Robert Pippin (Chicago): Participants and Spectators. From GQ, according to Lou Dobbs, we've been completely wrong about him; Jeanne Marie Laskas meets the man we thought we knew. A review of The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure by Brian Skyrms. Godfather of the e-reader: Look past Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos to the forgotten Bob Brown and his 1930s reading machine. Benjamin Kunkel reviews Valences of the Dialectic by Fredric Jameson. From Paris Hilton to John Edwards, celebrity sex tapes are the signature art form of our age. Madison Smartt Bell reviews Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with some thoughts on Muses (especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines by William T. Vollmann (and an excerpt and an interview). Rum and Hope: Haiti’s famed Barbancourt rum factory has survived by taking self-sufficiency to an extreme. A review of 1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About by Joshua Clover (and more and more). Bless this mess: Molly Young wades through the shit with the disaster masters. Ought implies can: Steven Horwitz on how ethical pronouncements without economics lead to diastrous public policies. Erin Manning on her book Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. What civilizes us? James V. Schall, S. J. investigates. The Rubik's Cube is 30: Happy birthday to the colorful, 3x3x3 battle between order and chaos. Michael Henry Adams on Thomas Hoving, Wendy Burden and the end of elite privilege. Backyard fiction: Dean Blumberg on the Great American Myth of Suburbia. How have hominids adapted to past climate change? A review of The Tyranny of Guilt by Pascal Bruckner.
