New Podcasts: Zadie Smith on speaking in tongues, Elizabeth Drew on the president-elect, Sue Halpern on reportage from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Volume 56, Number 1 · January 15, 2009
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American Parable
By Sanford Schwartz
Whether he paints shipping in Boston harbor, with flags and clouds stretched by the wind, or sloops making their way up the Hudson River on a glistening autumn afternoon, or his subject is the wonder of being face to face with a giant waterfall, Thomas Chambers's work, currently the subject of a rousing exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, seems at first less like the product of a particular person than an emanation of antebellum American life as a whole.
Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption
By Marcia Angell
No one knows the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians, but I estimate from the annual reports of the top nine US drug companies that it comes to tens of billions of dollars a year. By such means, the pharmaceutical industry has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products. Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease.
What to Do About the Torturers?
By David Cole
America's experiment with torture presents the Obama administration with one of its most difficult challenges: how should the nation account for the abuses that have occurred in the past, what are the appropriate remedies, and how can we ensure that such abuses not happen again?
China's Charter 08
Translated from the Chinese by Perry Link
Signed by over three hundred prominent Chinese citizens, this document calls not for ameliorative reform of the current political system but for an end to some of its essential features, including one-party rule, and their replacement with a system based on human rights and democracy.
How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East
By Hussein Agha and Robert Malley
Foreign affairs had no more than a small part in Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and the Middle East peace process only a fraction of that. Yet the sorry prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians make a break with past US policy on this matter imperative, regardless of the new administration's priorities.
A Chill on 'The Guardian'
By Alan Rusbridger
News organizations in the Western world, struggling with declining audiences and revenue, are shedding journalists, closing down foreign operations, and cutting costs. But they are also increasingly inhibited by efforts—of government officials and of private corporations—to prevent them from protecting sources or from carrying out difficult investigations.
Capitalist Pastorale
By Janet Malcolm
On A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter and six other books.
Plus: Daniel Mendelsohn on Doctor Atomic, Mark Ford on Gerard Manley Hopkins, Alison Lurie on John Updike's Widows of Eastwick, Max Rodenbeck on Iran, Robert Skidelsky on Niall Ferguson, and much more.
Volume 55, Number 20 · December 18, 2008
- Obama: In the Irony-Free Zone by Joan Didion and Darryl Pinckney
- The Truth About the Election by Elizabeth Drew
- How Historic a Victory? by Michael Tomasky
- In the Divided Heartland by Michael Massing
- What to Do by Paul Krugman
- My Turkish Library by Orhan Pamuk
- Becoming Susan Sontag by Deborah Eisenberg
- Mysteries of Siena by Ingrid Rowland
- The Triumph of Roberto Bolaño by Sarah Kerr
- Plus: Mary Beard on Caesar, Garry Wills on Studs Terkel, Ian Jack on Paul Theroux, Alison Lurie on schools, Jonathan Raban on Gore Vidal, and more.
Volume 55, Number 19 · December 4, 2008
- The Crisis & What to Do About It by George Soros
- 'The Time Has Come to Say These Things' by Ehud Olmert
- Just Remember This by Michael Greenberg
- Frozen Scandal by Mark Danner
- Iraq: Before & After, and Now by Joshua Hammer
- Desire in Berlin by Ian Buruma
- Spellbound by Michael Dirda
- Plus: David Cole on Terror and Consent by Philip Bobbitt, Geoffrey Wheatcroft on Benjamin Disraeli, Alison Lurie on the influence of the schoolroom, Alexander Stille on politics in Italy, Francine Prose on Diane Johnson's Lulu in Marrakech, Christopher Benfey on Robert Frost, and more.
Volume 55, Number 18 · November 20, 2008
- The Co-President at Work by David Bromwich
- Two Paths for the Novel by Zadie Smith
- Irène Némirovsky: The Dogs & the Wolves by J.M. Coetzee
- Trapped in the New 'You're on Your Own' World by Robert M. Solow
- The Lessons of the Master by Ian Buruma
- 'As Good as Great Poetry Gets' by Daniel Mendelsohn
- At Gull Pond by Reuel Wilson
- Obama & Sweet Potato Pie by Mark Danner
- Plus: Charles Rosen on Auden, Martin Filler on Frank Lloyd Wright, John Banville on James Wood, Anthony Grafton on Giordano Bruno, Oliver Sacks on Darwin's garden, and more.
