Linda Lovelace and James Fenimore Cooper, together at last: Welcome to Harvard’s wacky New Literary History of America, arriving in bookstores as we speak (and more and more and more). Li'l Lionel Trillings will have to fend for themselves: Columbia English professor James Shapiro’s undergraduate seminar, “The Book Review” is on indefinite hiatus. Why are wonderful writers sometimes such dull conversationalists? The Daily Beast is forming a new imprint that will focus on publishing books on a much shorter schedule. This is your brain on Kafka: Does absurdist literature make you smarter? Penguin’s Great Ideas series is too Eurocentric, too male, but at least it’s made it cool to pull a volume of Edmund Burke from your pocket. What does your bookcase say about you? Prune that prose: Learning to write for readers beyond academe. Publishers be bold: Why it's time to ditch the subtitle. On the occasion of its 35th anniversary, Linda Wolfe provides a brief concise history of the National Book Critics Circle (and more on NBCC's 35th anniversary). A new wave of posthumous releases from authors like Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace and Ralph Ellison raises thorny questions about what the writers intended. The sincerest form of lawsuit bait: Sequels are a constant lure for authors who didn’t write the original. Curling up with hybrid books, videos included: Publishers are looking to “vooks,” which intersperse videos in electronic text that can be read and viewed online. A review of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover (and more).

From LPBR, a review of Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law by Philip K. Howard; and a review of Law's Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics by Gordon Silverstein. A review of The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution by Barry Friedman. The first chapter from Weak Courts, Strong Rights: Judicial Review and Social Welfare Rights in Comparative Constitutional Law by Mark Tushnet. P.J. O'Rourke on twittering the Constitution: All the Founding Fathers go tweet, tweet, tweet. Let Citizens United speak: Why the Supreme Court should abolish political speech limits on corporations and unions. Here is the Supreme Court's secret go-to chart for easy answers. Benched: Barry Friedman on why the Supreme Court is irrelevant. More on Packing the Court by James MacGregor Burns. A review of Melvin I. Urofsky’s Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (and more). Do women make better judges? Asked and answered, with data. From NYRB, Ronald Dworkin on Justice Sotomayor: The unjust hearings. Are Obama’s judges really liberals? Jeffrey Toobin investigates. Spoonfuls of sugar: Dahlia Lithwick on Americans' continued love affair with the John Roberts Court. A review of Justice Kennedy's Jurisprudence: The Full and Necessary Meaning of Liberty by Frank J. Colucci. A review of Death Justice: Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas and the Contradictions of the Death Penalty by Kenneth W. Miller and David Niven. Ardor in the court: A Texas court affirms the right of a judge and a prosecutor who slept together to condemn a man to death.

The first chapter from How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns by Audrey Kurth Cronin. Al Qa’eda’s tactical power is impossible to gauge, but its real strength still lies where it always has — in public relations. New studies of suicide bombers say that most have three important qualities in common: testosterone, a narrative fantasy, and a desire to make theater. A review of Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War by Jonathan Pieslak. A review of Master of War: Blackwater USA's Erik Prince and the Business of War by Suzanne Simons (and more and more and more). From Policy Review, an essay on how to measure the war: Judging success and failure in counterinsurgency; and a review of The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East by Joshua Muravchik. It sounded like a good idea: Swarms of social scientists would help U.S. troops better understand local customs and avoid cultural mishaps — but is the program creating more problems than it solves? Fred Kaplan on two questions Obama must ask before sending more troops to Afghanistan — and how to judge the responses. The Vietnamization of Afghanistan: Obama's choices in Afghanistan will either break the Democrats' association with Vietnam or confirm it. Afghanistan is a mess, suicide bombs are still going off in Iraq — is nation-building doomed to failure? It's time to consult the original insurgent, T.E. Lawrence.

From Slate, keep your subsidies off my ovaries: William Saletan on the pro-choice argument against health care reform; and Timothy Noah on how the Senate finance committee strangled the public option, health reform's best idea (and more). Going Dutch: Jonathan Cohn on life after the public option. A look at health care options in Europe and the balance between individual and centralized concerns. Talk to the invisible hand: Darshak Sanghavi on the promises and perils of treating patients more like consumers. The first chapter from Taming the Beloved Beast: How Medical Technology Costs are Destroying Our Health Care System by Daniel Callahan. More on The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T. R. Reid (and more). From Vanity Fair, an article on the sick business of health-care profiteering. Rick Scott profits off the uninsured: A leading foe of healthcare reform owns a chain of clinics aimed at people who would benefit from a public option — and had strange criteria about who could work in his clinics. From NYRB, Elizabeth Drew on health care: Can Obama swing it? Obama's four-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new kinds of political confusion; to boldly go where no rational health-care reformer has gone before. Obama vs. the Lobbyists: A scorecard for the future of American politics. Thomas Frank on Obama and the K Street Set: Whatever happened to "change"? A-OK Street: Is lobbying becoming more efficient? In defense of lobbying: The Constitution protects the right to petition.

