From Intelligent Life, an article on the rise of the journo-gurus. From The New Yorker, a better brew: An article on a the rise of extreme beer; Elizabeth Kolbert on how Bush is rewriting the rules; the perils of efficiency: James Surowiecki on how we created the food crisis; and are violins the last safe investment? Daniel Menaker wants to know. Here are three reasons why Monopoly is the perfect symbol of the financial crisis. The best book of 2008, a masterpiece?: A review of 2666 by Roberto Bolano (and more and more; and from Bookforum, an excerpt from Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas and a review of The Savage Detectives). From New York, the “Bitch” and the “Ditz”: How the Year of the Woman reinforced the two most pernicious sexist stereotypes and actually set women back; building a new WPA: Great architects need a great canvas; New York needs infrastructure; and a lot of people need jobs — a proposal; and for junior capitalists fleeing the financial meltdown, is Dubai, the highly leveraged, hotly speculative Middle Eastern insta-metropolis the last, best place on Earth — or a mirage? A review of The Unprecedented Reach of the Global Citizen by Daniel Drache. Herbert Gintis reviews Jeffrey Alexander's The Civil Sphere and reviews The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt.
