— From "Declining Public Appetite for Large Wars of Occupation," a poem by Dara Wier

— From "The Boy Under the Car," a poem by John Freeman

ecstasy passes over us

in a mist of particles . . ."

—From "Ecstasy," a poem by Jane Miller

— from "To Conda from Anaconda," a poem by David Biespiel. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

There was only one way to find out. Stephen Phelan reports from the exhumation of Pablo Neruda's grave.

This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Reality Check," a poem by David Lehman

From "At the End of Hell," a poem by Jericho Brown.

This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "The Ghost of Berries," a short story by Joe Fassler

— From "Electric Fence," a poem by Tom Healy

off my own anxiety. …"

— From "The Coast of Apples," a poem by Lee Upton

From "Cinderella," a poem by Alfred Starr Hamilton

— From "Tayopa," a short story by Ben Stroud.

lingering like that elusive dream,
What was it? That the stolen car or key forgotten

in a murky city is another word for dread?"

— From "Ice Idyll," a poem by Lisa Russ Spaar

grave albino onions, juniper nip & the cusp of snow,
we sip slow, as at a glacier’s lip. Holy day. . . ."

— From "Hibernalphilia," a poem by Lisa Russ Spaar

From "when i go to bed i go to bed with the lights on," a poem by Sasha Fletcher

anything still upright. . . ."

— From "From the Keep," a poem by Cherry Pickman

— From "Whistle and Snare," a poem by Broc Rossell

— From "The Killers," a poem by Andrew Elliott

for hours, held down by the chesterfield
and an ottoman. . . ."

— From "Wake," a poem by Molly Minturn

— From "A Parable," a poem by Anna Maria Hong

—sunset a Coleman
Pack-Away lantern"

— From "Là," a poem by Andrew Zawacki

— From "Station," a poem by Andrew Zawacki

— from "Recent History," a poem by John Ashbery

— From "Elegy," a poem by Martha Ronk

— From "Poem Beginning with a Line from Gammer Gurton’s Needle" by John Ashbery

—From "No Sky," a poem by Martha Ronk

So why isn’t it happening? One word: politics.

Mike Konczal writes the lead essay of our forum on debt forgiveness, with responses by Dean Baker, Jacob Hacker, Tamara Draut, and others.

— From "On Ninjas," a poem by Jane Yeh

— From "To the Shopping Mall," a poem by Vincent Guerra

— From "Thomas Goes Riding the Silver Sunset," creative nonfiction by Thomas E. Kennedy.

— From "Spool 25," a poem by Matthew Cooperman

— From "Pirouette," new fiction by Scott Marengo

— From "The Good Historian," a poem by Graham Foust

— From "They're There," a poem by Frederick Seidel

here is glass
or a curtain of dust . . ."

— From "Untitled," a poem by Barbara Claire Freeman

— From "House Search," a poem by Sean Campbell

— From "Slave (Jagger/Richards)," a poem by Graham Foust

— from "It Is the Perpetual Day" by Virginia Konchan

Not an owl now, scratchy
bourbon who-who. . . ."

— From "Dewseaville," a poem by Daniel Tiffany

tracing the spine of a curl.
Your sleeve brushing my face. . . ."

— From "To the White Woman on the Plane Who Doesn’t Understand My Discomfort When She Asks If She Can Touch My Hair," a poem by Torrie Valentine

wears white, and believes in it. . . ."

— From "After Paradise Lost," a poem by Alison Powell

it is too intransigent
its manner conveys
a gray enmity

toward whatsoever lies close to a flame . . ."

— From "Essential Difference," a poem by Kiki Dimoula, translated from the Greek by Cecile Inglessis Margellos and Rika Lesser

of the city. . ."

— From "Waiting for Tear Gas," a poem by Tung-Hui Hu

— From "Cash for Gold," a poem by Ernest Hilbert

— From "Golden Buddha," a poem by Sandra Simonds

— From "Xochimilco," a short story by Esmé-Michelle Watkins.

