From Mittleweg, Harald Weilnbock on trauma melancholia and other (ab-)uses of trauma concepts in literary theory (and part 2 and part 3). George Soros on the false ideology at the heart of the financial crisis. A review of Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. The 2.0 Decade? Readers come up with names for the era now winding down — Scott McLemee looks back on it all. Andre Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Levy write an open letter to Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel on NATO. From The Hindu, roots, migration and exile: An interview with Jhumpa Lahiri on her new book, her voice as a writer and her continuing interest in issues of identity and immigration (and more and more; and migration, assimilation, and inebriation: Jhumpa Lahiri talks with Bookforum). Wiki Woman: Eve Fairbanks on the battle to define Hillary online. American voters are a contradictory bunch: They say they want social welfare, but don't want to pay for it; they claim they are left-leaning, but vote for center-right candidates. More on The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad by John Stape. From The New York Observer's First Annual Survey of Magazines, big, fat, glossy, but will they make it into the future? From GQ, an interview with Karl Rove. From Slate, Fixing It 2008: A series of articles on repairing some of the worst Bush administration screw-ups.
