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Current Issue
Decline or Renewal? (
Spring
2009 issue)
DECLINE OR RENEWAL?
The epochal collapse on Wall Street has sent a tornado of destruction ripping through America’s economy—and its self-confidence. Is American-style capitalism finished? Will the world ever accept U.S. leadership again? What must America do to recover?
Can America Fail?| By Kishore Mahbubani
Last Man Standing | By Tyler Cowen
The Pessimist Persuasion | By Arthur Herman
A Fighting Chance
By Alfredo Corchado | With multiparty democracy barely under way in Mexico, drug violence and corruption threaten to bring the country to its knees—and now both problems are spilling into the United States.
The World's New Numbers
By Martin Walker | New facts have snuck up on the doomsayers who foresee a decrepit, baby-poor Europe overrun by fertile Muslim immigrants and unable to pay for its social welfare states.
They Call It Home
By Margaret Paxson | One family’s life in a rural village gives the lie to ethnic and religious stereotypes about the North Caucasus region, home to Chechnya and other evolving Russian republics.
John Stuart Mill’s “Very Simple Principle”
By Christopher Clausen | Two books published 150 years ago helped inaugurate the modern age. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is more celebrated than read. Mill’s On Liberty remains essential in today’s struggles over rights and the meaning of freedom.
EDITOR’S COMMENT
LETTERS
FROM THE CENTER
FINDINGS
IN ESSENCE
Our survey of notable articles from other journals and magazines
SOCIETY
He Told Us So, from
The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and
Social Science
Bye-Bye Books? from The New Atlantis and Daedalus
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
The Establishment Restored, from
First Things
In Praise of Trimmers, from Harvard Law Review
FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE
First Steps With Iran, from
The National Interest
Magnifying American Power, from
Foreign Affairs
ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS
A Leg Up From the Job Corps,
from American Economic Review
PRESS & MEDIA
The Zen of Spell-Checking, from
Slate
City of Niche News, from
journalism.org
HISTORY
The First Civil War, from
The Journal of Military History
History by Name, from
Journal of African History
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
God’s Speed Dial, from
Salmagundi
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
The Lullaby of Taxis, from
Conservation Magazine
Survival Art, from Science
The Bulging Brain, from
Scientific American
ARTS & LETTERS
Postmodern Pews, from
Christian Century
The Barbarous Black Skeleton, from
The New England Review
OTHER NATIONS
Brazil’s Bold Experiment, from
Development and Change
Catch and Release, from
World Policy Journal
Breaking the Chinese Mold, from
Journal of Chinese Political Science
CURRENT BOOKS
Two Billion Cars:
Driving Toward Sustainability.
By Daniel Sperling and
Deborah Gordon
Reviewed by Tom Vanderbilt
How Lincoln Learned
to Read:
Twelve Great Americans and the Educations That Made Them.
By Daniel Wolff
Reviewed by Sarah L. Courteau
Sweating the Small Stuff:
Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism.
By David Whitman
Work Hard. Be Nice.
How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America.
By Jay Mathews
Whatever It Takes:
Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America.
By Paul Tough
Reviewed by Thomas Toch
The Godfather Doctrine:
A Foreign Policy Parable.
By John C. Hulsman and
A. Wess Mitchell
Reviewed by Robert Litwak
The Public Domain:
Enclosing the Commons
of the Mind.
By James Boyle
Reviewed by Kembrew McLeod
Leaving India:
My Family’s Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents.
By Minal Hajratwala
Reviewed by Vikram Johri
The Painter’s Chair:
George Washington and the
Making of American Art.
By Hugh Howard
Reviewed by Matthew Battles
Bright Young People:
The Lost Generation of
London’s Jazz Age.
By D. J. Taylor
Reviewed by Michael Moynihan
The Fires of Vesuvius:
Pompeii Lost and Found.
By Mary Beard
Reviewed by Andrew Curry
Last Rites.
By John Lukacs
Reviewed by Gerald J. Russello
Equal:
Women Reshape American Law.
By Fred Strebeigh
Reviewed by Alexandra Vacroux
The Art Instinct:
Beauty, Pleasure, and
Human Evolution.
By Denis Dutton
Reviewed by John Onians
The Future of Liberalism.
By Alan Wolfe
Reviewed by Theo Anderson
PORTRAIT
Double Exposure
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In Essence
Selections from our review of notable articles
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Contagious Crime
Researchers investigating the "broken windows theory" of crime control found that people are twice as likely to steal from a graffiti-covered mailbox as from one that's pristine.
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The Research Boomerang
Doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton and Bush administrations has had the curious effect of leading to less biomedical research.
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The Sickening State
The most optimistic national estimates
show Russia’s population falling to 136 million in 2020, down from 141 million today. Life expectancy in Russia is among the lowest in the developed world.
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Headscarf Politics
Why would France waste resources on such an economically and politically marginal issue as banning headscarves in schools?
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A Second Surge?
The wisdom of employing an Iraq-like surge in Afghanistan.
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The Local Government Colossus
State governments think it makes sense to consolidate local governing bodies, but at the local level the benefits seem abstract and largely unproven.
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The Clueless Voter
Some political scientists have called for compulsory voting to force citizens to participate in the electoral process. It won't work.
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Spice and Status
New research reveals that spice was not used in medieval times to mask the taste of rancid meat, but rather to infuse good meat with the sweet-sour flavor that was the epitome of the fashionable cooking of the era.
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