From Vanity Fair, talking to students, alumnae, and the headmistress, Evgenia Peretz discovers that Tatum Bass, a student at Miss Porter’s School, in Farmington, Connecticut, violated a deep, unspoken code. An excerpt from Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations by Henry Fairlie. A review of The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern by Keith Devlin. Can you run a government with prediction markets? They actually might be useful for all kinds of political and business decisions. The starting gun for a student movement: The news that Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a Stasi spy sheds new light on the birth of '68 (and more). Highborn Fools: A review of books by Duc de Saint-Simon. How much will the financial crisis hurt America’s economic potential? Obsessive Housing Disorder: Nearly a century of Washington’s efforts to promote homeownership has produced one calamity after another. How much is a dead Nigerian worth to Shell? A look at how attractiveness enhances income prospects. Wrong Again: Why Naomi Wolf needs to update her knowledge of feminism. A review of David Sedley's Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity. Jessa Crispin reviews Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War by Jim Risen and Judy Thomas.

From The Daily Beast, from admiring lectures about Soviet double agent Kim Philby to coffee at Alger Hiss Cafe, hints abounded that accused Cuban spy Walter Kendall Myers might be a communist spook; and Dan Rather on the sadism at Gitmo: A detainee speaks. People are altruistic because they are militaristic, and cultured because they are common — at least that is the message of a couple of new studies. Are Predators our best weapon or worst enemy? Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann investigate. Lunch with the FT: Bob Woodward. A look at how stereotypes defeat the stereotyped. From First Principles, a review of The Contested Public Square: The Crisis of Christianity and Politics by Greg Forster; and a review of Cry Wolf: A Political Fable by Paul Lake. A review of Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism by Cathy Gere. The lighter side of Islam: An excerpt from The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday by Neil MacFarquhar (and more). "We lost all the battles, but we had the best songs": Serge Halimi is in praise of revolutions. How did astronomer Paul Davies come to propose that life arose on Mars and then seeded the Earth? An excerpt from Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff.

From The Economist, a special report on international banking; a special report on business in the US; a look at how attitudes towards redistribution have a strong cultural component; and Americans have grown slightly more receptive to the idea of an activist government — will they go along with Barack Obama’s aspirations. Do we need a technological breakthrough to avert the climate crisis? From Newsweek, love is a battlefield: For some soldiers, there's no place like combat; and Fareed Zakaria on how to end in Iraq. Just like grown-up Republicans, College Republicans face an identity crisis. The Taliban in Afghanistan seem to be channeling the Sopranos in their war against the West. From TAP, we ought to be in a golden age of data — so why are so many of the statistics we hear just fuzzy math? An excerpt from Justin Fox's The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street (and a review). 20,000 Nations Above the Sea: Is floating the last, best hope for liberty? The debate over the effect of the fiscal stimulus is not between historians and economists but within the economic profession itself, writes Robert Skidelsky. What was the most important year ever? Andrew Marr suggests it was probably 1776, but Bruce Clark thinks otherwise.

From the International Journal of Mormon Studies, Heikki Raisanen (Helsinki): Joseph Smith as a Creative Interpreter of the Bible. The Case for Europe: As Europe swings to the right, BBC journalist Nick Fraser asks: is the EU worth saving? From NYRB, a review of Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi'ism by Abbas Amanat; Sexual Politics in Modern Iran by Janet Afary; and Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs by Ray Takeyh. How much faith should the faithless put in Barack Obama? Comedians have yet to figure out how to mock Barack Obama; the only exception is a newspaper founded in 1421. From The Politico, a discussion on the idea of "judicial activism" and if it poses a problem. A review of The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini (and more from Bookforum). Eighteen challenges in contemporary literature: Fancy yourself a novelist for these times? Read this first. From Cato Unbound, Robert Wright on why we think they hate us: Moral imagination and the possibility of peace. What's the deal with Obama's public health-care plan, and why is the president running into such a minefield getting it passed? George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic, but it owes its plot, characters and conclusion to Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1920s novel We.