Table of Contents
Volume 52, Number 10 · June 9, 2005
Orlando Figes, The Fiddler's Children 
The Jewish Century by Yuri Slezkine
Robin Robertson, At Dawn (poem)
Joan Acocella, 'A Note of the Miraculous'
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Hussein Agha, Robert Malley, The Lost Palestinians
Tim Parks, Looking Forward to the Past
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco, translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock
James Fenton, The Cruel Carpenter
Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare by Philip Short
Daniel Mendelsohn, Victims on Broadway II
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, directed by Edward Hall
Frank J. Sulloway, He Almost Scooped Darwin
Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of 'Vestiges of the NaturalHistory of Creation' by James A. Secord
Michael Chabon, On 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh'
Ian Buruma, Between Two Worlds
The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss
The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey Without Borders by Masayo Duus, translated from the Japanese by Peter Duus
Robert Bartlett, Off to a Good Start
The Birth of Europe by Jacques Le Goff
W.S. Merwin, In Love and War
Rules for Old Men Waiting by Peter Pouncey
Witold Rybczynski, How Things Work
Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design by Henry Petroski
Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering by Henry Petroski
Mark Ford, A Holiday in Reality
Where Shall I Wander by John Ashbery
Charles Rosen, The Anatomy Lesson
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, with an introduction by William Gass
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. Text in three volumes edited by Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blair, with an introduction by J.B. Bamborough; commentary in three volumes edited by J.B. Bamborough and Martin Dodsworth
Joan Didion, The Case of Theresa Schiavo
Mark Danner, The Secret Way to War
Letters
Clifford Geertz, 'Very Bad News'
The Editors, Correction
Contributors
Joan Acocella is a staff writer for The New Yorker. She is the author of Mark Morris, Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder, and Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism. She also edited the recent, unexpurgated Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky.
Hussein Agha is Senior Associate Member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. He is the author, with A.S. Khalidi, of A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine. (May 2008)
Robert Bartlett is Wardlaw Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the author of The Making of Europe, which won the Wolfson Prize for History in 1993, and, most recently, The Hanged Man: A Story of Miracle, Memory and Colonialism in the Middle Ages. (June 2005)
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)
Michael Chabon is the author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
and Clay and the children's book, Summerland. He lives in Berkeley, California.
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.
Joan Didion is the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction. (December 2008)
James Fenton is the editor of The New Faber Book of Love Poems and D.H. Lawrence’s Selected Poems. (November 2008)
Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, London University. His new book, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, will be published this month. (November 2007)
Mark Ford teaches in the English Department at University College London. His edition of the poetry of Frank O’Hara was published this year. (November 2008)
Robert Malley was Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council staff from September 1998 to January 2001. He is currently Middle East and North Africa Program Director at the International Crisis Group. (May 2008)
Daniel Mendelsohn 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 Complete Works and Unfinished Poems will be published next spring. (November 2008)
W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and grew up in Union City, New Jersey, and in Scranton, Pennsylvania. From 1949 to 1951 he worked as a tutor in France, Portugal, and Majorca. He has since lived in many parts of the world, most recently on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. He is the author of many books of poems, prose, and translations and has received both the Pulitzer and the Bollingen Prizes for poetry, among numerous other awards.
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)
Robin Robertson's Swithering won the 2006 Forward Prize. His translation of Medea will be published in September. (May 2008)
Charles Rosen's most recent book is Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist. (November 2008)
Witold Rybczynski is the Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, and is architecture critic for Slate. His new book on American building, Last Harvest, has just been published. (May 2007)
Frank J. Sulloway is Visiting Scholar in the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author most recently of Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives. (November 2006)
