From The New Yorker, in the ring: Norman Mailer on grappling with the twentieth century; Adam Gopnik reviews John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand by Richard Reeves; and Peter Boyer on the Appalachian problem: Obama goes to rural Virginia. From New York, a special issue on the unusual degree of tumult the city has experienced during the 40 years of the magazine’s life. Experimental philosophers emerge from the shadows, but skeptics still ask: Is this philosophy? Hidden histories: The Odyssey and The Iliad are giving up new secrets about the ancient world. Stoics, cynics and the meaning of life: Its language is now barely known, and only a few of the works produced by its great writers and thinkers survive, but ancient Greece's influence surrounds us. How would you respond if Cesare Borgia invited

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