Table of Contents
Volume 55, Number 15 · October 9, 2008
Charles Simic, The Nicest Boy in the World
Indignation by Philip Roth
Henri Cole, Sleeping Soldiers 
(poem)
Joseph Lelyveld, John & Sarah in St. Paul
Edmund S. Morgan, Marie Morgan, Jefferson's Concubine
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
Daniel Mendelsohn, Evelyn Waugh Revisited
Brideshead Revisited a film directed by Julian Jarrold, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh
Daniel J. Kevles, Martyred by Monsters
The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin’s Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century by Peter Pringle
Diane Johnson, J.G. Ballard: The Glow of the Prophet
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, An Autobiography by J.G. Ballard
The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard
Crash by J.G. Ballard
Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard
Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
The Day of Creation by J.G. Ballard
Running Wild by J.G. Ballard
The Kindness of Women by J.G. Ballard
Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard
Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard
Kingdom Come by J.G. Ballard
John Ashbery, Summer Reading (poem)
Everett Ehrlich, Felix G. Rohatyn, A New Bank to Save Our Infrastructure
Martin Filler, Fabrication & Bucky Fuller
Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, July 20–October 20, 2008.
Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, June 26–September 21, 2008.
Topologies: The Urban Utopia in France, 1960–1970 by Larry Busbea
Jonathan Freedland, A Case of Intellectual Independence
Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century by Tony Judt
Colin Thubron, Marco Polo Goes to Gorgeous Xanadu
Frank Kermode, You Can't Take It with You
Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes
Robert Gottlieb, Keeper of the Jewels
Balanchine Variations by Nancy Goldner
John Gray, A Rescue of Religion
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?: 23 Questions from Great Philosophers by Leszek Kolakowski, translated from the Polish by Agnieszka Kolakowska
Michael Chabon, Obama & the Conquest of Denver
Letters
Steven Nadler, Benjamin Moser, Rembrandt & The Jews
Robert M. May, Freeman Dyson, How Long Will They Stay?
David Harland, Samantha Power, It Didn't End
Contributors
John Ashbery is the author of twenty books of poetry, including Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975), which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award; and Some Trees (1956), which was selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series. He has also published art criticism, plays, and a novel. Ashbery is currently the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.
Michael Chabon is the author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
and Clay and the children's book, Summerland. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Henri Cole’s most recent book of poems is Blackbird and Wolf. (October 2008)
Everett Ehrlich is President of ESC Company, a Washington D.C.–based consulting firm, and was Undersecretary of Commerce during the Clinton administration. (October 2008)
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.
Jonathan Freedland is an editorial-page columnist for The Guardian. In July he was awarded the David Watt Prize for “Bush’s Amazing Achievement,” published in these pages in June 2007.
(October 2008)
Robert Gottlieb has been Editor in Chief of Simon and Schuster, Knopf, and The New Yorker. He is the author of George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker and the dance critic of The New York Observer. (October 2008)
John Gray is Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. Among his most recent books are Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, and Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions.
Diane Johnson’s new novel, Lulu in Marrakech, will be published this month. (October 2008)
Frank Kermode lives in Cambridge, England. His most recent book is The Age of Shakespeare. (October 2008)
Daniel J. Kevles is Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University. His most recent book is The Baltimore Case.
Joseph Lelyveld is a former correspondent and editor of The New York Times. He is the author of Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop. (November 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)
Edmund S. Morgan is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale. His most recent book, The Genuine Article: A Historian Looks at Early America, was published in 2004. (October 2008)
Marie Morgan, author of Chariot of Fire, is a historian of nineteenth-century America who frequently collaborates with Edmund Morgan in the writing of history and the designing and making of furniture. (October 2008)
Felix Rohatyn is an investment banker and has been a governor of the New York Stock Exchange, Chairman of the New York Municipal Assistance Corporation, and US Ambassador to France. (October 2008)
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)