— From "One Bird Behind One Bird," a poem by Amy King

but in a ‘can do’ way, yes I could,
and then yes I was . . ."

— From "Protective Balls," a poem by Scott Withiam

what faces me, the storm, red sky at morning. . . ."

— An excerpt from Claudia Rankine's That Were Once Beautiful Children. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "At the Edge of the Bed," a poem by Geoffrey G. O'Brien. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

alongside heart, blood, bone,
getting good and warm. . . ."

— From "Manifesto for Tumor and Poem," a poem by Jo Ann Clark.

— From "Pretty Little Failboat," a poem by Anthony Madrid. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Milk the Dog and Walk the Cow," a poem by Anthony Madrid. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "The Precision Chromatic Ray Race of People," a poem by Anthony Madrid. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Order and Kinetics," a poem by Claire Donato. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Certain Allied Experiments," a poem by Lily Brown. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

the wasp nest hung in its gray paper,
bobbing in the empty air . . ."

— From "When All the Leaves," a poem by Oni Buchanan. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "For My Son," a poem by Stephen Dunn. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "The Gulf," a short story by Tania James.

It’s such a long day
or
what a long day it’s turning into."

—From "369," a poem by Kate Greenstreet.

all because for a short time in my teenage life I wanted to fit in. . . ."

— From "My Friends Were Having Sex and I Wanted to Fit In," a poem by Katie Degentesh. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

inhabit a mind I can hardly recognize as you
purport not to remember
me, your favorite,

only, daughter. . . ."

— From "Wilds," a poem by Michele Glazer. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Amor Fati," a poem by Sandra Lim. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Clairvoyance (Sunlight)," a poem by Melissa Kwasny

— From "True Figures," a poem by David Blair.

— From "All One Has Before One," a poem by Simone Kearney. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Objectivity," a poem by Tanya Larkin. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Stakes Is High," a poem by Marcus Wicker. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Store," a poem by Jon Woodward. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

—From "The Story of How You Went to the Museum," a poem by Jon Woodward. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

—From "Suicide Is Painless," a poem by Michael Robbins

— From an excerpt from The Bridge, a book by Mary Austin Speaker. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Poem of Hope, Almost at Equinox" by Brenda Hillman. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

—From "Mystical Lichen Falls Through the Fonts" by Brenda Hillman. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

at north and south. . . ."

— From "Build a Wide Tomb for War Animals" by Patricia Lockwood

into the air, where a palm-shaped cloud slapped . . ."

—From "Cumulus," a poem by Margot Schilpp

—From "Poem for Rihanna After Chris Brown’s Arrest" by Greg Weiss

—From "Poem for Chris Brown After His Arrest" by Greg Weiss

— From "A. in May," a poem by Kathleen Ossip

From "Dear Day," a poem by Catherine Pierce

in predictable ways. . . ."

— From "Boat," a poem by Spencer Short

the men I know are aspens
they lose the leaves

their women won’t

stoop to gather . . ."

— From "[ill wind]," a poem by Jesse Lichtenstein

—From "Ambiguous Origins," a poem by Jack Boettcher.

— From "Toxic Assets," a poem by Sam Witt

— From "A Photograph of a Crowd," a 1998 poem by Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska.

From "The State of Utah is Shaped Like a Glove," a poem by Alina Gregorian.

It’s the sound of a river churning, assertive in its nothingness.

Water threads everywhere, making the world wetter, making the debris float, an unchosen act expanding. . . ."

— From "Some Novelties of Stagecraft," a poem by Matthew Gagnon

—An excerpt from Joan Houlihan's forthcoming book Ay.

—From "The Bicameral Eyeball," a poem by John Ashbery.

—From "The Sound of It, Spring," a poem by Elizabeth Gramm.

I touch where the penknife had
Plunged & stood. I watch you . . ."

