Susan Ball (Sorbonne) and Petros Petsimeris (Vincennes): Mapping Urban Social Divisions. Signs of the zeitgeist: The vain battle to promote German. The battle over taxing soda: The classic way for lobbyists to defend their client's interest is to insist that they are not actually defending their client's interest — really, they say, they are just looking out for ordinary Americans. A review of The English Lakes: A History by Ian Thompson, The Making of the British Landscape: How We Have Transformed the Land, from Prehistory to Today by Francis Pryor, and The Hidden Landscape: A Journey into the Geological Past by Richard Fortey. A review of books about silence — the harder you look for it the more it resists. A review of Geekspeak: A Guide to Answering the Unanswerable, Making Sense of the Nonsensical, and Solving the Unsolvable by Graham Tattersall. A new sort of togetherness: With new technology and new concerns, emigres reinvent themselves. A review of Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law by Gabriel Schoenfeld (and more). From The Economist, a truck in the dock: How the police can seize your stuff when you have not been proven guilty of anything; and the world according to 24: Jack Bauer is a cartoon — yet some people take him seriously. A review of Dying, Assisted Death and Mourning. If the universe as we know it ends, when will it happen? In praise of oversharing: The Web is making us more intimate strangers — why going public can be a civic good. What is behind the U.S.-led push to create global norms against texting while driving? This is speculation, but it may be Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein. Melissa Anderson reviews The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar.
