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Slide Show: The GOP’s Presidential Contenders, Wannabes and Also-Rans

Slide Show: The GOP’s Presidential Contenders, Wannabes and Also-Rans Slide Show: The GOP’s Presidential Contenders, Wannabes and Also-Rans

It’s the job nobody seems to want: with Barack Obama’s ratings higher than they have been in months, the GOP is having trouble finding candidates to take him on in next…

May 18, 2011 / Photo Essay / The Nation

The Impresario: On Irving Kristol

The Impresario: On Irving Kristol The Impresario: On Irving Kristol

Irving Kristol was wrong about most things. So why was he one of the most politically influential intellectuals of his generation?

May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / George Scialabba

Hordes of trees with unpronounceable names poured down on our suburb Hordes of trees with unpronounceable names poured down on our suburb

As the seasons waned Collided with our own trees grown grassy with meditation Club-footed humilis draped in a coat borrowed from the wolf Quercus with its tympanums pierced by vindictive birds Oleaster black with the secretions of cemeteries We would wait for them with sticks, hatchets and bark-eating dogs Our widows pursued them howling The moon dumped its overload of stones and sparks on them They left without having parted the love-furrow of a single rose Without having touched the downy neck of a single honeysuckle Or showed their wounded knees to the healing beech tree They retreated to the river where they emptied their pockets full of beetles That they had intended for us We witnessed their rout through the town’s interstices From shafts of light kept for heat waves Hairy Disheveled And their sooty souls left traces on our laundry The mother’s heart went out to plebian trees To the elm that holds dreams back at hell’s gate To the golden-eyed arbutus Their photos on our walls replaced those of ancestors gone to graze on the mountains Of a brother who died for having written a book with the words of the pomegranate     tree that splashed the doorstep with blood   (Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker)  

May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Unreal Images: On Javier Cercas

Unreal Images: On Javier Cercas Unreal Images: On Javier Cercas

In a nonfiction account of a failed coup, the novelist Javier Cercas tackles the confounding history of Spain's transition to democracy.

May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Jonathan Blitzer

The Queen Comes to Ireland The Queen Comes to Ireland

The Irish government can bend for a British monarch, it seems, but it cannot apply the same rigid discipline to tax cheats and reckless investors.

May 18, 2011 / Jennifer O’Mahony

Shelf Life Shelf Life

Daniel Orozco, Orientation and Other Stories; Mercè Rodoreda, The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda.

May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz

David Brooks

The Dumbest Story Ever Told: On David Brooks The Dumbest Story Ever Told: On David Brooks

The Social Animal is a deep and public embarrassment, a lumpy hybrid of fable, neuroscience and social engineering.

May 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Gary Greenberg

Cornel West and Melissa Harris-Perry at Odds on Obama’s Performance Cornel West and Melissa Harris-Perry at Odds on Obama’s Performance

Princeton Professor Cornel West says the president has failed to deliver to America's for the constituencies that voted him into office, The Nation's Melissa Hariss-Perry says...

May 18, 2011 / Press Room

Cornel West and Melissa Harris-Perry at Odds on Obama’s Performance Cornel West and Melissa Harris-Perry at Odds on Obama’s Performance

Princeton Professor Cornel West says the president has failed to deliver to the constituencies that voted him into office, The Nation's Melissa Hariss-Perry says that criticism is ...

May 18, 2011 / The Ed Show

Jeremy Scahill: Inside Erik Prince’s United Arab Emirates Mercenary Army Jeremy Scahill: Inside Erik Prince’s United Arab Emirates Mercenary Army

Why is Blackwater founder Erik Prince building a mercenary army for the United Arab Emirates? The contracted guns will be much less involved in maintaining the peace than they...

May 18, 2011 / Press Room

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