Letters
Our Readers, Anatol Lieven, Arthur C. Danto & Russell Jacoby
As Lolita turns 50 Lila Azam Zanganeh assesses the cultural impact of Nabokov's nymphet; John Banville reviews Party in the Blitz, the final book in Nobel laureate Elias Canetti's series of memoirs; and Richard Goldstein ponders Geena Davis's telegenic version of an American President.
Letters
Editorials & Comment
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The GOP Retreat
: Undoing the savage inequalities of the Bush era will require a titanic fight, but the new-found courage of GOP moderates hints that significant changes are in the wind.
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More Leaks, Please!
Bruce Shapiro : Power-friendly reporters like Judith Miller are easily manipulated by selective leaks. But what we need now is more civil disobedience by whistleblowers exposing renditions, acts of torture and the flagrant abuse of power.
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In Kars and Frankfurt
Orhan Pamuk : The winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature wrote this 2005 editorial in The Nation, addressing the issue of the artistic imagination at risk in a repressive state.
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Bush's War on the Press
John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney : Until the Bush Administration is held accountable by Congress for its propaganda, manipulation of the truth and assaults on journalism, freedom of the press will exist in name only.
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Spectacle
President Thelma
Richard Goldstein : Is Commander-in-Chief softening up the country for President Hillary? Americans may not not be ready to put a woman in the White House, but they may have calmed down enough to contemplate the pleasures of female power.
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Emile Capouya
Ted Solotaroff : Emile Capouya, literary editor of The Nation from 1970-1976, was both a working man and an intellectual, who brought trade book publishing to European standards and lived to oppose and be ground down by conglomerates.
Reviews
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book
The Ring Cycle
Gerald Early : When Joe Louis defeated Nazi sympathizer Max Schmeling in 1938, it was the boxing match that reverberated across the world. Three new books chronicle the match and all the racial and political turmoil of which it was an emblem.
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Profane Illuminations
David A. Bell : New biographies of Rousseau and Voltaire help us appreciate how very fragile the eighteenth century's great movement of ideas was, and how remarkable it is that the Enlightenment not only survived but flourished.
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Monster's Ball
John Banville : Party in the Blitz, the final volume of Nobel laureate Elias Canetti's memoirs, is a chaotic, horribly fascinating memoir of a man who was a slave to love, an omnivorous intellect and a literary giant.
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book
I Act, Therefore I Am
David Thomson : Admired from a distance and reviled up close, Laurence Olivier could establish a relation with his audience that was like an infection. His official biography chronicles a personal life of an actor who altered the cultural compass of a nation.
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book
All About My Mother
Kate Levin : The Caribbean island of Vieques is a fitting setting for Captain of the Sleepers, Cuban novelist Mayra Montero's engrossing story premised on violations of the dead.
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Mystic River
Tariq Ali : Amartya Sen's latest collection of essays explores the rich flow of various peoples in and out of India and how they shaped the politics and spirituality of the nation today.
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The Scrivener and the Whale
Vivian Gornick : Andrew Delbanco's new biography of Herman Melville reveals that the great writer came to realize that what torments men is not the longing to believe that there is meaning in the universe, but that behind the longing lies fear of nothingness.
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book
Soul on Ice
David Yaffe : Is jazz really dead--or has it simply moved to a cooler location? Four new books take a scholarly look at a musical genre that is on the wane in America, but finding new life and new audiences in Europe.
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The Dying Animal
Michael Wood : Gabriel García Márquez's new novella begins as an autobiography, but the passion-filled story of an old man, mad with love and clinging to life, weaves Marquez's other fiction into the tale.
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The Tower of Babel
Lee Siegel : Jerome Charyn's Savage Shorthand: The Life and Death of Isaac Babel examines the life the revolutionary idealist murdered by Stalin in 1940 and explodes the literary myths that have thus far defined his works.
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Agee's Gospel
Phillip Lopate : Two new volumes in the Library of America series present the life and work of James Agee, whose flashes of greatness as an essayist, screenwriter, novelist and Nation film reviewer have secured his place in the American literary canon.
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Succès de Scandale
Lila Azam Zanganeh : American readers have long felt guilty about loving Lolita. As Vladimir Nabokov's nymphet heroine turns 50, Lila Azam Zanganeh traces the impact of a novel that has become both an icon and a cultural cliche.
Columns
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DEADLINE POET
Don't Criticize Me
Calvin Trillin : Karl Rove and his Singing Slimemeisters riff You Go To My Head.
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DIARY OF A MAD LAW PROFESSOR
Unholy Wars
Patricia J. Williams : The conduct of the war in Iraq has embarrassed us, lowered us, endangered us and betrayed our best ideals. The debasement of our soldiers and the lawlessness of our leaders is shocking, merciless and infinitely destabilizing.
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THE LIBERAL MEDIA
The Lies That Bind
Eric Alterman : Lack of candor is not surprising from Bush or Ahmad Chalabi, but why does the New York Times continue to struggle with the truth about Judith Miller? The Gray Lady might solve the problem by banning anonymous Administration sources in its news reports. If they're going to lie to us anyway, why not under their own names?
Web
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The Secret History of Rum
Ian Williams : Long before oil dominated geopolitics, rum was the original global commodity, tying Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Caribbean in a complex web of trade and credit. And Bacardi was the original multinational.
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Buyers' Remorse
Nicholas von Hoffman : Home equity--for those lucky enough to own a house or condo--is a primary source of economic security. But unsold inventory, rising interest rates and record levels of mortgage defaults are making the future look grim.
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An Oil-Slicked Playing Field
Dilip Hiro : The scramble for petroleum by developing countries worldwide is reshaping global geopolitics in favor of oil-rich nations like Iran, Venezuela and Sudan.
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The War With No Name
Christian Parenti : For twenty-five years, Kurdish guerrillas have battled the forces of the Turkish state. For a while, things began to settle down, but the US occupation of Iraq changed all that.
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The Champ Meets the Chump
Dave Zirin : When George W. Bush met Muhammad Ali at the White House last week, the Champ had one last rope-a-dope up his sleeve. You don't have to guess who won this match.
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Break Up Cheney's Cabal
Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith : If the United States is to extricate itself from the Iraq debacle, the first step is to break up the cabal of Bush Administration officials who have led the nation to war.
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Scooter Libby's Doomed Defense
Elizabeth de la Vega : Capitalizing on Bob Woodward's revelation that he was one of the first to learn about Valerie Plame's CIA status, Scooter Libby's legal team hopes that will get their client off the hook. That turkey won't fly.
Cover by José Chicas/Avenging Angels
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