From New Humanist, a review of The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley; and Heidegger’s former disciple Emmanuel Levinas, a victim of Nazism, pioneered a humanism for the 21st century. From The Global Spiral, an essay on Emmanuel Levinas’ challenge to the modern European cultural identity. A review of Queering the Underworld: Slumming, Literature and the Undoing of Lesbian and Gay History by Scott Herring; and a review of Political Interventions: Social Science and Political Action by Pierre Bourdieu. From The Nation, from campus to courtroom, longstanding gains for women are being eroded everywhere you look; a review of The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe. Gary Becker, Myron Scholes, Michael Spence, Ed Phelps discuss the depth of the U.S. financial crisis, its effect on the rest of the world and the commodity price rises. From Vanity Fair, in 1935 oil tycoon H. L. Hunt created what would become a multi-billion-dollar trust for his descendants; a lawsuit by his free-spending great-grandson is shaking the foundations of that mighty family fortune; and the private follies of middle-aged male politicians are treated as weakness, perversion, corruption—anything but the real issue: human desire. Literary criticism could be one of our best tools for understanding the human condition, but first, it needs a radical change: embracing science.
