online archive
5:00PM
JUN 5 2008
The most natural thing in the world
The salty wit and wisdom of a Rural American Christian Pacifist: A review of Bill Kauffman’s Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism. America’s stealth industrial policy: Free marketers want the government off business's back, but they may not realize how much of the spine is government funded. Gregory Clark reconsiders Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. A look at what Barack Obama must do to live up to the Kennedy political legacy. How do presidential nominees choose their running mates? Here are accounts of choosing and prepping vice presidential candidates over the past 40 years. K. Anthony Appiah reviews Susan Neiman's Moral Clarity (and a review of Appiah's Experiments in Ethics). Why don't we do it in the lab? It's the most natural thing in the world, but scientific research into what really happens when boy meets girl has long been stigmatised. Marjorie Welish reviews Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions by Maggie Nelson. After decades of effort, some scientists are beginning to despair of explaining the universe — or is it universes? God may be dead, but the question of why he permits suffering lives on: James Wood reviews God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question by Bart Ehrman.
1:00PM
JUN 5 2008
From underdog to alpha
From Foreign Policy, a breakdown of the countries where being born female can be a cruel fate; why do some countries succeed when others struggle? An interview with Nobel laureate A. Michael Spence of the Commission on Growth and Development; and had the Bush administration officials simply replaced the word “Japan” with the word “Iraq” in a secret memo from 1943, the course of the war might have been vastly different. The scandal that shook Brideshead: The Lygons of Madresfield Court, inspiration for the doomed aristocratic family in Waugh's novel, were almost destroyed when their patriarch was outed as a homosexual — instead, they banded together. A special report on how Obama went from underdog to alpha. Hillary didn't lose — Barack won. Thomas Frank on why Obama needs a better reading list. From TNR, a review of A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances, and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century by John Burrow. What barriers stand in your way to the polls? The methods are far less conspicuous than fire hoses and more legally ambiguous than poll taxes and literacy tests. Robert P. Baird reviews Seven Notebooks by Campbell McGrath. Introducing Europe's weird ways: Phallus fights and other strange traditions. America's massive military budget is irrational, costly and dangerous; why isn't it a campaign issue?
9:00AM
JUN 5 2008
The ultimate literary portrait
From The New York Observer, one thing that sucks is when you move to a new town after college, and it blows. Williamsburg does not blow! And secretly—and we know you’re alone, so it’s O.K. to admit it—it’s not that different from college anyway. From The New Yorker, a special issue on fiction. An interview with Rick Shenkman, author of Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter. An excerpt from The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House by Benjamin Barber. From TAP, a look at why the problem with conservatism is conservatism; and an article on what Hillary did for women. From Interpersona, Elaine Hatfield, Theodore Singelis, Timothy Levine, Guy Bachman, Keiko Muto, and Patricia Choo, (Hawaii): Love Schemas, Preferences in Romantic Partners, and Reactions to Commitment; a review of Cyberspace Romance: The Psychology of Online Relationships by Monica Whitty and Adrian Carr. A new issue of Policy Review is out, including Henrik Bering on The Ultimate Literary Portrait: Boswell's painterly masterpiece; a review of Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism by Ibn Warraq; and more on In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (and more from Bookforum). What are the potential crossover books from university presses in the fall? Scott McLemee begins the survey.
