From Scientific American, a cover story on Science 2.0: Is open access science the future? An excerpt from A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion by Catherine L. Albanese. Does language shape what we perceive or are our perceptions pure sensory impressions? An excerpt from Shut Up, I'm Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government by Gregory Levey. How Republicans quietly hijacked the Justice Department to swing elections: An excerpt from Loser Take All. An excerpt from Pierre Manent's Democracy without Nations? The Fate of Self-Government in Europe (and part 2). Yona Zeldis McDonough reviews Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves. The hazards of telling the truth: A review of History Lesson: A Race Odyssey by Mary Lefkowitz. Looking at the US often encourages proto-paranoia suppositions and scenarios — and no wonder, reading some of recent books on the American way. The coming hunger: Was Malthus right? Are we getting too numerous to feed ourselves? Technology may have changed the way we obtain music, but as Nick Hornby's High Fidelity reminds us, it can never alter our love affair with the medium. What drove so many Libyans to volunteer as suicide bombers for the war in Iraq? A visit to their hometown—the dead-end city of Darnah.
