From Ethics & International Affairs, Rajan Menon (Lehigh): Pious Words, Puny Deeds: The "International Community" and Mass Atrocities; a review of National Responsibility and Global Justice by David Miller; a review of The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror by Manfred B. Steger; and a review of What's Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It by Thomas G. Weiss. A review of Human Rights at the UN: The Political History of Universal Justice by Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi. A review of Justice Across Borders: The Struggle for Human Rights in U.S. Courts by Jeffrey Davis. Sometimes the process is painful and sometimes it is controversial, but the International Criminal Court is changing international relations forever. Misjudgment: Sometimes, grand prosecutions of war crimes don’t make sense. From TNR, a review essay on Rwanda after the genocide. Pol Pot’s men are finally being tried for their crimes — but 85 per cent of Cambodians don't even know the Khmer Rouge trials are taking place. Name before shame: A precise record of the individual victims of war and conflict worldwide is emerging as a key objective of humanitarian work. Are you sure that slaves didn't pick the produce that fills your fridge? From Swans, Michael Barker on combating [some] slavery. There are more slaves today than at any time in human history: An interview with Benjamin Skinner, author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern-Day Slavery. A review of Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics.
A review of The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President by Taylor Branch (and more and more and more and more and more). Aquacalypse Now: Daniel Pauly on the end of fish. Alexander Cockburn on when gossip came back and our modern age was born. Brain and behaviour research is increasingly being incorporated into political and policy debate in Britain; it is forcing both left and right to re-examine old assumptions. Project "Gaydar": At MIT, an experiment identifies which students are gay, raising new questions about online privacy. A review of A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the Founding Document Doesn’t Mean What It Meant Before by Cass Sunstein (and an interview with Sunstein on Republic.com 2.0). Glenn Beck says Sunstein wants to give animals the right to sue humans — really? A review of Frankenstein: Icon of Modern Culture by Audrey A. Fisch. On the wrong side of the coin: Oleg Yuriev takes a black tomcat to the crossroads on Christmas Eve to gain new perspectives on the nature of money. Wrong Tomorrow keeps track of predictions of the future by public figures in order to hold people and media outlets accountable for pretending to see into an unpredictable future. Michael Shermer on why people believe in conspiracies. To cry “Sapere aude!” once again: Craig Nelson on Thomas Paine and the magic of engineering. Pajamas Government: Alan Grayson in the blogosphere's man in Congress. Castles of the imagination: From Wales to Syria, fortresses are monuments to an age of chivalry — but some are only castles in the air.
From The Nation, a review of Wallace Stevens: Selected Poems, edited by John N. Serio; and a review of Death in Spring by Merce Rodoreda. The uses of erotic poetry: Poetry is an ideal form for expressing, and understanding, one of our deepest drives. It seems an amusing twist of fate to learn that Dan Brown and David Foster Wallace were in a creative writing workshop together at Amherst college. From TLS, a review essay on William Golding and the capacity for evil: An ambitious and complicated late starter who did not understand the impulses behind his own books (and more and more); and a review of books on Rainer Maria Rilke. Mark Arax reviews Imperial by William Vollmann (and more and more and more and more and more and more). They're no bodice rippers, but Amish romances are hot. From NYRB, a review of books on Samuel Johnson (and more and more). Fashion in literature: Want inspiration for what to wear? Read a good novel. Ted Kennedy, Victorian Hero: Darwinian literary critics on how to tell the "bad guys" from the "good guys". A Thornton Wilder boomlet of recent years has just entered an especially captivating phase. A review of books on Emily Dickinson. Out of this word: The greatest science fiction imagines universes wholly unlike anything we have ever seen before (and more). Julian Baggini meets Guillermo Martinez, the Argentine novelist with maths on his mind.
A review of Taking Sports Seriously: Law and Sports in Contemporary American Culture by Jeffrey Standen. At long last, the sports mortgage: In lean times, teams try "equity seat rights" to raise money. From NBER, an article on game theory and major league sports: Pitchers appear to throw too many fastballs; football teams pass less than they should. How economists are tackling sports injuries: The high cost of injuries has inspired a new breed of statisticians to number-crunch the best solutions. Using some basic probability theory we can quite easily produce a reasonable probability for all the possible results of a game. The statistical problem with soccer: The tradeoff is between a beautiful game and a statistically significant one. The profound stupidity of football: A review of Why England Lose and Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. Football v. Football: An article on the NFL v. the Premiership. Football fixation: Bob Hyldburg is the biggest single-team geek following professional sports in America — here’s how he got that way. Don't bore us with the obvious: Sports talk should reveal the secret world of athletes. A look at how making up a sport helps folks regain their mojo. From Vanity Fair, Steve King surveys the development of our peculiarly modern obsession with sports outcomes — and the extraordinary timekeeping devices that have made it possible. The eyes have it: Is visual training the sports world's next big thing? Play up and play the game: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto experiences a Damascene sporting conversion.