In the forum, Edward Miguel is optimistic about growth in Africa. Olu Ajakaiye, Paul Collier, Rachel Glennerster, and others respond.

William Hogeland on Pete Seeger and William F. Buckley; Zakes Mda on South African fiction; Patricia Engel's contest-winning short story; Maureen McLane on Emily Dickinson, post-9/11; poems by Barbara Claire Freeman and D.A. Powell.

Jonathan Zittrain leads a forum on the balance between security and freedom on the Internet, with responses from Richard Stallman, Bruce Owen, Susan Crawford, and others.

John Rawls on baseball, the best of all games; Michael Gecan on suburban decline; a short story by Dagoberto Gilb; Stephen Burt reviews Laura Kasischke; Katie Peterson on Robert Hass.

Reporting from the Middle East, Nir Rosen investigates the growth of al Qaeda in Lebanon; ending urban poverty, with Dalton Conley, Patrick Sharkey, and Stefanie DeLuca.

Pranab Bardhan on myths of Chinese and Indian growth; Vivian Gornick on Hannah Arendt; Dimiter Kenarov on Bulgarian literature; two poems by Tomaž Šalamun.

Abbas Milani and Akbar Ganji on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; William Hogeland explores the troubling embrace of Alexander Hamilton; Colin Dyan on prisoners' right to read.

A short story by Charles Johnson; Elizabeth Willis wins the tenth annual poetry contest; criticism by Reginald Shepherd; a poem by John Updike.

Owen Fiss, Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Jenny Martinez on international criminal courts; Nir Rosen examines the plight of displaced Iraqis. 

Fiction by K. J. Bishop; poems by Mary Jo Bang and Roberto Bolaño; Alan Stone reviews Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn.

Glenn Loury asks "Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?"; Robert Blecher and Jeremy Pressman on Israel's existential crisis; George Scialabba on the curse of modernity; Anatol Lieven on "realist" foreign policy.

A short story by Patricia Engel; Charles Johnson on artistic passion; Forrest Gander on John Ashbery.

Akbar Ganji on changing Iran from within; Hans Blix on global arms control; a look at religion in politics by Catherine Tumber; Nicholas Schmidle on Islamism in Bangladesh.

Fiction contest winner Pama Viswanathan; Katie Peterson on Tomas Tranströmer.

Nancy Birdsall, Abhijit Banerjee, Michael Kremer, and others look at the question, "What helps poor countries grow?"; Sarah Chayes on the future of Afghanistan; Alex Byrne on morality and the brain

A short story by Peter Mountford; poems by Jorie Graham, H. L. Hix, Susan Stewart, and Geoffrey G. O'Brien; poetry criticism by Barbara K. Fischer and Cal Bedient.