— From "The Spot," a poem by Joseph P. Wood

— From "Argument in Optative," a poem by Emily Wolahan

—From "The Harp and the Machine," a poem by Terese Svoboda

when he once was a pigeon,
when he has
become, within a coop,

an approximation of a coop ..."

— From "A Taxonomy of the Etiquette of Brandos," a poem by Eric Kocher.

—From "The Man from the Phone Company," a poem by J.T. Welsch.

—from "After Battle," a poem by Karen Lepri

—From "Lottery," a poem by Anis Shivani

— From "Thirty Seconds From Now," a short story by John Chu.

—From "Soup Is One Form of Salt Water," a poem by Heather Christle

Used-To turns months
to something cheap . . ."

— From "Used-To Lives On," a poem by C.J. Sage

—From "Of Late Fashion," a poem by Scott Provence

—From "The Rock in Mid-Lake Disappears & I Who Might," a poem by Jeanne Larsen

shirt gets down on his wrists and his knees to crawl . . ."

— From "October," a poem by Joseph Fasano.

red feathers
as they move past

me . . ."

— From "Yes," a poem by Anthony Opal

— From "The Gift Shop," a poem by Cate Peebles.

donning a semblance of dependability—

like listening for a wavelength of someone’s voice

where syllogisms present truths . . ."

— From "If Hounds," a poem by Genevieve Burger-Weiser.

—From "So Tender Beauty," a poem by Sarah Sarai.

water’s bounded body,
a bent-limb river flowing

in imitation of life’s farewells."

— From "From Love, Imagination," a poem by Sarah Sarai.

— From "ROTC Kills," a poem by John Koethe.

It is our birthright. . ."

— From "America! America!" a poem by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado.

— From "It Was a Rat That Carried Your Heart to the Sea," a poem by Kyle McCord

— From "His Legacy," a poem by Timothy Liu

vibrato he left behind like school . . ."

— From "High Church," a poem by Timothy Liu

SANITIZE hands or words or knives, don’t have to use a

SCALE each morning, worried we take up too much space. . . ."

— From "Safe House," a poem by Solmaz Sharif. This poem was one of the winners of the 2011 “Discovery” Poetry Contest.

—From "Point," a poem by Adam Roberts. This poem was one of the winners of the 2011 “Discovery” Poetry Contest.

object and taste of desire, both surrender
and control in one wet exchange, . . ."

— From "Self Suck," a poem by Angelo Nikolopoulos. This poem was one of the winners of the 2011 “Discovery” Poetry Contest.

— From "Reverse: A Lynching," a poem by Ansel Elkins. This poem was one of the winners of the 2011 “Discovery” Poetry Contest.

— From "The Shunting Trains Trace Iron Labyrinths," a short story by Ana Menéndez.

—From "Hate Mail," a poem by Carol Muske-Dukes

remind me of casseroles ..."

— From "Frog and Toe," a poem by Caitlin Dube.

— From "By Some Miracle a Year Lousy With Meteors," a poem by Cynthia Arrieu-King and Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis.

— From "Breath," a poem by Daniel Coudriet.

— From "Lollipop," a poem by Daniel Coudriet.

— From "Rational Rational," a poem by Joel Craig. This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Novenary," a poem by Joanna Klink. This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "I Didn't See It," a poem by Prageeta Sharma. This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Sporting Life," a poem by D.A. Powell. This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Doubt," a poem by Jennifer Grotz (with video). This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Album, c.1930," a poem by Marjorie Welish.

— From "In the Vestibule, in the Barn . . ." a poem by Dara Wier. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Sore Throat," a poem by Katie Peterson. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "I Know Hephaestus, It’s Tough Loving Love," a poem by Kent Shaw. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

A dummy is held aloft for a long time
By a strong person. . . ."

— From "The Nut," a poem by Arthur Vogelsang (video included). This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "The Exile," a poem by Ben Mazer (audio included).