From Social Europe Journal, articles on the ethics of capitalism and capitalism and ethical life; an essay on morality and capitalism in sociological perspective. From New Statesman, how can we build a “good society”? A look at four evolving strands of progressive thought and the guiding spirits behind (and more); just because humans are selfish, should we give up on the ideals of equality and community? G A Cohen wants to know (and the first chapter from Why Not Socialism? and a review of Rescuing Justice & Equality); and Labour is in the middle of its gravest crisis in 30 years — it needs to rediscover the radicalism that animated its founders. Joschka Fischer took Germany's Greens out of the wilderness and into real power — but has he become what he once eschewed? From Der Spiegel, an article on how Europe's center-Left parties are stuck in a dead end. Where now for European political parties? Even in capitalists’ bad times, Europe’s socialists suffer. Jacob Heilbrunn wants to know, is socialism finished in Europe? (and more by Harold Meyerson) Beyond the Third Way: What is wrong with social democracy? Turning malcontents into (sensible) militants: In most of Europe moderate leftists are having a bad recession, but things look more promising for them elsewhere. With Germany and France becoming the first major western economies to emerge from recession, perhaps the US should learn something from our transatlantic cousins. The current severe recession may be forming a generation that is more risk-averse and believes more in redistribution.

The final issue of Culture is out. From Applied Semiotics, Christos Zagkos, Argyris Kyridis, Ifigenia Vamvakidou, Nikos Fotopoulos (Western Macedonia): The Banknote as a Figure of Nationhood in the Balkan Countries; and Daniel Reynolds (UCSB): Esthetics of the Extreme in Shock Websites. Christopher Terry welcomes a re-examination of the work of F.R. Leavis and the legacy of his controversial style of criticism. Russell Jacoby on Sigmund Freud in America. From New Statesman, a special issue on the 50 people who matter today. A study uncovers the "de-urbanization" of America. A review of Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations by Susan Sessions Rugh. What does woman want? Mary Eberstadt on the war between the sexless. Print is still king: Only three percent of newspaper reading happens online. Queens of the Scatological Age: Jay Wexler reviews this year’s candidates for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and tiptoes through the doo-doo. People who know a lot about a lot have long been an exclusive club, but now they are an endangered species; Edward Carr tracks some down. Torture porn movies are complex cultural products that deserve serious academic attention and analysis. Captain Hook meets Adam Smith: Debunking pirate myths reveals how hidden economic forces generate social order. Fashion Forward: A Washington couple finds happiness in a cocktail of philosophy and fashion — metaphysics never looked so good. Should Roman Polanski have to pay for crimes he committed 30 years ago? AC Grayling investigates.

From NYRB, what is an Andy Warhol? Richard Dorment reviews Andy Warhol by Arthur Danto; Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol by Tony Scherman and David Dalton; and I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon) by Richard Polsky. Noah Berlatsky writes in praise of useless art that nobody wants. A review of A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits by Laura Cumming (and more and more and more and more). My ant could paint that: What invertebrates’ creations tell us about art. Malignant sadness: Brian Dillon examines the relationship between creativity, illness and the imagination. Mr. MOMA: Calvin Tomkins on Michael H. Dunn, the man who left it all to the museum. Claire Barliant reviews The Possible Life of Christian Boltanski. Decoding Jackson Pollock: Did the Abstract Expressionist hide his name amid the swirls and torrents of a legendary 1943 mural? In praise of doodling: Preliterate, primordial, the doodle is at once the most common and the most ignored art form. An interview with Jeff Koons. Bird Brain: Is art criticism so easy that a pigeon can do it? At New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Amy Herman schools police in the fine art of deductive observation. Forgotten visionary: An article on the art of Charles Burchfield. Why do people visit art museums? The answer depends on the type of art on display. Paul Johnson on the joy of portraiture. A public-art experiment is taking London’s art scene by storm — giving 2,400 people each an hour to do whatever they like in the city’s most bustling square. Research suggests artistic tendencies are linked to "schizophrenia gene".

A review of After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton. Long thought to be on the path to extinction, modern-day Sufism is as strong as ever in the Arab world even if serious study of the movement is lacking. A review of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary. A review of Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law by Nonie Darwish. Last gasp for global Islam: A review of The Crisis of Islamic Civilization by Ali Allawi (and more). Can the clash of civilisations be avoided? Jeremy Stangroom tests Ramin Jahanbegloo’s commitment to peaceful, constructive dialogue. A review of Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom by Bruce Bawer (and more). Richard Koch and Chris Smith rue the west’s loss of nerve. Twice Branded: An article on Western women in Muslim lands. The introduction to Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women by Marnia Lazreg. From Standpoint, turning a blind eye to misogyny: Liberals and feminists do not consider the oppression of women a pressing concern when done in the name of culture or religion; and a veil of silence over murder: All over the world, men are killing women on a point of "honour" — why do we tolerate the intolerable? An article on the wave of homophobia that is sweeping the Muslim world. Let’s talk about Muslim sex: Sex has ruffled many in the Arab world lately — about time.