August 29-September 5, 2011 Issue

Cover art by: Cover design by Milton Glaser Incorporated

Feature

Europe’s Turn to the Right

What is the link between the Norway killer’s actions and the ideas he espoused?
Ian Buruma
Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So

The journalist blames teachers unions, not economic inequality, for students’ failure to achieve.
Dana Goldstein
A New Kind of Southern Strategy

The threat of Arizona-style laws has strengthened pro-immigrant coalitions in unlikely places.
Susan Eaton
Rethinking Politics in the Classroom

We need a mandatory course in every high school that looks at society through the lens of ethics and morality, rather than efficiency and productivity.
Daniel Judt
Life After Fukushima

Japan’s artists and writers respond to the 3/11 disaster.
Eric Ozawa
In a Motel Room in Chandler, Arizona

En route to Los Angeles during the quake, the author finds himself in Arizona, watching the tsunami unfold on TV.
Koji Suzuki
A Man-Made Disaster

3/11 will go down in history as a day that fundamentally changed the environment of modern Japan.
Hiroshi Senju
Canaries in the Coal Mine

After 3/11, there is no way we can go back to how things used to be.
Banana Yoshimoto
Self-Restraint

The response by the Japanese people to the quake fills the author with pride—and great concern.
Hitonari Tsuji
Restoring the Time Capsule

For those who grew up in Fukushima, the disaster didn’t just destroy their home town, it stole their childhood memories.
Hideo Furukawa

Editorial

Change the Debate

Obama must stop searching for common ground—and start defining higher ground.
The Editors
Subprime Contagion

Is America finally learning that extreme inequality isn’t just bad for those at the bottom—it’s ruinous for those on top, too?
Chris Hayes
Noted.

William Greider on making the banks pay, Marc Kilstein on the FAA fiasco and Greg Mitchell on the Hiroshima anniversary
Various Contributors
Downgrading Democracy

When Congress, the president and the media run roughshod over popular will and citizen action, small-d democracy pays the price.
Ilyse Hogue
Why We Aren’t Like Greece

Deficit hawks argue that excessive government spending drives the US’s debt woes. They’re wrong.
Dean Baker
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Books & the Arts

Inhuman Bondage: On Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights

Robin Blackburn’s The American Crucible treats modern slavery as an international institution with national histories.
Eric Foner
Shelf Life

On Reza Aslan’s Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East.
Elias Muhanna
Sentimentality or Honesty? On Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor is a sadly endangered type: the philosopher-statesman.
Mark Oppenheimer
Break That Wall

Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz’s The Interrupters; Raul Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon; Jon Favreu’s Cowboys and Aliens; David Yates’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 2; Brit Marling’s Another Earth; Miranda July’s The Future
Stuart Klawans
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