— A selection from Notes from Irrelevance, a poem by Anselm Berrigan. This is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "We are birds in migration," a poem by Elena Shvarts, translated from the Russian by Stephanie Sandler. This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Poetry Machines," a poem by Cate Marvin. This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

everything: more or less. . . ."

— From "Under the Gun," the first of a selection of poems from The Other Poems, a book by Paul Legault. This selection is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "(Afterward) One Corner More ..." a poem by Harmony Holiday from our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Biography of Sleep," a poem by Aleš Debeljak (translated by Brian Henry). This piece is part of our special National Poetry Month package.

says this to Liz Taylor in
a movie so Liz gets trashed

and puts a shopping bag
over her head . . ."

— From "The Perspective Fairy," a poem by Mark Bibbins. This piece is part of our National Poetry Month package.

— From "Palling Around," a poem by Gregory Pardlo. This piece is part of our National Poetry Month package.

—From "You Are Free," a short story by Danzy Senna.

—From "Saint Days," a poem by Ange Mlinko. This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

from my palms. . . ."

— From "Majestic Interlude," a poem by Brett Fletcher Lauer. This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

the ocean’s frozen over. . . ."

— From "A Storm," a poem by Laura Kasischke. This poem is part of our National Poetry Month package.

skitters across the surface
tension . . ."

— From "At Least," a poem by Rae Armantrout. This poem launches BR's National Poetry Month package.

— From "Hearing," a poem by Joshua Trotter.

—From "Clear in the September Light," one of five poems by Mark Strand, with commentary by Nicholas Christopher.

This concludes "Small Changes, Big Results," our forum on behavioral economics and global development.

Posner's response is the seventh from "Small Changes, Big Results," our forum on behavioral economics and global development.

Their response is the sixth from "Small Changes, Big Results," our forum on behavioral economics and global development.

O'Gara's response is the fifth from "Small Changes, Big Results," our forum on behavioral economics and global development.

Gómez-Márquez's response is the fourth from "Small Changes, Big Results," our forum on behavioral economics and global development.

Bardhan's response is the third from "Small Changes, Big Results," our forum on behavioral economics and global development.

Bendavid's response is the second from "Small Changes, Big Results," our forum on behavioral economics and global development.

Coyle provides the first response in our BR Forum "Small Changes, Big Results."

—From "The Witch," a poem by Elizabeth Willis

two voices mysteriously revolt: ..."

— From "River Caskets," a poem by Diana S. Adams.

The bird in her chest a bankrupt

conductor, improvising. A lunar

river seeks to collect her, garnishes

grass banks with murk. . . ."

— From "Monody," a poem by Diana S. Adams.

& take: take up the vacant
space: the vacant eye flips up: . . ."

— From "In Wind: Blunt: Closer," a poem by Rae Gouirand.

we rely on for whiteness, for dawn:
what we must. . . ."

—From "Follow," a poem by Rae Gouirand.

— From "Back When Post-War Vienna," a poem by Kyle Thompson

You appeared to me as an old man, clear
as television. Teach me, I said. . . ."

— From "Entrance Liturgy," a poem by Dawn Marie Knopf

— From "Underlight," a poem by Aaron McCollough

(n.b. This is a different poem than the previously published McCollough poem with the same title.)

— From "Underlight," a poem by Aaron McCollough

—From "Poem In a Book That Was Never Opened," a poem by Timothy O'Keefe.

—From "The Insentientist," a poem by Stephanie Adams-Santos.

— From "forgetting something," a poem by Nick Flynn

— From "invasion of the body snatchers," a poem by Nick Flynn

— From "How the Other Half Files Its Teeth," a poem by Dan Pinkerton

—From "Instantly I Was Love," a poem by Amanda Nadelberg

—From "The Heidelberg Series" by Caitlin Doyle.

diverge, and the convergence of objects due to gravity,
and it’s all important. Ask temporal lobe epileptics ..."

— From "This Is Serious Business," a poem by Jason W. Selby.

