online archive
5:00PM
MAR 20 2008
The alphabet game
From New Politics, Martin Oppenheimer (Rutgers): Does Immigration Hurt U.S.-Born Workers?; Emad El-Din Aysha (AUC): America's Soft Power Dysfunctions; a review of Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor; a special section on Latin America; and an essay on writing about torture. From The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris on what the Abu Ghraib photographs cannot explain; and Jill Lepore on fake memoirs, factual fictions, and the history of history. From The Economist, are we too dependent on electronic aids? What do Hillary Rodham Clinton’s big-state victories say about race in America? A review of The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of a Photograph that Shocked America by Louis P. Masur. A review of Darren Wershler-Henry and Lori Emerson's The Alphabet Game: A bpNichol Reader. A look at how social pressure increases voter turnout. An interview with Chris Hedges, author of I Don't Believe in Atheists. All the most illustrious scientists had beards — so why are they such bad news in the lab? From Utne, in this era of pervasive fear, it's important to remember that U.S. history is littered with violent acts of terrorism. Long past the days of the eloquent FDR, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or John F. Kennedy, Americans have rediscovered the desire to be absorbed by words, stirred by words, even awed by words, again.
1:00PM
MAR 20 2008
There is a new kind of gender trouble
From Slate, "why did we get it wrong? Five years on, "liberal hawks" consider their support for the Iraq war; and what, exactly, has the Iraq war achieved? A lot? A little something? Nothing at all? Looking back on the Iraq war at its fifth anniversary, and reckoning with its staggering costs. From The Nation, a cover story on the costs of war (and more). Supreme Court Inc.: Jeffrey Rosen on how the nation’s highest court became increasingly receptive to the arguments of American business. Rumor’s reasons: Why Internet-spread innuendo is so hard to rebut. The Right choice? Andrew J. Bacevich on the conservative case for Barack Obama. Leon Wieseltier parses the Jewish community's fears about Obama. A review of On Empire: America, War, and Global Supremacy by Eric Hobsbawm. From TLS, an article on the hopes and glories of Edward Elgar: How historians, philosophers, modernists, musicologists and musicians have celebrated Elgar's work; a review of Wrestling with Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology by Rowan Williams; and a review of Other Colors: Essays and a Story by Orhan Pamuk. Akhil Reed Amar on reframing the constitutional debate over gun control. A review of Hiroshima: The World’s Bomb by Andrew J. Rotter. At the nation’s elite women’s colleges, there is a new kind of gender trouble: students who enter as one sex and become another.
9:00AM
MAR 20 2008
Blogs are like gym memberships
The latest issue of Perspectives on Politics is free online, including Keally McBride (San Francisco): State of Insecurity: The Trial of Job and Secular Political Order; Ingrid van Biezen (Birmingham) and Michael Saward (Open): Democratic Theorists and Party Scholars: Why They Don't Talk to Each Other, and Why They Should; Daniel Drezner (Tufts): The Realist Tradition in American Public Opinion; Jocelyn Elise Crowley and Margaret Watson (Rutgers) and Maureen R. Waller (Cornell): Understanding “Power Talk”: Language, Public Policy, and Democracy; Elizabeth J. Perry (Harvard): Chinese Conceptions of “Rights”: From Mencius to Mao—and Now; and a review essay on The New Europe. A review of Jay Wright’s The Guide Signs: Book One and Book Two. From The Science Creative Quarterly, an article on the Tragedy of the Commons Explained with Smurfs. Multiculturalism's nemesis: Meet Trevor Phillips, the man charged with shaking Britain's view of diversity. Bear Run: Why the Fed had to bail out Bear Stearns. The Bear Stearns bailout proves that conservatives hate government intervention—except when they don't. Order in the jungle: The rule of law has become a big idea in economics, but it has had its difficulties. Millions of Muslims think Shariah means the rule of law — could they be right? Blogs are like gym memberships: It's keeping them up that counts.
