The Glory and the Folly

An Admirable Folly

– Denis MacShane

From afar, America’s presidential contests often look more like playground antics than a shining example of democracy. But looks can be deceiving.

Poll Power

– Scott Keeter

“Pollsters and pundits” has become a dismissive epithet in modern politics. Pollsters, at least, deserve much better.

Bury the Hatchet

– Gil Troy

The antidote to frenzied partisanship won’t be found in politics as usual but in problem-solving leaders who govern from the center.

In a digital era, can the Oxford English Dictionary stay a cultural cornerstone?

– Charlotte Brewer

For more than a century, the Oxford English Dictionary has dominated language lovers’ bookshelves. Now it is online, and a new edition may never see book covers again. In the digital age, will the OED remain a cultural cornerstone?

Regime Change 2.0

– Robert S. Litwak

There is more than one way to get a rogue state to change its ways.

The New Kindergarten

– Douglas M. Call and Douglas J. Besharov

The case for universal pre-kindergarten isn’t as strong as it seems.

The Big Thaw

– Joshua Kucera

Global warming is shrinking Greenland’s ice sheet—and heating up its movement for independence from Denmark.

Crime's New Address

– The Wilson Quarterly

Memphis demolished inner-city projects and transferred residents into better neighborhoods, but only succeeded in spreading crime to the new areas.

Happiness Paradoxes

– The Wilson Quarterly

What makes people happy keeps confounding the experts.

The Global Warming Diet

– The Wilson Quarterly

Eating “green” is not so easy.

The Inside-Out City

– The Wilson Quarterly

Cities are undergoing a complicated and profound demographic inversion.

Bogged Down Again

– The Wilson Quarterly

What do post–Civil War Reconstruction and U.S. nation-building efforts in the Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan have in common?

And by the Way...

– The Wilson Quarterly

The new American president will have plenty on his plate, especially in the Southern hemisphere.

History Recharged

– The Wilson Quarterly

A prominent historian ponders the long-term legacy of the elusive Bush Doctrine.

Fortified Diplomacy

– The Wilson Quarterly

The new U.S. embassy in Iraq is a fortress covering 104 acres, but building bunkers may not be the best model to follow.

The Long Tail Tale

– The Wilson Quarterly

Many online merchants have looked for profits in the "long tail"—the niche markets—but an economist questions whether the numbers add up.

The Graying of Kindergarten

– The Wilson Quarterly

To give children advantages in emotional, academic, or athletic performance, parents are starting their kids in school later. Two experts think the practice intensifies inequality in American life.

Beating the Market

– The Wilson Quarterly

Even before the recent meltdown, the stock market was hard to read. A market strategist explains why.

Virtually Invisible

– The Wilson Quarterly

Pouring academic publications online has not meant that researchers can find them. There's too much out there, and it's too poorly indexed.

Colonial Warming

– The Wilson Quarterly

America has been dealing with energy crises for a long time. Like the one in the winter of 1637...

Medieval Protectionism

– The Wilson Quarterly

The German cities of Lübeck and Hamburg took different approaches to outside trade; one faded into insignificance, while the other became Europe's third most important trading center.

A Habsburg Plan for Brussels

– The Wilson Quarterly

The Brussels-based leaders of the European Union might take a page from the Habsburg playbook in dealing with the problems of unifying its varied countries under one banner.

Conservative Complicity

– The Wilson Quarterly

William F. Buckley Jr. opposed every milestone achievement of the civil rights movement, but he was no bigot.

Will Evangelicals Hail Mary?

– The Wilson Quarterly

Mary, the mother of Jesus, has long been revered by Catholics, but now evangelical Christians are increasingly drawn to her.

The Arrow of Time

– The Wilson Quarterly

Does time run backward in other universes? It would match the symmetry of many other aspects of our physics.

What Is 'Natural'?

– The Wilson Quarterly

A lesson in the ongoing struggle between man and nature, courtesy of Hawaii's gray bird grasshopper.

What's American About American Art?

– The Wilson Quarterly

John Updike's ruminations about American artists and their need to "confront the viewer with something vitally actual, beyond illusion."

Paris's New Look

– The Wilson Quarterly

Like most cities, Paris's architecture is changing constantly, but there is a growing tension between the low-profile, older buildings in the city's center and the higher-rise denser construction on the périph.

Mesopotamian Treasures

– The Wilson Quarterly

Evidence of ongoing destruction of Iraq's most celebrated archaeological sites is as illusory as WMDs.

The Battle of the Caspian Sea

– The Wilson Quarterly

Who gets what share of the mineral riches at the bottom of the Caspian depend on whether it's a sea or a lake.

Ability Grouping

– The Wilson Quarterly

Banning part-time child labor in countries such as the Philippines may have a perverse and unforeseen effect—forcing parents to pull the children out of schools.

India's Sick Democracy

– The Wilson Quarterly

India's parliamentary system is in a shambles, and may only get fixed when the country's small parties put enough pressure on the two dominant one.

The Great African Hope

– G. Pascal Zachary

G. Pascal Zachary on Rwandan president Paul Kagame, whose rule "provides the clearest test case in Africa of whether an enlightened authoritarianism can produce better results than liberal democracy."

Married to the Muse

– Kate Christensen

Kate Christensen looks at the wives of three famous French artists, and how their lives, "no matter how difficult, painful, or uncertain, were never boring."

Poverty of the Imagination

– James McGrath Morris

James McGrath Morris reviews a chronicle of Jacob Riis's rise from poor immigrant to famous muckraker.

America on the Couch

– Charles Barber

Charles Barber finds American Therapy "thoroughly researched and elegantly organized," but says it does not quite capture the "fascinating dialectic" between "our exterior and interior landscapes."

Mind and Matter

– Geoff Manaugh

In Concrete Reveries, writes reviewer Geoff Manaugh, philosopher Mark Kingwell offers only a glimpse of what makes him "an original thinker with provocative ideas."

Bulletins from Immortality

– Stephanie E. Schlaifer

Reviewer Stephanie E. Schlaifer looks at Brenda Wineapple's account of the quarter-century relationship between poet Emily Dickinson and political activist Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Victims of War

– Hew Strachan

Hew Strachan on Targeting Civilians in War: "Desperation drives even democracies to target civilians in order to coerce the enemy to surrender."

Labors of Love

– Darcy Courteau

What makes people volunteer to help others? Reviewer Darcy Courteau tries to find some answers in a study by two sociologists.

Spouse Hunt

– Renuka Rayasam

eviewer Remuka Rayasam finds Anita Jain "more interested in stringing together amusing anecdotes than in making a sincere attempt at cross-cultural understanding" in her account of her hunt for a suitable husband.

Fear Itself

– Evelin Sullivan

Writing about Daniel Gardner's The Science of Fear, Evelin Sullivan concludes that "for the sake of our survival, one fear ought to become stronger: that of being afraid of the wrong things."

Einstein, Relatively Speaking

– David Lindley

Hans C. Ohanian's analysis of Einstein's works, "reveals himself to be the kind of strictly logical, step-by-step physicist that Einstein plainly was not, and Ohanian's inability to cope with that difference almost seems to have turned into a personal animosity."

Fuller's Earth

– Edward Tenner

Edward Tenner reviews a biography of Buckminster Fuller.

Saints and Sinners

– T. R. Reid

T. R. Reid reviews a "warts-and-all history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the darkest moments in the 180-year history of the Mormon Church."

Hollywood's Crucifixion

– Aaron Mesh

Aaron Mesh on Hollywood's controversial attempts to portray the last days of Jesus Christ on film.