— From "From Which Mortar Cities Rise," a poem by G.C. Waldrep.

— From "Visitation," a poem by Eamon Grennan.

— From "Pursuit of Happiness," a poem by Peter Cooley.

— From "One Dispensation," a poem by Elizabeth Whittlesey.

— From "The Four Questions," a poem by Seth Landman.

— From "Mouse in a Government Building," a poem by Shelly Roche-Jacques

Horses before the barn burned down.

Expired lights at night.

A pile of books in the clearing."

—From "The Fold," a poem by Jose Perez Beduya.

A chair, an animal
Whose legs are broken

Leans towards absence"

—From "Abeyance," a poem by Jose Perez Beduya

— from "Conquest," a poem by Adam L. Dressler

—From a poem by Milosz Biedrzycki (translated from the Polish by Frank L. Vigoda)

—From a poem by Milosz Biedrzycki (translated from the Polish by Frank L. Vigoda)

— From Ben Stroud's "The Moor"

— From "If A Train," a poem by Jason Labbe

Scientifically stretching over the cheeks
at the edge of one moment. The grey suit passed,

the overcoat, impressions everywhere. . . .

— From "The Nerve Fibers," a poem by Mary Jo Bang

— From "Office," a poem by Allison Titus

— From "Reductive," a poem by Arthur Vogelsang

"don't fight the background music / the plan is the heist / tune stage dread hitting a ray / a single solid side arrow out / won't fight rather walk down street / lose mind, play piano / bring the people to their feet."

Plus, "Psyche," a poem by the late Gustaf Sobin.

"If you’ve got a basic American problem you can be sure it is a universal problem. In this country, we do get wherever we’re going sooner than anybody else. We are 'numero uno' with everything. We can be good or bad, but we are going to be it first."

Haines Eason on Richard Greenfield's "Tracer."

"A teen sex romp movie genre means
we’re chanced to be a hopeful
people, which I like"

Lindsay Turner praises Savich, seeing poetry filled with "the messes and mishaps of life."

“Damn it, if I knew which son of a rabbit bit the mango
I would turn his whole family
into counter-revolutionaries!”

Plus, Steve Healey's new poem, "What If There Is a Person" and Christopher Schmidt reviews Jennifer Moxley's Clampdown.

Part of a forum on the impact of the pharmaceutical industry on medical training and science, and the responsibilities of physicians.

To kick off the July 4th weekend, we present Martha C. Nussbaum's 1994 essay on the role of nationalism in an increasingly diverse world.

Contest judge Chang-rae Lee describes Adam Sturtevant's winning story as "a heady, dark flash on the wounded human heart."

A new short story from Jess Row, author of the critically acclaimedThe Train to Lo Wu.

No stamps on-hand? Haven't used a stamp in a few years? Submit online, with payment through Paypal or by credit card.

giving you the benefit of the doubt

but you knew the computer at the other

end of the officer’s PDA would not find

your brown number in its little black index…”

This year's judge is the estimable Peter Gizzi. You can check out the full rules and previous winners at bostonreview.net/contest.

Good luck!

Emanuel's Boston Review Book, What We Know About Climate Change, is available now from MIT Press.

Banerjee's Boston Review Book, Making Aid Work, is available now from MIT Press.

You can read the winning poems from Chelsea Jennings, Brandon Kreitler, Camille Rankine, and Tanya Olson at our website and in the May/June issue.

With a reply from Angell.

This article is part of a forum on the impact of the pharmaceutical industry on medical training and science, and the responsibilities of physicians.

You can see the winners read from their poems on May 10 at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

"At this time American poetry is in better condition than the American criticism of poetry. . . . in my own generation, John Ashbery, James Merrill, A.R. Ammons . . . increasingly do look like the strong successors to, say, Wallace Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop."

Part of an exchange that began with Colin Dayan's article Dead Dogs.

The Road to Democracy in Iran, his only book in English, is available from Boston Review Books and MIT Press.

