State of the Nation

The media and other matters

---

Essays

The Breakout

Hamas and the end of the two-state solution
Helena Cobban

The Unending War

Argentina's quest for justice
Sam Ferguson

American Dreamers

Pete Seeger, William F. Buckley, Jr., and public history
William Hogeland

The Bitter End

Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism
Kevin Mattson

New Fiction Forum

Desaliento

The winner of Boston Review's 15th annual fiction contest
Patricia Engel

Justify the Enemy

Becoming human in South Africa
Zakes Mda

On Film

Badlands

The Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men
Alan A. Stone

On Poetry

This Ecstatic Nation

Learning from Emily Dickinson after 9/11
Maureen N. McLane

Ghosts

Susan Howe's Souls of the Labadie Tract
Andrew Zawacki

The Writing Cure

Don Share's Squandermania
Erin Belieu

Microreviews

Poems

Grace

Desirée Alvarez

Torso of an Unknown Soldier

Bridgette Bates

(Dialogue in a country graveyard)

Matvei Yankelevich

centerfold

D.A. Powell

When the Moon Comes Up

Barbara Claire Freeman

Hover, Coo

Frances Justine Post

The World

Marie Howe

Why the Novel Is Necessary but Sometimes Hard to Read

Marie Howe

Principles of Uncertainty

Cynthia Lowen

Poet's Sampler: John W. Evans

Introduced by Campbell McGrath