Contents

May 11, 2000 • Volume 47, Number 8

LETTERS

Contributors

Al Alvarez is the author of Risky Business, a selection of essays, many of which first appeared in The New York Review of Books.

John Bayley is a critic and novelist. His books include Elegy for Iris and The Power of Delight: A Lifetime in Literature.

John Ashbery is the author of several 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. His first collection, Some Trees (1956), was selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series. He has also published art criticism, plays, and a novel. From 1990 until 2008 Ashbery was the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.

Jeremy Bernstein’s books include Plutonium: A History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element and Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know, which was published in paperback in February. (May 2010)

Tim Flannery is Panasonic Professor of Environmental Sustainability at Macquarie University in Sydney. His book Among the Islands: Adventures in the Pacific will be published this month. (November 2012)

Alma Guillermoprieto often writes on Latin America in these pages. She lives in Mexico City. (November 2012)

Denis Donoghue is University Professor at New York University, where he holds the Henry James Chair of English and American Letters. His works include The Practice of Reading, Words Alone: The Poet T.S. Eliot, and The American Classics.

Robert Conquest, a Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is the author of The Great Terror. (March 1997)

Michael Ignatieff, a former leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, is a fellow at Massey College and teaches human rights and international politics at the University of Toronto.
 (December 2012)

Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) was an anthropologist. Widely recognized as the most influential American anthropologist of the twentieth century, Geertz championed the role of symbols in the creation and interpretation of social meaning. His many books include Peddlers and Princes: Social Development and Economic Change in Two Indonesian Towns and Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics.

Ian Frazier is the author of ten books, including Great Plains, Family, On the Rez, and Travels in Siberia. 
(March 2013)

Mark Lilla is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia and author of The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics. His article in the April 25, 2013 issue will appear as the introduction to Against the Current by Isaiah Berlin, to be published in a new edition by Prince­ton University Press in May 2013.

Hilary Mantel is an English novelist, short story writer, and critic. Her novel, Wolf Hall, won the Man Booker Prize in 2009.

Lars-Erik Nelson (1941-2000) was the Washington columnist for the New York Daily News, and a frequent contributor to the Review.

Andrew O’Hagan’s latest book, The Atlantic Ocean: Reports from Britain and America, was published in the United States in January.
 (May 2013)

Thomas Powers is the author of The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (1979), Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (1993), Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda (2002; revised and expanded edition, 2004), and The Confirmation (2000), a novel. He won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1971 and has contributed to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The Nation, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone. His latest book, The Killing of Crazy Horse, won the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. He is currently writing a memoir of his father, who once told him that the last time he met Clare Boothe Luce was in the office of Allen Dulles.


John Russell (1919–2008) was Chief Art Critic at The New York Times from 1982 until 1990. He was the author of many art-historical studies, including Matisse, Father & Son and The Meanings of Modern Art.

Joyce Carol Oates is Visiting Professor in the English Department at the University of California at Berkeley. Her new novel is Daddy Love.


Sophia Woodman is Research Director of the organization Human Rights in China (HRIC) and the editor of HRIC’s quarterly journal, China Rights Forum. She lives in Hong Kong. (May 2000)