Ganji spent six years in an Iranian prison after writing Dungeon of Ghosts, an investigation tying the murders of Iranian dissidents to senior officials, including former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. While in prison, Ganji completed his Republican Manifesto, a call for democratic reform, which was smuggled from his cell. He has lived in exile in the United States since 2006.

The Prize is given by the Cato Institute every other year "to an individual who has made a significant contribution to advance human freedom."

“What is to be learned from Eliot is the double-edged nature of poetic reality. . . . Poetry that was originally beyond you, generating the need to understand and overcome its strangeness, becomes in the end a familiar path within you.”

Harvard Bookstore is located at 1256 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA. The book is available from MIT Press, or at your local bookseller.

Elaine Scarry's new Boston Review book, Rule of Law, Misrule of Men, explains how the failure to prosecute Bush administration officials for their crimes has led to an executive branch entirely above the law.

Professor Scarry will be reading from her book at the Harvard Bookstore tomorrow, April 8 at 7pm.

Tom Hart on opening day, when hope springs eternal, even for a Red Sox fan in the dark days of the Curse.

Also, reader favorite John Rawls on the philosophical perfection of the game.

"The superstitious fear of evil images has been secularized, losing its religion aura but retaining the power that only such prerational bugaboos possess."

“In spite of being heavily taxed in every way that an idle, cruel, and cunning state apparatus could think up, the peasantry—illiterate, submissive, unschooled, lacking medical care—fed itself fairly well, reproduced itself, maintained stable family life, and supported on its back the entire country.”

This comes on the heels of our National Magazine Award nomination and three Pushcart Prize nominations for our authors. We’re eagerly awaiting the results, so wish us luck!

We share the nomination with National Geographic, The New Yorker, San Francisco, and Technology Review. The awards will be announced April 22nd: wish us luck!

Economist Dean Baker: ‘Progressives undermine their cause by attributing free-market principles to their opponents’

Finance expert Robert Johnson:‘Trust in government starts with policies that reflect core values’

Political scientists Sarah Binder, Andrew Gelman and John Sides: ‘Political and institutional hurdles prevent serious reform’

With a reply from Eliot Spitzer.

In the fall of 1992, Eugene Rivers, Pastor of Azusa Christian Community in Dorchester, MA, published an open letter in Boston Review calling for African-American intellectuals to honor their responsibilities to struggling urban communities.

In response to the letter, prominent African-American intellectuals bell hooks, Glenn Loury, Cornel West and Margaret Burnham met with Rivers for a wide-ranging panel discussion on issues of poverty, class and education within the Black community.

As Congress struggles over the details of how, or if, healthcare reform is going to be implimented, these authors explore the range of political, social and medical issues at stake.

BR’s Tom Barry discusses the private prison boom in a recent Utne Reader podcast.

Tom is also appearing this week on HDNet’s Dan Rather Reports in What's Happening Inside Reeves?, an investigation based on his article A Death In Texas.

Contributing Editor Evgeny Morozov is quoted in The New York Times taking Google to task for privacy violations in its new Buzz social network.

Publishers Weekly praised Elaine Scarry’s Boston Review Book, Rule of Law, Misrule of Man, as “...a forceful condemnation of Bush-era government excesses.” and “A cogent and frightening reminder of what’s at stake for us as a nation.” Pre-order your copy today from the MIT Press.

BR Contributing Editor Glenn Loury talks with Thinkprogress’’s Matthew Yglesias on all this and more.

Powell won Boston Review’s fourth annual poetry contest in 2001. He has appeared in the magazine several times since then and will be among the featured poets in our upcoming National Poetry Month special, on stands March 3.

"Brilliantly crafted and made with unknown actors who seem to have been born to play these roles, A Serious Man is simultaneously sad and funny: the defining emotional dialectic of the Jewish sensibility"

This article ran originally as a response to "Going Public," in a forum on campaign finance reform.

