Douglass C. North (WUSTL): Violence and Social Orders. Kevin J. Murphy (USC): The Politics of Pay: A Legislative History of Executive Compensation. From the new journal Pastoralism, Robin Bendrey (Reading): Some Like It Hot: Environmental Determinism and the Pastoral Economies of the Later Prehistoric Eurasian Steppe. The Smithsonian Life List: 43 places to see before you die. From THES, a review of The Quest for Mental Health: A Tale of Science, Medicine, Scandal, Sorrow and Mass Society by Ian Dowbiggin; and a review of Putting a Name to It: Diagnosis in Contemporary Society by Annemarie Goldstein Jutel. The science of rioting: Is there a reason for the violence, and is there a solution? A review of Free Will: A Guide for the Perplexed by T. J. Mawson. From Prospect, a new exhibition signals the end of postmodernism, but what was it, and what comes next? The decade that won't die: Nirvana, "all that," Harrison Ford, double-breasted suits, they're all back from the '90s, and as prevalent as ever — but why? X-Rated Ethics: Socially sustainable sex could save the economy, the environment, and our society. From Hilobrow, a series of posts about P-Funk's Afrofuturism. To judge from its critical reception, David Mamet's The Secret Knowledge is not only a bad book but possibly an evil one. Why would anyone go into politics? It’s not money or power that gets people to run; it’s the need to be popular — with the huge U.S. debt to be dealt with, even that reason no longer makes sense. A review of Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked Into an Intellectual Black Hole by Stephen Law. The Reactionary Imagination: Behind the crass reactionary propaganda produced by right-wing institutions like the now defunct News of the World lies a deeper systematic failure shared by the liberal media institutions.
