From NYRB, Robert Darnton on six reasons Google Books failed (and more). Adam Serwer presents a Birtherism Lexicon. From the Yale University Press, a blog discussion of Terry Eagleton’s new book, Why Marx Was Right, beginning at Bensonian.org. Peter Beinart on Obama's moral case for war and why consistency in foreign policy is overrated. Was a Vanity Fair editor secretly working for the Church of Scientology? A review of The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon by Leo Braudy. End of the road: Some thoughts on the death of the station wagon. “OMG! LOL! Dictionaries Are Funny!”: Alexandra Petri is right — the O.E.D. is not a pedophile. Here are 7 reasons why the "authentic" travel experience is a myth. Flight of the Valkyries: Charli Carpenter on what gender does and doesn’t tell us about Operation Odyssey Dawn. Pain without purpose: Right now, the global economy is suffering a grand mal seizure of slack demand and high unemployment — we know the cures, yet we seem determined to inflict further suffering on the patient. The Closing of the American Erotic: What happened to films in which sex matters more than violence? An article on 5 personality flaws that science will cure in our lifetime. From U.S. Intellectual History, Ben Alpers on the Cronon Affair and the political culture of the GOP (and more and more and more and more). The art and music worlds, compared: "Where the art world has been open and omnivorous, the world of high-brown music has been snobby and exclusionary". From Rolling Stone, a special report on how U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses — and how their officers failed to stop them. From The Weekly Standard, the paranoid style in liberal politics: Matthew Continetti on the left’s obsession with the Koch brothers (and a response by Jonathan Chait at TNR). Quoth the detective: Edgar Allan Poe’s case against the Boston literati. From Big Think, is your big idea worth spreading? A review of Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice by Mark Singleton.