From the BR archives, Noam Chomsky and Abhijit Banerjee address global politics and relief, while Patrick Erouart-Siad looks at Haitian literature in an age of crisis.

across the Hudson where everyone seems

smarter than I am but still I find my way

to the orphanage and my host’s warm car

in January cold..."

To celebrate our anniversary, all this year, we will be presenting some of the best stories from BR's three and a half decades in print.

The final article in our forum on Afghanistan.

"When the problem is cast in combat terms—Afghanistan as a theater in the 'war on terrorism'—the solutions are inevitably military. But the central problem in Afghanistan is political."

"Part of the problem may be that Western policymakers have the wrong idea about what constitutes a “strong” state. Afghanistan does not need a centralized state with a massive military and police presence. This will only fuel the unrest. Instead it needs a loosening of the centralized state."

"The stabilization of Afghanistan depends primarily on Afghans, and any strategy that ignores this is doomed to failure."

"Intelligence agencies are now realizing that both the Mumbai events and the Delhi plans—plotted directly by al Qaeda affiliated groups, which I call the Neo-Taliban—were directly linked to Afghanistan, but also incorporated wider aims. The goal was to expand the theater of war to India so that Washington would lose track of its objectives and get caught in a quagmire."

"Obama and his advisors seem to have concluded—with their prime reference point being the latter years of the Bush administration's experience in Iraq—that from the U.S.-political point of view, an exit strategy in Afghanistan must start with a troop surge."

"Counterinsurgency, as practiced by the U.S. government and its allies today, is not all about killing and domination. As General McChrystal says, 'It's not how many people you kill—it's how many you convince.'"

Translations by Ezra E. Fitz, and Esther Allen.

Through the end of December, gift subscriptions are just $20 each—33% off the cover price. That’s a year of the best news, debate, reviews, and literature anywhere for $3.33 an issue.

Order now and give your friends and family six great issues of BR, or get it for yourself at a bargain price!

The Onion also featured a satirical look at Tomasello's book!

Second of a two-part series on American counter-insurgency with The Ugly Peace.

Check out Mike Gecan’s Boston Review Book, After America’s Midlife Crisis, “which poses questions and warnings to a fellow community organizer from the Windy City, Barack Obama.”

“Joshua Cohen is the leading political philosopher of deep democracy of his generation. This book is profound, subtle, and relevant. We need his wise and powerful voice in this age of Obama.”—Cornel West, Princeton University

G.C. Waldrep looks at the haunting works of J. Robert Lennon, which explore the intersection of narrative and community.

A response to David Victor and Richard Morse's Living With Coal.

A review of Calvin Bedient's The Yeats Brothers and Modernism's Love of Motion and Helen Vendler's Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form.

Jordan Davis looks at the interplay between modern works from Russia, Germany, Turkey, Vietnam and more.

Cass R. Sunstein, recently appointed Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, posed the question and offered some answers for BR in 2001.

Contest judge Rae Armantrout: "With their cast of recurring characters, the poems in Gallaher’s series are as bitter and skeptical—and funny!—as (old) Bob Dylan songs."

"We are talking about situations in which nonviolent protest is directed against a system that, though it may be bolstered by law, is in conflict with basic human values and with our conscience as human beings. A man such as Ezra feels he has not only the right but the duty to oppose such rules."

But do these beliefs translate into support for policy change?

Buy it now from MIT Press or read an excerpt online.

Also, political scientist Michael Dawson says that the mobilization of minority voters should be seen as a direct and desirable cause of Obama's victory.

Finally, Andrew Gelman and John Sides reply with a call to academics to bring their insights to the public and combat the media's fetish for novelty.

Rick Perlstein (Nixonland) points out how news sources have been treating electoral politics like celebrity gossip, to the detriment of democracy.

Also, Richard Johnston and Emily Thorson argue that Sarah Palin's entry into the race had a statistically significant effect that cannot be explained away.