From The American Conservative, a special issue on the legacy of George W. Bush. From The Economist, a special report on Russia. From The National, the situation in Afghanistan is not as bad as you've heard, it's worse — Nir Rosen reports; and angry young men: A review of The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China by James Mann and Chinese Cyber Nationalism: Evolution, Characteristics, and Implications by Xu Wu. From In Character, a special issue on forgiveness, including essays by Theodore Dalrymple and Michael Dirda. From NYRB, a review of Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947–1963 by Susan Sontag, edited by David Rieff (and more from Bookforum); and Orhan Pamuk on his Turkish library. Amazon Warriors: Thanks to the Internet, everyone's a book critic. The ideas of the pioneering anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss still inform contemporary understandings of the human mind and its cultures, says Dan Sperber. Why piracy pays: An interview with Peter Lesson, author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Why don't we hang pirates anymore? Bret Stephens wants to know. Noam Chomsky on the election, economy, war, and peace. Jeffrey Leonard on the $30 billion rebate: Why car buyers, not car companies, should get a bailout.
