December 11, 2006 Issue

Cover art by: Cover by Gene Case & Stephen Kling/Avenging Angels

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Feature

A Soldier’s Story

“For just a minute or two, step into my life. I am a soldier in the Army Special Forces, just back from Iraq, where I lived and fought beside my Iraqi counterpart as we battled the insurgency. I am a conflicted man.”
Major Bill Edmonds
The Day the Music Died

It’s the end of the world as we know it: Tower Records, the last great CD emporium, is closing, victim of the iPod and MP3 revolution. As Wal-Mart and other big-box stores pick up the slack, will niche music also perish?
Max Fraser

Editorial

Protect the Vote Locally

As the Democratic majority in Congress weighs several measures to address voter suppression, the time is right for real voting reform on the local level.
Paul Rogat Loeb
Prop 209: Ten Long Years

Ten years after its passage, California’s Prop 209 has had a devastating impact on diversity in higher education.
Carmina Ocampo
Friedman’s Cruel Legacy

Milton Friedman’s free-market faith produced a bastardized system of interest-group politics that favors sectors of citizens at the expense of many others.
William Greider
Big Win for Enviros

America’s environmentalists won big in the midterm elections. But can they make real progress on climate change by 2008 and beyond?
Mark Hertsgaard
An Immodest Proposal

Modesty is a virtue, but rather than telling the courts to practice restraint, the Bush Administration should rein in its own abuses of power.
David Cole
The Odd Attack on Dean

James Carville’s bizarre attack on Howard Dean exposed an explosive battle for control between Clintonistas-in-waiting and advocates of renewal. This is a good fight to have.
The Editors
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Column

The Boomerang War

Bush launched the Iraq disaster, and it keeps coming back and hitting us in the head. And now he is counting on Iran to help bail us out.
Robert Scheer
Coffee, Tea or Another Airline Merger?

As US Air seeks to create a mega-airline by gobbling up Delta, the evidence mounts that a free market in the sky just doesn’t work.
Nicholas von Hoffman
Their Opportunism, Our Opportunity

Mainstream media have transformed the permanent presidential campaign into a never-ending soap opera. Progressives must create the movements that will influence whoever decides to run.
Gary Younge
Liar. ‘Liar?’

Bush’s contempt for the truth and for those whose job it is to find it has created an existential crisis for mainstream media.
Eric Alterman
On When We Can Leave Iraq

Can you say “never”?
Calvin Trillin

Books & the Arts

The Day the Music Died

It’s the end of the world as we know it: Tower Records, the last great CD emporium, is closing, victim of the iPod and MP3 revolution. As Wal-Mart and other big-box stores pick up the slack, will niche music also perish?
Max Fraser
A Life of His Own

Victoria Glendinning’s biography of Leonard Woolf looks at a remarkable public intellectual whose life and work were eclipsed by his more famous spouse.
Brenda Wineapple
God’s Willing Executioners

God’s War explores the barbaric clash of Christianity and Islam, and what happens when people follow religious voices that no one else can hear.
Daniel Lazare
The Man Who Loved Children

Adam Gopnik’s Through the Children’s Gate details the trials of a very smug and special class of parents raising children in post-9/11 New York.
Suzy Hansen
Class Consciousness

Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford explores the contradictions of a social revolutionary possessed of an aristocrat’s sense of the wrong and right kind of people.
Charles Taylor
Secrets

Your coffin was so small,
Only I knew it was full of
candlewick bedspreads,
orange pekoe tea leaves
smoking chimneys over wet peat;
Eavan Boland
The Collaborator

The Unfree French looks at the German occupation of Vichy; Bad Faith is a grim biography of a French collaborator.
David A. Bell
I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Laura Kipnis’s The Female Thing takes women to task for perpetuating the notion that they’re vulnerable.
Christine Smallwood
Getting Even

Roald Dahl’s Collected Stories are best enjoyed by adult readers who take their humor black.
Stephen Amidon
Not Dark Yet

