From World Policy Journal, Nina L. Khrushcheva (New School): Russia’s Rotting Empire; Mira Kamdar (WPI): India: Richer, Poorer, Hotter, Armed; Francois Heisbourg (IISS): Five Days in December: The Iran Crisis 25 Years Hence; and Mona Eltahawy on The Middle East’s Generation Facebook. The burgeoning field of astrobiology has a less well-known offshoot: The search for a "shadow biosphere", a second, independent form of life unrelated to sort we know (and more and more). Michael Lind reviews Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change by Michael Vlahos. A review of Obelisk: A History by Brian A. Curran, Anthony Grafton, Pamela O. Long and Benjamin Weiss. Who's the Divider? Ronald Brownstein investigates. From Air & Space Power Journal, a review of Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War by Kenneth Allard. Stompin' in my Air Force One: How will Obama's presidency change hip-hop? From Black Commentator, can hip-hop save an illiterate generation? An interview with Joan Wallach Scott, author of The Politics of the Veil (and more). Where to Now: 2008 was a spectacular year for women in politics — but the sober reality is that the race has just begun. A review of Theaters of Madness: Insane Asylums and Nineteenth-Century American Culture by Benjamin Reiss.Clean and Virtuous: When physical purity becomes moral purity. A review of Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West by Anthony Grafton.
