Daniel Richman leads a forum on the conflict between national security and civil rights, with responses from Bob Barr, Corey Robin, and others; Christine J. Walley explains Tanzania's people's park; Benjamin Paloff on Bruno Schulz.

Jennifer Howard on fantasy fiction; a short story by Emily Fridlund; Zack Finch on Marjorie Welish.

Sadik J. Al-Azm discusses Western dominance and the Muslim world; Alex de Waal explains the tragedy in Darfur; Ahmed S. Hashim on the Iraqi insurgency; a manifesto for democracy in Taiwan.

 Scott Saul looks at Henry Dumas, the lost voice of the Black Arts Movement; poetry from Allen Grossman and others.

Inside: How Can the Democrats Win? Rick Perlstein, with Ruy Teixeira, Daniel Cantor, Elaine Kamarck, William A. Galston, Adolph Reed Jr., Robert B. Reich, and others. Rajan Menon on ending the standoff in Chechnya; Martha C. Nussbaum on why women were mutilated in Gujarat, India; Paul Hockenos on Joschka Fischer. Susie Linfield on photographing cruelty; Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom on reading China; Grace Paley on Harvey Swados; poetry reviews by Calvin Bedient, Andrew Zawacki, and Larissa Szporluk. Poems by Adrienne Rich, David Lehman, Carol Ciavonne, and others.

What We Owe to Parents. Anne Alstott on how public policy can support the hard work of raising children. With Robin West, Amy L. Wax, Eva Kittay, Dorothy Roberts, Deborah Stone, and Richard A. Epstein. Stephen M. Meyer on the extinction crisis we've already lost; Peter A. Diamond and Peter R. Orszag's practical plan to save Social Security; Helena Cobban on the uncertain future of secular Palestinian nationalism; Diego Gambetta on post-9/11 irrationality. National Poetry Month: Hank Lazer on the radical democratization of American Poetry; Marjorie Perloff on Ezra Pound; Rachel Cline on Bruce Wagner; Jascha Hoffman on the Riemann Hypothesis; a story by Ander Monson; Alan A. Stone reviews Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn! Poems by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Li Hou Zhu, Caroline Knox, and Toni Burge.

Consent and Democracy: Elaine Scarry on local governments' refusal to comply with the Patriot Act; Larry Kramer on popular constitutionalism; Barbara Clark Smith on what the public life of American colonists can teach us about politics. Corey Robin on conservatives after the Cold War; John R. Bowen on France's headscarf controversy; Michael Standaert on an immigration crisis in the European Union; Rebecca Saxe on how our brains help us understand other people. Hilary Putnam reviews The Jewish Political Tradition, Volume II: Membership, by Michael Walzer et al.; Roger Boylan reviews John Banville; a story by D.S. Sulaitis, the winner of the 11th annual Boston Review fiction contest; Alan A. Stone reviews Thomas McCarthy's The Station Agent. Poems by Cynthia Cruz, Lucie Brock-Broido, Nadia Herman Colburn, and Karla Kelsey.

Rebuilding after violence: Alex de Waal on Somalia and the failure of Operation Restore Hope; Helena Cobban on the catastrophic inefficiency of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; Ralph Cintron, Stevan Weine, and Ferid Agani on the enormous challenges of exporting democracy to Kosova; John Tirman on why humanitarian interventions have become military interventions. Gary Marcus on the adaptive nature of genes and what it means about the nature-nurture debate; Leo Marx on intellectuals and politics. Benjamin Paloff reviews Charles Simic. Poetry by Sophie Cabot Black, Brett Fletcher Lauer, and Arthur Rimbaud. Alan A. Stone on Thirteen.

What makes schools work? With Richard D. Kahlenberg, Bernard Wasow, William A. Galston, Richard J. Murnane, Reg Weaver, Joseph P. Viteritti, Amy Hanauer, and Deborah Meier. Noam Chomsky on the Bush administration's imperial grand strategy; Juan Cole on the Iraqi Shiites; Duncan Kennedy on the dangerous mix of economic and military goals in Iraq; James K. Galbraith on JFK and Vietnam; Martha C. Nussbaum on Bernard Williams. George Scialabba reviews Bill McKibben; Carl Elliot reviews Edward Tenner. Poetry by Karen Volkman, Carl Phillips, and Richard Howard. Alan A. Stone on Sweet Sixteen and Raising Victor Vargas.

“The Secret History of the Magna Carta” by Peter Linebaugh; Jonathan R. Cole on defending the university post–9/11; “Just Marriage”: Mary Lyndon Shanley on the public importance of private unions; Abbott Gleason compares today’s antiliberal revolt to that of 1920s Europe; and Leonardo Avritzer examines the chances Brazil’s President Lula has to redeem democracy in Latin America. In reviews: Susie Linfield on the literature of political memory; Jehangir Pocha on Zoroastrianism; and Charles Lawrence on Young, Gifted, and Black. In the New Fiction Forum, James Hynes surveys works by British novelist Adam Thorpe. Poems by Claudia Rankine, Aaron Belz, and Nikolai Zabolotsky.

