Table of Contents

Volume 56, Number 9 · May 28, 2009

Claire Messud, Aiming to Please

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

Sue Halpern, Making It

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin

Richard Holmes, The Great de Staël

Madame de Staël: The First Modern Woman by Francine du Plessix Gray

Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël by J. Christopher Herold

Germaine de Staël & Benjamin Constant: A Dual Biography by Renee Winegarten

Madame de Staël: The Dangerous Exile by Angelica Goodden

Corinne, or Italy by Madame de Staël, translated from the French by Sylvia Raphael

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, An Honor For Tony Judt

Andrew O'Hagan, The Weather Makers

A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré

Richard C. Lewontin, Why Darwin?

Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography by Janet Browne

Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne

It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick by Greg Gibson

The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, annotated by James T. Costa

Deborah Eisenberg, The World We Live In

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

Jonathan Freedland, A Black and Disgraceful Site

Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia by David Vine

Richard Dorment, Primitive in Dresden

Brücke: The Birth of Expressionism in Dresden and Berlin, 1905–1913 an exhibition at the Neue Galerie, New York City, February 26–June 29, 2009

Jonathan D. Spence, The Mystery of Zhou Enlai

Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary: A Biography by Gao Wenqian, translated from the Chinese by Peter Rand and Lawrence R. Sullivan

John Banville, 'The Invader Wore Slippers'

Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1939–45: Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War by Peter Demetz

Daniel Howe, Goodbye to the 'Age of Jackson'?

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini

Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson by David S. Reynolds

Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829–1877 by Walter A. McDougall

Gershom Gorenberg, The War to Begin All Wars

1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris

Making Israel edited by Benny Morris

A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel by Gudrun Krämer, translated from the German by Graham Harman and Gudrun Krämer

Benjamin M. Friedman, The Failure of the Economy & the Economists

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller

The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do About It by Robert J. Shiller

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Letters

Liu Xia, The Poet in an Unknown Prison
Harry Chalmiers, Elizabeth Drew, A Stimulus for Musical Colleges?
The Editors, Corrections
Jeffrey M. Dickemann, Tim Flannery, Are We Becoming a Superorganism?
Jeremy Bernstein, What A.Q. Khan Really Did
Nora Rawn, John Muir's First Life

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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.

Richard Dorment is the art critic of the Daily Telegraph. (October 2009)

Deborah Eisenberg is the author of four collections of short stories and a play. She is the winner of the 2000 Rea Award for the Short Story, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and five O. Henry Awards. She lives in New York City.

Jonathan Freedland is an editorial-page columnist for The Guardian. In 2008, he was awarded the David Watt Prize for Journalism.
 (May 2009)

Benjamin M. Friedman is the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy at Harvard. His most recent book is The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. (November 2008)

Gershom Gorenberg is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He is the author, most recently, of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977. His blog can be found at SouthJerusalem.com.
 (May 2009)

Sue Halpern is a scholar in residence at Middlebury. Her most recent book is Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research. (November 2009)

Richard Holmes is the author of Shelley: The Pursuit (published by NYRB Classics), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1974; Coleridge: Early Visions, winner of the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year award; Dr Johnson & Mr Savage, which won the 1993 James Tait Black Prize; and Coleridge: Darker Reflections, which won the 1990 Duff Cooper Prize and Heinemann Award. His other works include Footsteps (1985) and Sidetracks (2000). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1992. He is also a professor of biographical studies at the University of East Anglia. He lives in London and Norwich with the novelist Rose Tremain.

Daniel Howe is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford and Professor of History Emeritus at UCLA. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2008 for his book What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848.
 (May 2009)

Richard C. Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University. He is the author of The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change and Biology as Ideology, and the co-author of The Dialectical Biologist (with Richard Levins) and Not in Our Genes (with Steven Rose and Leon Kamin).

Claire Messud's most recent novel is The Emperor’s Children. Her earlier novels include When the World Was Steady.
 (December 2009)

Andrew O'Hagan, who lives in London, is a recipient of the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His latest novel is Be Near Me.
 (October 2009)

Jonathan Spence is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale. His latest book is Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man. (December 2009)

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! He is writing a book on Winston Churchill’s reputation and legacy. (October 2009)

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