A review of Beauty: The Documents of Contemporary Art. More on The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton (and more at Bookforum). Why can't art simply shock? No one ever accuses a work of being beautiful just for the sake of it. A review of Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo (and more). A review of Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Danny Danziger. The pen is nightier: Jed Pearl celebrates the most original American museum show in years. Should the US create a Ministry of Culture? Here's how Britain's greenest cultural avengers plan to save the world. The Internet as Art: The Internet today has inspired artists to tinker with the possibilities and boundaries of the World Wide Web, launching a global art movement. Who wants reality: We search for truth in nature, on canvas and online, but Gary Day finds that illusion is usually preferred. What do the egg, the swan and the ant have in common? Forward rethinks the work of Arne Jacobsen; and Oded Ezer and his Hebrew designs are a bubbling font of creativity. The relationship between an artist's work and attire should not take the form of a direct visual analogy; a stripe painter may not wear stripes.

From The Tablet, Bradley R. Smith and Mark Weber are at the center of the Holocaust-revisionism movement — now they’re feuding with each other (and part 2 and part 3 and part 4). When cult figure of the neo-Nazi movement David Irving comes to town, it is not so hard to track him down. A review of Antisemitic Myths: A Historical and Contemporary Anthology. From IHE, a review of Stephen H. Norwood's The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses; and Robert S. Griffin, a professor at the University of Vermont for nearly 40 years, has written extensively and sympathetically about white nationalism (and a response). The first chapter from From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism by Joseph Lowndes. What are the practical consequences of defining the “Right” as having some kind of intimacy with white racism? Watching the GOP morph into the National Association for the Advancement of White People should give us all hope, not despair. What it's like to go undercover and infiltrate some of America's most dangerous hate groups. Are the Feds cracking down on right-wing terrorists? A post-conservative and post-national right can maybe be a voice for a “revolution” that isn’t just rhetoric. Here come the racists: Since the campaign ended, we’ve been seeing the extreme racial paranoia that has characterized the American right for decades.

From NI, a special issue on China. From THES, a review of books on China. In search of Chinese science: John Derbyshire (who Wikipedia hates) on Joseph Needham, sinologist and scientist. More on Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang. Rosie Blau reviews Liao Yiwu’s The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up and Floris-Jan van Luyn’s A Floating City of Peasants: The Great Migration in Contemporary China. A review of Leslie Chang's Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China. Forget about a Shanghai stock bubble: The whole Chinese economy's getting ready to burst. Has China de-industrialised other developing countries? Europe and America can no longer afford to ignore China's increasing influence in the Indian Ocean (and in the South China Sea). A review of When China Rules the World by Martin Jacques (and more and more and more). Don't believe the hype about the dawn of a new Asian age — it will be many decades before the region takes over the world, if they ever do. A review of The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth by Michael Schuman. There's more to Macau, a peninsula on the edge of China, than gambling and hotel resorts. China’s wild west: Ethnic conflict erupts in Beijing’s new frontier.

From TLS, how Orwellian was Orwell?: A review of Orwell and Marxism: The Political and Cultural Thinking of George Orwell by Philip Bounds; and Orwell in Tribune: "As I Please" and Other Writings 1943-7. A review of Rescuing Justice and Equality by G. A. Cohen. A review of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice (and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more; and a review by Paul La Farge at Bookforum). From Rolling Stone, Barack Obama So Far: Three leading political observers grade the President's first six months. Will Obama be brought low by the same forces that irreparably damaged Clinton and Carter? Sarah Palin, meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: You two right-wing populists have a surprising amount in common. Their martyrs and our heroes: Powerful, developed countries have suicide bombers too. Are you Muslim? Do you find it hard to convince people that you're NOT a terrorist? That's as it should be, writes Ben Pobjie, but he's gunna help you out anyway. From The Smart Set, symbolic gestures: What National Park Service images tell us; and a look at why anniversaries that end in "0" seem so important. 10 mysteries of you: Despite our best efforts, some of our strangest foibles still defy explanation.