Islam and the Challenge of Democracy, a forum with Khaled Abou El Fadl, William Quandt, Muqtedar Khan, Jeremy Waldron, Saba Mahmood, and others. In the New Fiction Forum, Tom Bissell on the short stories of Elizabeth Crane and Marshall Boswell. Owen R. Cote, Jr. examines a security strategy doomed to failure. George Scialabba on the real problem behind the 2000 election. Maureen N. McLane on the East Harlem Poetry Project. Short fiction from A. L. Kennedy. Stephen Burt reviews nine new poets. Benjamin Paloff examines the poetry and controversy of Tom Paulin. Plus: Poems by Cal Bedient, Liz Waldner, and Andrew Zawacki; Jennifer Howard on Jean-Patrick Manchette; and Alan Stone on The Hours.

War and Democracy with John W. Dower, Uday Singh Mehta, Helena Cobban, and Neta C. Crawford. Patrick Erouart-Siad rides finds French literature out of touch with social realities; James Campbell remembers legendary New Yorker editor Robert Maxwell. Alan A. Stone reconsiders The Battle of Algiers. Carroll Bogert looks at works on humanitarian intervention; Archon Fung searches for lessons from grass-roots organizing. Tod Marshall examines the lyric verse of Peter Sacks and Donald Revell. Peter Gizzi introduces Aaron Kunin in the Poet’s Sampler. Poems by Rae Armantrout, Susan Davis, Emily Fragos, Brian Henry, Bill Knott, and Timothy Liu.

Civil liberties after 9/11 with David Cole, Bonnie Honig, Amitai Etzioni, Juliette Kayyem, Alan Dershowitz, Laurence Tribe, and others. In the New Fiction Forum, Roger Boylan journeys through the glamorous, doomed world of Alan Furst. Robert S. Boynton examines the strange case of Masud Khan, the “fallen angel” of psychoanalysis. The winner of the Tenth Annual Short Story Contest is announced. Seyla Benhabib reviews Richard Wolin’s Heidegger’s Children, Mark Lilla’s The Reckless Mind, and Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem. Karen Volkman looks at the Collected Works of Lorine Niedecker, rural Wisconsin’s exhilarating, lost poet. New poems by Dorothea Tanning, Richard Howard, and John Latta, and more.

Elaine Scarry compares the stories of two airplanes hijacked on 9/11 to question our traditional, “top-down” defense structure; Richard Falk, Antonia Chayes, Charles Knight, Ellen Willis, and others respond. Vivian Gornick takes a fresh look at feminist literary icons Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, and Marguerite Duras, and finds they haven’t aged well. Susan F. Hirsch on her experience in the U.S. embassy bombing trials and why she didn’t testify; Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold on American Jews’ protest and support of Israeli policy. John D’Agata reviews Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho. Plus: new poems by Matthew Zapruder, Ethan Paquin, contest winner Max Winter, and Katy Lederer in our Poet’s Sampler. Plus, a lively exchange on intelligent design with William Dembski and H. Allen Orr.

A forum on the privatization of public goods with David Bollier, Marcia Angell, Nicholas Johnson, Tom Palmer, and others. Charles Tilly on the nature of collective violence. Helena Cobban on growing despair in the Middle East. Jason M. Baskin on Thomas Bernhard, plus reviews of Lucius Shepard, Nora Eisenberg, and Hans Koning. A lively exchange on Helena Cobban's "Crime and Punishment in Rwanda" with Kenneth Roth and Alison DesForges. H. Allen Orr reviews William Dembski's No Free Lunch. New poems by Arthur Sze, Ray DiPalma, James Galvin, and April Bernard, and more.

Crime, punishment, and the limits of law, with essays by Helena Cobban, Bernard Harcourt, and Loïc Wacquant. Hugo Adam Bedau reviews recent books on capital punishment. Stephen Burt on Rae Armantrout's poetry of suspicion. James Campbell examines the case of Jonathan Franzen and Oprah's Book Club; Drake Bennett surveys the novels of Howard Norman. Fiction by Ryan G. Van Cleave. Poems by Nicholas Laughlin, Rae Armantrout, Carmen Giminez-Rosello, and others.

A debate on the state of American caregiving with Jody Heymann, Anne Alstott, Theda Skocpol, William A. Galston, Isabelle Ferreras, Frances Fox Piven, and others. Sohail H. Hashmi, Amina Wadud, and John L. Esposito respond to Khaled Abu Al Fadl's "The Place of Tolerance in Islam." Roger Boylan explores inner and outer exile in the novels of James Hamilton-Paterson; Jennifer Howard places the spy thrillers of Eric Ambler in a political context. Fiction by Robin Bradford, the runner-up in our short story contest.

A forum on a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict with Lama Abu-Odeh, Helena Cobban, Leonard Fein, Louis Michael Seidman, Ian S. Lustick, and others. Khaled Abou El Fadl examines the the place of tolerance in Islam. Randall Curb on Paula Fox; Stephen Burt reviews an Anthology of Twentieth-Century Irish and British Poetry, fiction by Manini Nayar, poetry by Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Dorothea Tanning, and Andrew Zawacki; microreviews, and more.