Beyond the Hero Syndrome

JEFF STEIN on Osama bin Laden and the hero myth

Propaganda of the Deed

MARK MAZOWER: Alex Butterworth’s The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents and Eric Hobsbawm’s How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism

Reading Trotsky in Tahrir

GRAEME WOOD on Leon Trotsky and the Arab Spring

Strange Bedfellow

SUDIP BOSE: Romain Hayes’s Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: Politics, Intelligence and Propaganda 1941–43 and Sugata Bose’s His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire

The Strenuous Life

CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL on Bernard-Henri Lévy and the invasion of Libya

Less than Zero

ROGER D. HODGE: Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy

JASON ROSS: Glenn O’Brien’s How to Be a Man: A Guide to Style and Behavior for the Modern Gentleman

MICHAEL GREENBERG on marriage and imagination

MELANIE REHAK on frozen desserts

ERIC BANKS: Raymond Roussel’s Impressions of Africa and New Impressions of Africa

ALBERT MOBILIO: Bruce Duffy’s Disaster Was My God: A Novel of the Outlaw Life of Arthur Rimbaud

MATTHEW SHARPE: Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia

LEO ROBSON: Bohumil Hrabal’s Vita Nuova and Gaps

HEATHER HAVRILESKY: Kate Christensen’s The Astral

BARRY SCHWABSKY: Tim Dlugos’s A Fast Life: The Collected Poems

FRANCESCA MARI: Jo Ann Beard’s In Zanesville

WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN: John Sayles’s A Moment in the Sun

BRENDAN BOYLE: Steve Pyke’s Philosophers

LAUREN O’NEILL-BUTLER: Surfing Photographs From the Eighties Taken by Jeff Divine

IAN VOLNER: Sophie Lovell’s Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible

ALLEN BARRA: David Browne’s Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970

PARUL SEHGAL: Maggie Nelson’s The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning

J. C. HALLMAN: Janet Reitman‘s Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion

JIM SLEEPER: John Patrick Diggins‘s Why Niebuhr Now?

EMILY RABOTEAU: Colin Grant’s The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer

CHARLES HOMANS: Jerry Thompson‘s Cascadia’s Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami That Could Devastate North America

JENNY DAVIDSON: William Deresiewicz’s A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter and Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

ANDREW HULTKRANS: J. Hoberman‘s An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War

THE CRITICAL LIST

MICHAEL DIRDA on Publishing’s Wrong Numbers

RUTH FRANKLIN on Readers of the Pack: American Best-Selling

GERALD HOWARD on The List’s Seductions

STUART KELLY on Walter Scott, the Original Number One

BENJAMIN ANASTAS on ELMER GANTRY

AIMEE BENDER on LOVE STORY

JOSHUA COHEN on DOCTOR ZHIVAGO

SIDDHARTHA DEB on THE SATANIC VERSES

STACEY D’ERASMO on THE ROAD

STEVE ERICKSON on ADVISE AND CONSENT

SHEILA HETI on VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

TOM MCCARTHY on JAWS

PATRICK MCGRATH on HALF A ROGUE

CLAIRE MESSUD on REBECCA

MADISON SMARTT BELL on STRANGE FRUIT

PETER STRAUB on A PERFECT SPY

ANDREW STUTTAFORD interviews STIEG LARSSON’S GHOST

MARIANNE WIGGINS on RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE