Table of Contents

Volume 55, Number 12 · July 17, 2008

Jonathan Mirsky, How He Sees It Now

Sanford Schwartz, Enchanted & Ominous

Peter Doig an exhibition at Tate Britain, London, February 5–April 27, 2008; the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, May 21–September 14, 2008; and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, October 9, 2008–January 11, 2009.

Thomas Powers, Iran: The Threat

Russell Baker, Not So Dangerous Liaisons

My Three Fathers: And the Elegant Deceptions of My Mother, Susan Mary Alsop by William S. Patten

Zadie Smith, F. Kafka, Everyman

The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay by Louis Begley

Darryl Pinckney, Obama & the Black Church

Hilary Mantel, From 'Wolf Hall'

Jonathan Freedland, Falling Hawks

Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left edited by Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman, with an afterword by Christopher Hitchens

The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom by Martin Amis

Stephen Greenblatt, In the Night Kitchen

Macbeth a play by William Shakespeare, directed by Rupert Goold

Macbeth an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, directed by Adrian Noble

Mary Beard, Isn't It Funny?

Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt

Looking at Laughter: Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture, 100 BC–AD 250 by John R. Clarke

Michael Massing, Embedded in Iraq

Claire Messud, Blood Relations

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

Madison Smartt Bell, A Hidden Haitian World

Massacre River by René Philoctète, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale, with a preface by Edwidge Danticat and an introduction by Lyonel Trouillot

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat

Street of Lost Footsteps by Lyonel Trouillot, translated from the French and with an introduction by Linda Coverdale

Children of Heroes by Lyonel Trouillot, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale

Anthologie secrète by Carl Brouard

The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier, translated from the French by Harriet de Onìs

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat

Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat

Bicentenaire by Lyonel Trouillot

Thérèse en mille morceaux by Lyonel Trouillot

Linda Colley, A Tale of Two Empires

Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 by J.H. Elliott

Per Petterson, From 'To Siberia'

Deborah Eisenberg, The Genius of Péter Nádas

Fire and Knowledge: Fiction and Essays by Péter Nádas, translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein

Janos Kis, Adam Michnik, After Five Years

Perry Link, Jeremy Waldron, What to do About Hate Speech?

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Letters

Edward Albee, Paul Auster, et al. Please Release the Chinese Writers in Prison!
D. A. Pratt, Freeman Dyson, The Brief Life of a Molecule
Marc Aronson, Robert Darnton, Google Without Pix
Celina Fox, Combat in the North Gallery
Marina Warner, Rapunzel, Parsley & Pregnancy
Jean Mallinson, Ingrid D. Rowland, Who Embroidered the Bayeux Tapestry?
The Editors, Corrections

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Contributors

Russell Baker is a former columnist and correspondent for The New York Times and The Baltimore Sun. His books include The Good Times, Growing Up, and Looking Back. (July 2008)

Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge. Her most recent book is The Roman Triumph. (July 2008)

Madison Smartt Bell is Professor of English and Director of the Kratz Center for Creative Writing at Goucher College. He is the author of twelve novels, Toussaint Louverture: A Biography, and most recently Charm City: A Walk Through Baltimore. (July 2008)

Linda Colley is Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton. Her latest book is The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History. (July 2008)

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. (July 2008)

Stephen Greenblatt is John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard. His play Cardenio, coauthored with Charles Mee, was performed in May and June by the American Repertory Theatre. (July 2008)

Janos Kis, who teaches philosophy at Central European University in Budapest, was a leading member of the Hungarian democratic opposition to the Communist regime and co-founder and first chairman of Hungary's liberal party. His latest book is Politics as a Moral Problem, which will be published in November. (July 2008)

Hilary Mantel is the author of nine novels, including Beyond Black. The excerpt in this issue is drawn from her new novel, Wolf Hall, which will be published by Henry Holt in 2009. (July 2008)

Michael Massing, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, writes frequently on the press and foreign affairs.

Claire Messud's most recent novel is The Emperor’s Children. Her earlier novels include When the World Was Steady. (July 2008)

Adam Michnik is Editor in Chief of the Warsaw daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. He spent six years in prisons in Communist Poland. In 1989, he participated in the Round Table agreements that led to establishing the first non-Communist government in the Soviet bloc. He is the author of several books, including Letters from Prison and Letters from Freedom. (July 2008)

Jonathan Mirsky is a journalist and historian specializing in Chinese affairs. He has been to Tibet six times. (July 2008)

Per Petterson is the author of five novels, including Out Stealing Horses. The excerpt in this issue is drawn from To Siberia, which will be published by Graywolf Press in October. (July 2008)

Darryl Pinckney is the author of a novel, High Cotton, and Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature.

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), 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.

Sanford Schwartz's essays and reviews have been collected in The Art Presence and Artists and Writers. (July 2008)

Zadie Smith is the author of three novels, most recently On Beauty. (July 2008)

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