Religion
A Geek Grows in Brooklyn
Chronic City By Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday, 432 pp., $27.95) READ MORE >>
"Realism Doesn't Have to be Granite-Hearted"
Alex Massie marvels at a State Department funding cutoff for a U.S. group that has investigated human rights abuses in Iran since 2004, and has been preparing an inquiry into the post-election crackdown there. This is not some fringe group--it has received more than $3 million from State and its board includes Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow. Alex: READ MORE >>
Kabul Notes
Return to Afghanistan with a group of journalists, escorted by the French defense minister, Hervé Morin. A limited view: We only see valleys in Surobi and Kapisa. But an invaluable glimpse, nevertheless, because it counters what is heard almost everywhere. READ MORE >>
Why Climate Change Isn't Like Health Care
In case you missed it on the homepage today (or on that sidebar to the right), Bill McKibben has a piece in our current print magazine on why global warming, as a policy issue, is going to be fundamentally different from health care. Physics and chemistry, he argues, don't tend to be terribly flexible negotiating partners: READ MORE >>
Awakenings
The Usefulness of Cranks
Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery By Steve Nicholls (University of Chicago Press, 524 pp., $30) American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau Edited by Bill McKibben (Library of America, 1,047 pp., $40) Defending The Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, And The Legacy Of Madison Grant By Jonathan Peter Spiro (University of Vermont Press, 462 pp., $39.95) READ MORE >>
Holy See to World: I Know You Are But What Am I?
From The Guardian: The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was "busy cleaning its own house" and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger.... READ MORE >>
The End of the Beginning
With apologies to Winston Churchill, President Obama may not have presided over the beginning of the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last week in New York, but he seems finally to have marked the end of an embarrassing beginning to his Middle East diplomacy. READ MORE >>
