Table of Contents
Volume 55, Number 1 · January 17, 2008
Max Rodenbeck, An American in Iran 
Freeman Dyson, Rocket Man
Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War by Michael J. Neufeld
John Updike, Nocturnes
Georges Seurat: The Drawings Catalog of the exhibition by Jodi Hauptman, with essays by Karl Buchberg, Hubert Damisch, Bridget Riley, Richard Shiff, and Richard Thomson
Michael Massing, As Iraqis See It
Martin Filler, Miracle on the Bowery
Hilary Mantel, The Shadow Line
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee
Michael Tomasky, They'd Rather Be Right
Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again by David Frum
They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons by Jacob Heilbrunn
Colin Thubron, A Prince of the Road
A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor, with an introduction by Karen Armstrong
Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese by Patrick Leigh Fermor, with an introduction by Michael Gorra
Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece by Patrick Leigh Fermor, with an introduction by Patricia Storace
A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, with an introduction by Jan Morris
Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor, with an introduction by Jan Morris
Garry Wills, Romney and JFK: The Difference
Charles Simic, The Muses' Darling
Tamburlaine a play by Christopher Marlowe, adapted and directed by Michael Kahn, produced by the Shakespeare Theatre Company
Edward II a play by Christopher Marlowe, directed by Gale Edwards, produced by the Shakespeare Theatre Company
Mark Ford, A Master of Noir
Voyage Along the Horizon by Javier Marìas, translated from the Spanish by Kristina Cordero
The Man of Feeling by Javier Marìas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
All Souls by Javier Marìas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
A Heart So White by Javier Marìas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marìas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
Dark Back of Time by Javier Marìas, translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen
Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 1: Fever and Spear by Javier Marìas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 2: Dance and Dream by Javier Marìas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
Pankaj Mishra, The Quiet Heroes of Tibet
Bill McKibben, Taking the Gospels Seriously
The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News? by Peter J. Gomes
unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why It Matters by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
Ian Buruma, The Genius of Berlin
Berlin Alexanderplatz directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Fassbinder: Berlin Alexanderplatz Catalog of the exhibition edited by Klaus Biesenbach
Daniel Mendelsohn, His Design for Living
The Letters of Noël Coward edited and with commentary by Barry Day
Tim Parks, Family Secrets
ABC: A Novel by David Plante
The Francoeur Family: The Family, The Woods, The Country by David Plante
Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three by David Plante
Annunciation by David Plante
Anthony Grafton, The Wonders of the Loom
Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor Catalog of the exhibition edited by Thomas P. Campbell
Robert B. Reich, Tony Judt, 'Supercapitalism': An Exchange
Letters
Derek Walcott, Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007)
Jane Smiley, David Bromwich, Justice for Cassy
Francis M. Bator, Vietnam Withdrawal?
The Editors, Correction
The Editors, Correction
Contributors
Ian Buruma is the Henry R. Luce Professor at Bard. He received this year's Erasmus Prize. His novel The China Lover was published in September. (December 2008)
Freeman Dyson has spent most of his life as a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, taking time off to advise the US government and write books for the general public. He was born in England and worked as a civilian scientist for the Royal Air Force during World War II. He came to Cornell University as a graduate student in 1947 and worked with Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman, producing a user-friendly way to calculate the behavior of atoms and radiation. He also worked on nuclear reactors, solid-state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, and biology, looking for problems where elegant mathematics could be usefully applied.
Dyson's books include Disturbing the Universe (1979), Weapons and Hope (1984), Infinite in All Directions (1988), Origins of Life (1986, second edition 1999), and The Sun, the Genome and the Internet (1999). He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 2000 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
Martin Filler is the architecture critic of House & Garden and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. He is the co-author, with Olivier Bossiere, of The Vitra Design Museum: Frank Gehry, Architect.
Mark Ford teaches in the English Department at University College London. His most recent collection of poetry, Soft Sift, takes its title from Gerard Manley Hopkins's “The Wreck of the Deutschland. ” This year he has published editions of the poetry of Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery. (January 2009)
Anthony Grafton teaches the history of Renaissance Europe at Princeton University. His books include Joseph Scaliger, Cardano's Cosmos, and Bring Out Your Dead.
Hilary Mantel is the author of nine novels, including Beyond Black. The excerpt in this issue is drawn from her new novel, Wolf Hall, which will be published by Henry Holt/John Macrae Books in 2009. (August 2008)
Michael Massing, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, writes frequently on the press and foreign affairs.
Bill Mckibben is scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and the author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.
Daniel Mendelsohn, a frequent contributor to The New York Review, is the author, most recently, of How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken, a collection of essays mostly from these pages. His translations, with commentary, of Constantine Cavafy's Collected Poems and Unfinished Poems will be published this spring. (January 2009)
Pankaj Mishra was born in North India in 1969 and now lives in London and India. He is the author of The Romantics, winner of the Los Angeles Times's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Guardian. His most recent book is Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond.
Tim Parks, a novelist, essayist, and translator, is Associate Professor of English Literature at IULM University in Milan. His most recent novel is Cleaver. (September 2008)
Max Rodenbeck is The Economist's Mideast Correspondent. He is based in Cairo. (January 2009)
Charles Simic is a poet, essayist and translator. He has published twenty collections of his own poetry, five books of essays, a memoir, and numerous of books of translations. He has received many literary awards for his poems and his translations, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin Prize and the MacArthur Fellowship. Voice at 3 A.M., his selected later and new poems, was published in 2003 and a new book of poems My Noiseless Entourage came out in the spring of 2005.
Colin Thubron has written many books on his travels in Asia, and is also a novelist. His latest book is Shadow of the Silk Road. (November 2008)
Michael Tomasky is Editor of Guardian America and writes a blog at www.guardian.co.uk. (December 2008)
John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. In 1954 he began to publish in The New Yorker, where he continues to contribute short stories, poems, and criticism. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, among other awards. His most recent books are the novel Terrorist and Due Considerations, a collection of his essays and criticism.
Garry Wills was born in Atlanta, Georgia. One of our most distinguished
historians and critics, he is the author of numerous books, including Saint Augustine, Papal
Sin, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lincoln at Gettysburg. He has won many other awards,
among them two National Book Critics Circle Awards and the 1998 National Medal for the Humanities.
He is currently Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern University. A regular contributor
to the New York Review of Books, he lives in Evanston, Illinois.
