs. Insecurity: The (Mis)Fortunes of Mental Labor in a Global Network; George Caffentzis (Maine): From the Grundrisse to Capital and Beyond: Then and Now; Charles Thorpe (UCSD): Capitalism, Audit, and the Demise of the Humanistic Academy; an essay on ideology and the crisis of capitalism; a review of Three Strikes: Labor’s Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans by Stephen Franklin; a review of Taking Back the Workers’ Law: How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights by Ellen Dannin; and a review of After Multiculturalism: The Politics of Race and the Dialectics of Liberty by John F. Welsh. A review of The New Feminized Majority: How Democrats Can Change America with Women’s Values by Katherine Adam and Charles Derber. More and more and more on The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley. A review of The World: A Brief History by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. From Bookforum, nobody’s everyman: Novelist Richard Ford considers Frank Bascombe’s role as a stand-in for the rest of us. First were the buses — now atheists get a student society. The ladies with all the answers: The women who have penned some of the most sought-out advice columns are experts in a kind of social history.

A new issue of Open Letters Monthly is out. From William James Studies, John Lachs (Vanderbilt): Human Blindness (and a response); a review essay on pragmatism in the 21st century; and a review of The Soul of Classical American Philosophy: The Ethical and Spiritual Insights of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce by Richard P. Mullin. Charles Murray on the Europe Syndrome and the challenge to American exceptionalism: America’s elites must once again fall in love with what makes the United States different. All boarded up: The next stage of the national foreclosure crisis is how to deal with abandoned neighborhoods and trolling pillagers. A look at how the recession is good for the environment. From New Statesman, the magnitude of the global economic crisis means that we have to change completely the way we live — to do that, we need a new kind of politics; and so are there too many of us? If so, how long before our planet becomes unfit for purpose? (and more) From Ovi, articles on Jurgen Habermas on the vision of a post-secular Europe and on Jacques Derrida, a philosopher who cuts the ground from the under of philosophy's feet.  From Vision, an article on life without children: The new nurture gap; an interview with Paul Ehrlich, author of The Dominant Animal; a review essay on our biological place in nature; and a review essay on social cooperation.

From Next American City, a special issue on Cities in Crisis. From LRB, an invertebrate Left: Perry Anderson on Italy’s squandered heritage. From The Atlantic, an article on learning to love the slasher-film renaissance; prophet without honor: Andrew Gumbel is among the polygamists in Hildale and Colorado City; and it's not nearly as beneficial as the popular literature suggests — is breastfeeding worth the cost of a mother's career, sanity, and independence? More and more and more and more on The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton (and more from Bookforum). Prominent economics professors say their academic discipline isn’t shifting nearly as much as some people might think. TARP Heels: Can conservatives overturn the bailout in court? Le vieux canard: The Economist on more nonsense about Europe and America. The indictment of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir has raised the International Criminal Court's profile — and the stakes for international justice as a whole. Why exactly do so many bloggers hate Thomas Friedman's guts? Yes, More Mr. Nice Guy: What Barack Obama really means when he talks about bipartisanship. Forget the GOP; Obama's enemy is the angry public. Octomom Hypocrisy: Four reasons Nadya Suleman drives us crazy, and why we're wrong. As a new exhibition celebrates the work of Le Corbusier, architect Guy Booth argues that his legacy was monstrous (and a review at Bookforum). 

Voices from the black sites: Mark Danner on the ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Fareed Zakaria on why Washington worries: Obama has made striking moves to fix U.S. foreign policy — and that has set off a chorus of criticism. From The Atlantic, the Mugabe of the Andes: Why President Evo Morales’s racial politics in Bolivia may backfire; saunas and silence: In the countryside of Finland, solitude is a national pastime; India’s new face: Meet Narendra Modi, the pro-business anti-Muslim extremist who could be the next leader of the world's largest democracy; with the global economy in meltdown, China is in big trouble in the short term, but the longer-term threat is to America; the revenge of Karl Marx: Christopher Hitchens reviews Marx’s “Das Kapital”: A Biography by Francis Wheen; and economic policy makers thought they had tamed the business cycle — not quite; let’s hope their hubris doesn’t get in the way of our economic recovery. Free Larry Summers: Noam Scheiber on why the White House needs to unshackle its economic oracle. Michael Scherer on how The Politico is transforming our approach to news. From NPR, an article on chronicling the death of American newspapers. Clay Shirky on newspapers — thinking the unthinkable.