Volume 55, Number 13 · August 14, 2008
An Iraqi standing guard as looters dig at a site near Afak, southern Iraq, May 21, 2003 (photo by Matt Moyer)
The Devastation of Iraq's Past
By Hugh Eakin
Since the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad in April 2003, the international press has accorded considerable space to the country's imperiled ancient heritage. Much of this coverage, however, has been devoted to the museum, the impressive campaign to recover its stolen works, and the continued struggle to reopen its galleries. Only occasional, anecdotal reports—mostly from the first year of the conflict—have borne witness to large-scale plunder of archaeological sites, to which the damage is irreversible.
The Democrats & National Security
By Samantha Power
On Us vs. Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security by J. Peter Scoblic, and Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats by Matthew Yglesias.
Volume 55, Number 12 · July 17, 2008
Embedded in Iraq
By Michael Massing
The embed had proved surprisingly easy to arrange. No one had objected to the three New York Review articles I had sent in as samples of my work. On the application form, I had written that I wanted to visit a typical Baghdad neighborhood to see how the surge was working and to get a sense of what more had to be done before the US could begin to draw down its forces in any significant number. Though I didn't say it, I also wanted to see what the embedding process itself was like.
Iran: The Threat
By Thomas Powers
At a moment of serious challenge, battered by two wars, ballooning debt, and a faltering economy, the United States appears to have lost its capacity to think clearly. Consider what passes for national discussion on the matter of Iran.
In the Night Kitchen
By Stephen Greenblatt
On Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by Rupert Goold at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Verdi's Macbeth, directed by Adrian Noble at the Metropolitan Opera.
Isn't It Funny?
By Mary Beard
Laughter is one of the most treacherous of all fields of history. Like sex and eating, it is an absolutely universal human phenomenon, and at the same time something that is highly culturally and chronologically specific.
Obama & the Black Church
Darryl Pinckney
My parents, old NAACP activists, live in front of CNN, and back in April I happened to be with them in Indianapolis the week before the Indiana primary, when the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy returned to embarrass Senator Barack Obama's campaign.
Plus: Jonathan Mirsky on the Dalai Lama, Sanford Schwartz on the art of Peter Doig, Jonathan Freedland on Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis, Madison Smartt Bell on Haitian authors, Deborah Eisenberg on Péter Nádas, and more.
Volume 55, Number 11 · June 26, 2008
- The Reign of Thuggery by Joshua Hammer
- The Jim Webb Story by Elizabeth Drew
- 'The Clarity of Things' by John Updike
- How the Mind Works: Revelations by Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff
- India: The Place of Sex by William Dalrymple
- In Love with Duras by Edmund White
- Ghosts by Ian Buruma
- Plus: Pico Iyer on James P. Carse's The Religious Case Against Belief, David Gilmour on Giuseppe Garibaldi, Christopher Benfey on Herman Melville, Francine Prose on Ma Jian's Beijing Coma, a poem by Anne Carson, and more.
Volume 55, Number 10 · June 12, 2008
- Who Is John McCain? by Michael Tomasky
- Jihadi Suicide Bombers: The New Wave by Ahmed Rashid
- The Library in the New Age by Robert Darnton
- Economics: Which Way for Obama? by John Cassidy
- The Truth Force at the Met by Daniel Mendelsohn
- The Question of Global Warming by Freeman Dyson
- In the Emperor's Dream House by Joyce Carol Oates
- Plus: Martin Filler on Eero Saarinen, Edward Mendelson on Alfred Kazin, Jasper Griffin on Richard Stoneman's Alexander the Great, Helen Vendler on Jorie Graham's Sea Change, and more.
Volume 55, Number 9 · May 29, 2008
- Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out? by Thomas Powers
- Thunder from Tibet by Robert Barnett
- The Rise of the Muslim Terrorists by Malise Ruthven
- Giddy & Malevolent by Francine Prose
- Women Artists Win! by Ingrid D. Rowland
- Churchill and His Myths by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
- How to Cover an Election by Frank Rich
- Plus: Joseph Lelyveld on V.S. Naipaul, Larry McMurtry on the Comanches, Joyce Carol Oates on boxing, poems by Robin Robertson and Brad Leithauser, and more.