Gore Vidal’s Point to Point Navigation is a brave and continuous affirmation of life and an assurance that though the Republic has been betrayed, we are not to give up hope.
Michael Wood
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind

Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day is actually four stories, each replete with brilliant patter, fancy footwork, wishful thinking and a plaintive ukulele.
John Leonard
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Letters

Awesome Powers

Hidden Valley Lake, Calif.
Our Readers and William Deresiewicz

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December 11, 2006 Issue

Feature

“For just a minute or two, step into my life. I am a soldier in the Army Special Forces, just back from Iraq, where I lived and fought beside my Iraqi counterpart as we battled the insurgency. I am a conflicted man.”

It’s the end of the world as we know it: Tower Records, the last great CD emporium, is closing, victim of the iPod and MP3 revolution. As Wal-Mart and other big-box stores pick up the slack, will niche music also perish?

Editorial

As the Democratic majority in Congress weighs several measures to address voter suppression, the time is right for real voting reform on the local level.

Ten years after its passage, California’s Prop 209 has had a devastating impact on diversity in higher education.

Milton Friedman’s free-market faith produced a bastardized system of interest-group politics that favors sectors of citizens at the expense of many others.

America’s environmentalists won big in the midterm elections. But can they make real progress on climate change by 2008 and beyond?

Modesty is a virtue, but rather than telling the courts to practice restraint, the Bush Administration should rein in its own abuses of power.

James Carville’s bizarre attack on Howard Dean exposed an explosive battle for control between Clintonistas-in-waiting and advocates of renewal. This is a good fight to have.

GET UNLIMITED DIGITAL ACCESS FOR LESS THAN $3 A MONTH!

Column

Bush launched the Iraq disaster, and it keeps coming back and hitting us in the head. And now he is counting on Iran to help bail us out.

As US Air seeks to create a mega-airline by gobbling up Delta, the evidence mounts that a free market in the sky just doesn’t work.

Mainstream media have transformed the permanent presidential campaign into a never-ending soap opera. Progressives must create the movements that will influence whoever decides to run.

Bush’s contempt for the truth and for those whose job it is to find it has created an existential crisis for mainstream media.

Can you say “never”?

Books & the Arts

It’s the end of the world as we know it: Tower Records, the last great CD emporium, is closing, victim of the iPod and MP3 revolution. As Wal-Mart and other big-box stores pick up the slack, will niche music also perish?

Victoria Glendinning’s biography of Leonard Woolf looks at a remarkable public intellectual whose life and work were eclipsed by his more famous spouse.

God’s War explores the barbaric clash of Christianity and Islam, and what happens when people follow religious voices that no one else can hear.

Adam Gopnik’s Through the Children’s Gate details the trials of a very smug and special class of parents raising children in post-9/11 New York.

Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford explores the contradictions of a social revolutionary possessed of an aristocrat’s sense of the wrong and right kind of people.

Your coffin was so small, Only I knew it was full of candlewick bedspreads, orange pekoe tea leaves smoking chimneys over wet peat;

The Unfree French looks at the German occupation of Vichy; Bad Faith is a grim biography of a French collaborator.

Laura Kipnis’s The Female Thing takes women to task for perpetuating the notion that they’re vulnerable.

Roald Dahl’s Collected Stories are best enjoyed by adult readers who take their humor black.

Gore Vidal’s Point to Point Navigation is a brave and continuous affirmation of life and an assurance that though the Republic has been betrayed, we are not to give up hope.

Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day is actually four stories, each replete with brilliant patter, fancy footwork, wishful thinking and a plaintive ukulele.

The stakes are higher now than ever. Get The Nation in your inbox.

Letters

Hidden Valley Lake, Calif.

Your coffin was so small,
Only I knew it was full of
candlewick bedspreads,
orange pekoe tea leaves
smoking chimneys over wet peat;