A new issue of Agora is out. Charlotte Higgins on The Iliad and what it can still tell us about war. If the latest numbers from online ad network Chitika are anything to go by, then we may well be on our way to the world of Idiocracy. From Time, what is Robert Gates really fighting for? From TNR, a review of of Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone by Stanislao Pugliese (and more); a review of Memoirs of a Fortunate Jew by Dan Vittorio Segre; and Leon Wieseltier on how writers have become the new proles. Sex-Offender City: Florida’s sex criminals are crowding into a handful of neighborhoods. For the Obama administration, there are dangers in doing too much and too little to help the pro-democracy movement in Iran — here is how to chart a safe, effective third way. An interview with James Meek on books on the death of empires (and Lorraine Adams reviews Meek's We Are Now Beginning Our Descent). From Splice Today, Noah Berlatsky on how it doesn't matter what you like — just so long as you recognize the aesthetic failures of bourgeois sentimentalism. The case for academic study of postage stamps: A review of Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American Postage Stamps by Jack Child. EJ Dionne on American Decline, the sleeper issue of the 2010 elections. Felix Salmon on world hunger and the locavores. Let us now praise standing in line: The case for our least-favorite activity. The notion that advertising revenue can save content is looking increasingly untenable — drug dealers and bakeries may have had the best business model all along. An excerpt from The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State by Shane Harris.
