Contents

January 15, 2009 • Volume 56, Number 1
  • Alison Lurie

    Widcraft e-edition

    The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike

  • John Ashbery

    Working Overtime (poem)

  • Marcia Angell

    Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption

    Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial by Alison Bass

    Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs by Melody Petersen

    Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness by Christopher Lane

  • Andrew Butterfield

    Sacred, Earthy & Sublime e-edition

    Mantegna, 1431–1506 an exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, September 26, 2008– January 5, 2009.

    Giovanni Bellini an exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, September 30, 2008– January 11, 2009

  • David Cole

    What to Do About the Torturers?

    Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values by Philippe Sands

    The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book by Michael Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights

    Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond by Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh

  • Mark Ford

    The Poet and the Wreck e-edition

    Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life by Paul Mariani

    Exiles by Ron Hansen.

  • Robert Skidelsky

    Can You Spare a Dime? e-edition

    The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson

  • Daniel Mendelsohn

    Oppie in New York e-edition

    Doctor Atomic an opera in two acts by John Adams, libretto by Peter Sellars, directed by Penny Woolcock, with stage design by Julian Crouch

  • Joel Simon

    Dictatorial Designs’ in Nicaragua e-edition

  • Max Rodenbeck

    The Iran Mystery Case e-edition

    Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US, and the Twisted Path to Confrontation by Barbara Slavin

    Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel,Iran, and the United States by Trita Parsi

    Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader by Kasra Naji

    Reading Khamenei: The World View of Iran’s Most Powerful Leader by Karim Sadjadpour

    The Struggle for Iran by Christopher de Bellaigue

    The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran by Hooman Majd

  • Cathleen Schine

    Adventures in the Opium Trade e-edition

    Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

  • Robert Malley,
    Hussein Agha

    How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East

    The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab–Israeli Peace by Aaron David Miller

    Negotiating Arab–Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East by Daniel C. Kurtzer and Scott B. Lasensky

    Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East by Martin Indyk

  • Janet Malcolm

    Capitalist Pastorale

    A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

    Freckles by Gene Stratton-Porter

    The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter

    Her Father’s Daughter by Gene Stratton-Porter

    The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter

    Gene Stratton-Porter: Novelist and Naturalist by Judith Reich Long

    The Lady of the Limberlost: The Life and Letters of Gene Stratton-Porter by Jeannette Porter Meehan

  • Sanford Schwartz

    American Parable

    Thomas Chambers: American Marine and Landscape Painter, 1808–1869 an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, September 27– December 28, 2008; the Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, February 8–April 19, 2009; the American Folk Art Museum, New York City, September 29, 2009–March 7, 2010; and the Indiana Univers

  • Perry Link

    China’s Charter 08

  • Alan Rusbridger

    A Chill on ‘The Guardian’

  • Paul Theroux,
    Margaret Murray,
    Ian Buruma

    On V.S. Naipaul: An Exchange

LETTERS

Contributors

Perry Link is Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, specializing in modern Chinese literature and Chinese language. He is currently Chancellorial Chair for Innovation in Teaching Across Disciplines at the University of California, Riverside. Along with Andrew J. Nathan, Link translated the Tiananmen Papers, which detailed the governmental response to the 1989 democracy protests. He is editing a collection of essays and poems by Liu Xiaobo that will appear in 2012 from Harvard University Press.

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. He is now Middle East and North Africa Program Director at the International Crisis Group. (September 2011)

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. (September 2011)

Andrew Butterfield is President of Andrew Butterfield Fine Arts. His books include The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio and Body and Soul: Masterpieces of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture.
 (March 2012)

David Cole is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He is the award-winning author of several books, including The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (2009), Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror (with Jules Lobel, 2007) and Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (2003).

Mark Ford’s third collection of poetry, Six Children, a volume of criticism, Mr. and Mrs. Stevens and Other Essays, and his translation of Raymond Roussel’s Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique were recently published. (October 2011)

Alison Lurie is a former Professor of English at Cornell. Her most recent novel is Truth and Consequences.

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; 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. His latest book of poetry is Planisphere and his new translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations will be available in paperback in May.


Marcia Angell is a Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. Her latest book is The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. Part I of her article in this issue appeared in the June 23 issue with the title “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” 
(July 2011)

Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University, England. His latest book is Keynes: The Return of the Master. Felix Martin, an economist at Thames River Capital LLP, worked at the World Bank for two stretches between 1998 and 2008. He was formerly an executive board member and analyst at the European Stability Initiative.
 www.skidelskyr.com. (April 2011)

Daniel Mendelsohn is the author of six books, including How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken, a collection of critical essays mostly from The New York Review of Books. He is the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard.

Joel Simon is the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. (January 2009)

Max Rodenbeck is The Economist‘s Mideast Correspondent. He lives in Cairo. (October 2011)

Cathleen Schine is the author of several novels, including Rameau’s Niece, The Love Letter, She is Me, The New Yorkers, and The Three Weissmanns of Westport. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.

Janet Malcolm was born in Prague. She was educated at the High School of Music and Art, in New York, and at the University of Michigan. Along with In the Freud Archives, her books include Diana and Nikon: Essays on Photography, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, The Journalist and the Murderer, The Purloined Clinic: Selected Writings, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, The Crime of Sheila McGough, and Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey. She lives in New York.

Sanford Schwartz is the author of Christen Købke and 
William Nicholson. (December 2011)

Alan Rusbridger is Editor in Chief of TheGuardian. (January 2009)

Paul Theroux is a novelist and travel writer who divides his time between Cape Cod and Hawaii. Among his books are the novels The Mosquito Coast, Millroy the Magician, and My Secret History and the travel memoirs Dark Star Safari, Riding the Iron Rooster, and The Great Railway Bazaar. He has edited The Best American Travel Writing and in 2007 published three novellas collected as The Elephanta Suite.

Ian Buruma is the Henry R. Luce Professor at Bard and a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library. His latest book is Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.


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)

Sarah Kerr, a longtime contributor to The New York Review, lives near Washington, D.C.(December 2008)