The New Republic

Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic By Michael Scammell (Random House, 689 pp., $40) I. READ MORE >>

When Barack Obama first appeared on the national scene, he set himself apart with his demonstrated willingness to intellectually engage his opponents. “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree,” he promised. This has been Obama’s hallmark at the Harvard Law Review, in the Illinois statehouse, and as president, where he’s dined with conservative pundits and held unprecedented free-form wonkfests with the Republican opposition. READ MORE >>

Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch By Eric Miller (Eerdmans, 394 pp., $32) READ MORE >>

Today's Washington Post reports on the feud brewing between GOP consultant and pundit Bradley Blakeman and Andy Shallal, the Iraqi-American founder of Busboys and Poets. READ MORE >>

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In Defense of Lost Causes by Slavoj Žižek (Verso, 504 pp., $34.95) Violence by Slavoj Žižek (Picador, 272 pp., $14) I. Last year the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj READ MORE >>

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The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success By Rodney Stark (Random House, 304 pp., $25.95) "Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect," concludes Rodney Stark in his new book, "most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls." I had always known that Jesus Christ was a pretty important person, but I had not quite realized that were it not for him, there would be no one to buy Rodney Stark's books. READ MORE >>

I. I, Maya Plisetskaya By, Maya Plisetskaya Translated by Antonina W. Bouis Yale University Press 386 p. $35 READ MORE >>

Ovid's Poetry of Exile Translated by David R. Slavitt (Johns Hopkins University Press, 256 pp., $32.60, $12.95 paper) The Last World By Christoph Ransmayr (Grove Weidenfeld, 240 pp., $18.95) READ MORE >>