From Education Next, a review of The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life by William Damon; and more on Charles Murray's Real Education. A review of The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education by Kathryn Ecclestone. A review of Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh by Gerald Grant. Arrogant or dynamic, harsh or honest? Inside the mind of Michelle Rhee, D.C.'s controversial schools chief (and more on Rhee). E.D. Hirsch Jr. on how schools fail democracy. An interview with Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez, author of The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School. An article on looking for solutions to the Catholic-school crisis. An excerpt from Write These Laws On Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling by Robert Kunzman. Kitchen-classroom conservatives: An article on the growth of home-schooling. From Harper's, dehumanized: When math and science rule the school. Cooking the books: Why we need home economics (back) in schools. The unimportance of gym class: Still the most worthless of high school requirements. The grim reader: Should classroom books reflect the tough realities of life, or is there still a place for escapism? Why not take a look at what school would be like if books, teachers and administrators were honest? Teacher Cooperatives: What happens when teachers run the school? The Rubber Room: Steven Brill on the battle over New York City’s worst teachers. Teach for America gets a timeout: A union wins a victory against TFA, but can it be replicated nationwide?

Dominic Lasorsa and Jia Dai (UT-Austin): When News Reporters Deceive: The Production of Stereotypes. Zines Are Dead: A look at the six deadly sins that killed zinery. Imagination takes flight: An article on the life and mind of Antoine de Saint-Exupery. From The Atlantic Monthly, a cover story on twenty-seven people with courageous ideas — from relocating endangered species to hiring autistics to printing loads of money — that are shaping our future. Don’t read that: Julia Keller on the secret lives of book banners. From "Twilight" to "True Blood" and now "The Vampire Diaries", is it vampires that so many American women love or just gay men? Make believe mementos: Significant Objects turns cast-aside knickknacks into sought-after heirlooms — through the power fiction. Barack Obama's Work in Progress: What if Obama’s first and truest calling — his desire to write — explains more about him than anything else? Three tweets for the Web: Welcome the new world with open arms — and browsers. The new buck starts here: It's time to give American bills a makeover. Greed is not good, and it’s not capitalism: Capitalism doesn’t need greed — what capitalism does need is human creativity and initiative. From Outlook India, an interview with Amartya Sen: “I prefer to fight today’s battles”. Jonathan Chait on the case against awards: Why the wrong person always wins. What did the Founders argue about? Healthcare. Form Business Week, a special report on How We Buy. As well as good stories, Judy Blume also tells vital truths to young teenagers — and she's battled heroically against those who want to stop them being told.

From Foreign Affairs, surrogate broadcasting was a central element of U.S. soft power in the Cold War; today, it should take on a larger role in U.S. efforts to combat authoritarianism and extremism. Scott McLemee reviews The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War by John V. Fleming. Intellectual Cold Warriors: New books chronicle American expertise on the Soviet Union and debate over the U.S.S.R.'s demise. A review of The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War by Nicholas Thompson (and more and more and more). A review of The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman. A review of A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan (and more and more and more). Nicholas Thompson goes inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine, a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid uber-hawks. From NYRB, a review essay by Timothy Garton Ash on "1989!" From Dissent, a symposium on Two Decades After the Fall, with contributions by Paul Berman, Norman Geras, Anna Seleny, and more. Contrary to popular lore, the Berlin Wall did not fall on Nov. 9, 1989, nor did it fall in Berlin — it fell on Oct. 9, 120 miles away, in the city of Leipzig. The defeat of communism 20 years ago was the most liberating moment in history, so why don't we talk about it more?

From PopMatters, a review of Cult Magazines: A to Z. From TLS, the literary journal is dead, long live the literary journal: A review of The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Seize the pen: In Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer’s Life, Michael Greenberg emerges as figure out of Bellow. From The Nation, a review of Oranges and Peanuts for Sale and An Elemental Thing by Eliot Weinberger. There is neither the money nor the space to sustain a career as a full-time book reviewer; D J Taylor mourns the slow death of the man of letters. From Bookslut, an interview with Ron Charles, Deputy Editor of The Washington Post’s "Book World" and winner of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. From Publishing Trends, a series on how book reviews are changing. The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature isn’t always a bolt-out-of-the-blue surprise, a writer whose work is known only to an elite fraction of readers — it only seems that way. Why big books still matter: Sarah Palin’s memoir demonstrates the power of the book-as-talisman. You might think there’s no future at all for bookstores, but the folks at Canada’s Quill & Quire magazine are dreaming big and holding out hope. From NYRB, Charles Rosen on the lost pleasure of browsing. James Schall on libraries without readers. Click by click, libraries and readers wade into digital lending. Napsterized: Will piracy become a problem for e-books? Parchment brothers: Before e-books, publishers, and printers, Western knowledge was in the hands of scribes and their superiors.