Table of Contents

Volume 55, Number 19 · December 4, 2008

Ehud Olmert, 'The Time Has Come to Say These Things'

Michael Greenberg, Just Remember This

Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research by Sue Halpern

Glyn Maxwell, The Execution of Saint-Just at Thermidor (poem)

David Cole, A Larger War on Terror?

Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century by Philip Bobbitt

Ian Buruma, Desire in Berlin

Kirchner and the Berlin Street an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, August 3–November 10, 2008.

Joshua Hammer, Iraq: Before & After, and Now

Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq by Farnaz Fassihi

The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq by Bing West

Mark Danner, Frozen Scandal

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, What Disraeli Can Teach Us

Benjamin Disraeli by Adam Kirsch

Alison Lurie, The Message of the Schoolroom

School by Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor

Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory by Jonathan Zimmerman

Teaching Boys and Girls Separately an article by Elizabeth Weil

Michael Dirda, Spellbound

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster

Oracle Night by Paul Auster

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster

The Red Notebook: True Stories by Paul Auster

I Thought My Father Was God and Other True Tales from NPR's National Story Project by Paul Auster

Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure by Paul Auster

Timbuktu by Paul Auster

Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster

Leviathan by Paul Auster

The Art of Hunger: Essays, Prefaces, Interviews by Paul Auster

The Music of Chance by Paul Auster

Moon Palace by Paul Auster

In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster

The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room by Paul Auster with an introduction by Luc Sante

The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster

Squeeze Play by Paul Auster, published under the pseudonym Paul Benjamin

Tim Flannery, The Spider Man and Other Stories

Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey

Francine Prose, Waking Up to a Nightmare

Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson

John Banville, Luminous Memoir of a Lost World

James M. McPherson, The Historian Who Saw Through America

Diverse Nations: Explorations in the History of Racial and Ethnic Pluralism by George M. Fredrickson

Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race by George M. Fredrickson

Christopher Benfey, The Storm Over Robert Frost

The Collected Prose of Robert Frost edited by Mark Richardson

Fall of Frost by Brian Hall

Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher by Peter J. Stanlis, with an introduction by Timothy Steele

William Easterly, Foreign Aid Goes Military!

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier

Elaine Blair, In Search of the Outrageous Past

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon, with photographs by Velibor Bozovic and from the Chicago Historical Society

Alexander Stille, Italy Against Itself

La deriva: perché l'Italia rischia il naufragio (Adrift: Why Italy Risks a Shipwreck) by Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo

La paura e la speranza (Fear and Hope) by Giulio Tremonti

Se li conosci li eviti (If You Know Them, You Avoid Them) by Peter Gomez and Marco Travaglio

George Soros, The Crisis & What to Do About It

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Letters

Teresa Ghilarducci, Robert M. Solow, The Trouble with 401(k)s
Russell Todres, Daniel J. Kevles, Vavilov and the Famine
Leo A. Lensing, Karl Kraus and Walter Benjamin
Elizabeth J. Rosenthal, A Field Guide to the Birder

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Contributors

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of many novels, including The Book of Evidence, The Untouchable, and Eclipse. Banville's novel The Sea was awarded the 2005 Man Booker Prize. On occasion he writes under the pen name Benjamin Black.

Christopher Benfey is Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke. His latest book, American Audacity: Literary Essays North and South, has just been published. (December 2008)

Elaine Blair is the author of Literary St. Petersburg, published last year. (December 2008)

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)

David Cole is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He is the award-winning author of several books, including Less Safe, Less Free:Why America Is losing the War on Terror (with Jules Lobel, 2007) and Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (2003).

Mark Danner, longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of three books: The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War; The Road to Illegitimacy: One Reporter's Travels Through the 2000 Florida Recount; and Torture and Truth. Danner's work has been honored with many awards, including a National Magazine Award, three Overseas Press Awards, and an Emmy. In June 1999, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. He is Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. He divides his time between Berkeley and New York. His work is archived at markdanner.com.

Michael Dirda is the author of two collections of essays, Readings and Bound to Please, the memoir An Open Book, and, most recently, Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life. In 1993 he received the Pulitzer Prize for his reviews and essays in The Washington Post Book World. Before drifting into journalism, Dirda earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Cornell University, concentrating on medieval studies and European romanticism.

William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University and Co-Director of NYU's Development Research Institute. The paperback edition of his latest book, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, appeared last year. (December 2008)

Tim Flannery, former director of the South Australian Museum, is a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney and chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council. His latest book is The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. (December 2008)

Michael Greenberg writes the Freelance column in the Times Literary Supplement. His memoir Hurry Down Sunshine was published in September. (December 2008)

Joshua Hammer is a former Newsweek bureau chief and Correspondent at Large in Africa and the Middle East. His next book, the story of a colonial-era uprising in German Southwest Africa, will be published in 2010. (December 2008)

Alison Lurie is a former professor of English at Cornell and the author of nine novels and several books of nonfiction, including The Language of Clothes. Her review in this issue is from a work in progress on the language of houses and other buildings. (December 2008)

Glyn Maxwell is the author of numerous plays and nine books of poetry. His most recent collection, Hide Now, was published in September and has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. (December 2008)

James M. McPherson is George Henry Davis '86 Professor of American History Emeritus at Princeton. His most recent book is Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief. (December 2008)

Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel, resigned in September. Nachum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer are political columnists for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Avi Steinberg is a writer living in Philadelphia. (December 2008)

Francine Prose is the author of three collections of stories and ten novels. Her most recent novel, The Blue Angel, was nominated for the National Book Award.

George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC and the Open Society Institute, is the author, most recently, of The New Paradigm for Financial Markets. (December 2008)

Alexander Stille is San Paolo Professor of International Journalism at Columbia. His most recent book is The Sack of Rome: Money + Media + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi. (December 2008)

Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s books include The Controversy of Zion, which won a National Jewish Book Award in 1996, The Strange Death of Tory England, and Yo, Blair! (December 2008)

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