Contents

November 8, 2007 • Volume 54, Number 17

LETTERS

Contributors

Thomas Pickering is Co-Chair of the United Nations Association-USA, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, and former US Ambassador to Russia, Israel, India, Jordan, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the UN. (February 2009)

Paul Volcker was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan from 1979 to 1987, and the Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Obama during 2009 and 2010. (December 2012)

Mark Danner is the author, most recently, of Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War. He is Chancellor’s Professor of English, Journalism and Politics at the University of California at Berkeley and James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs, Politics and the Humanities at Bard College and is currently teaching at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem. His book Torture and the Forever War will be published in the spring of 2013. His writing and other work can be found at markdanner.com.

Michael Tomasky is Special Correspondent for Newsweek/
The Daily Beast and Editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.
 (April 2013)

Colin Thubron is the president of the Royal Society of Literature. Among his books are Mirror to Damascus, The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon, Jerusalem, In Siberia, and, most recently, To a Mountain in Tibet. 
 (January 2012)

Garry Wills is Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern. His study of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. His latest book, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition, was published in February 2013.

Joseph Lelyveld is a former correspondent and Editor of The New York Times. His latest book is Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India.

 (June 2013)

Stephen Greenblatt is John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard. His latest book, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, received the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.

Jennifer Schuessler is an editor at The New York Times Book Review. (March 2011)

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.
 (October 2012)

Larry McMurtry lives in Archer City, Texas. His novels include The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove (winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), Folly and Gloryand Rhino Ranch. His nonfiction works include a biography of Crazy Horse, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, Paradise, Sacagawea’s Nickname: Essays on the American West and, most recently, Custer.

Gordon Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown. His latest book is The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States.

Billy Collins is the author of five books of poetry, including Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems, The Art of Drowning, The Apple That Astonished Paris, and Questions About Angels. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Poetry, The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The Atlantic Monthly, among other publications. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and is the winner of numerous awards. In 1992, he was chosen by the New York Public Library to serve as “Literary Lion,” and is currently serving as the 2001-2003 Poet Laureate of the United States. A Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College (CUNY), Collins lives with his wife, Diane, in northern Westchester County, New York.

Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author, among other books, of The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924, and Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. His latest book is The Crimean War: A History. (January 2012)

Fintan O’Toole is Literary Editor of The Irish Times and Leonard L. Milberg Visiting Lecturer in Irish Letters at Prince­ton. His latest book is A History of Ireland in 100 Objects.
 (June 2013)

Neal Ascherson is the author of The Struggles for Poland, The Black Sea, and Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland. He is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.


Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge. Her new book, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations, will be published in the US in 
September. She has just been appointed Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature. (May 2013)

Jonathan Mirsky, a journalist and historian of China, is the former East Asia Editor of The Times of London.
 (May 2013)

Malise Ruthven is the author of Islam: A Very Short Introduction, Islam in the World: The Divine Supermarket (a study of Christian fundamentalism), A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America, A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Wrath of Islam, and several other books. His latest book is Encounters with Islam: On Religion, Politics and Modernity.

Paul Berman is the author of A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968. (October 2001)

Ian Buruma is the Henry R. Luce Professor at Bard. His books include Murderer in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents, and the novel The China Lover. His book Year Zero: A History of 1945 will be published in September 2013.

Brian Urquhart is a former Undersecretary-General of the United Nations. His books include Hammarskjöld, A Life in Peace and War, and Ralph Bunche: An American Life. His article in this issue draws on his essay in Tyringham Topics.
 (February 2013)

Nathaniel Rich’s second novel, Odds Against Tomorrow, is published this month. He lives in New Orleans. (April 2013)