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.

The story of a young man who escapes a life of poverty and abuse in Calcutta, Past Continuous was praised by the judges for "unrelenting honesty," and for a narrative which "confronts the larger questions of human frailty, the conflicted will to debasement and the strange manifestations of love."

Neel shares the award for best English-language fiction with Amitav Ghosh (Sea of Poppies).

The Vodafone Crossword Book Award, otherwise known as "the Indian Booker," is India’s premier literary award and recognises the best of Indian writing in English. Previous winners include Vikram Chandra for Sacred Games, Salman Rushdie for Shalimar the Clown, Vikram Seth (twice: in the fiction category for An Equal Music and in the non-fiction category for Two Lives) and Amitav Ghosh (for The Hungry Tide).

"But before we overwhelm ourselves with worry, some perspective is in order: no sensitive or classified data has been compromised, and no servers have melted. . . Plenty of pundits jumped at the opportunity to blame the attacks on the North. But few commentators bothered to examine the political situation in South Korea, where at least some local politicians greatly benefited from the event."

See his bloggingheads.tv discussion with Ethan Zuckerman of the Berkman Center.

"You may have a phone-solicitor voice, and a voice for scolding your recalcitrant children, and a voice for sincere apology. They are all false, all partial, yet all equally and accurately evidential of selfhood. If the personae Seidel and Mayer describe occupy radically different social milieus, their formal manipulations of verse are curiously similar."

Colin Dayan with a story of race, faith, and mourning.

Paul Collier (The Bottom Billion, Wars, Guns, and Votes) takes on the obstacles to development in this controversial forum, with responses by an array of distinguished scholars:

Stephen D. Krasner: “If third parties play a more decisive role, there is some hope.”

William Easterly: “The burden of proof should be on interventionists—doubt is a superb reason for inaction”

Larry Diamond: “Instead of imposing policies, reward states that invest in well-being and institutions.”

Edward Miguel: “The premise that the poorest countries cannot grow ignores a decade of modest successes.”

Mike McGovern: “Strategies that might work in one state should not be applied generally to the bottom billion.”

Nancy Birdsall: “Consider other interventions, less exciting but better grounded in experience and evidence.”

Collier responds: “My hope is to open discussion on an issue that has been too uncomfortable to face.”

With four detainees already released to Bermuda, Amy Waldman's post-Guantánamo story has an eerie resonance.

New fiction from Shivani Manghnani.

Stephen Burt reads "the best new books that seem to have goals in common."

This New Democracy Forum features responses by a panel of 16 leading voices on immigration, including T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Marc Rosenblum, Mae M. Ngai, Roberto Suro, Carol M. Swain, and others. Click here to see the full debate.

Nancy MacLane looks at what faith-based activism can do for labor.

Annabelle Yeeseul Yoo: Bright Burial
Jeffrey Schultz: J. Steals from the Rich and Uses the Money to Get Drunk Again
Jynne Dilling Martin: Repercussions of the Current Import/Export Ratio
Bridget Lowe: The Wild Boy of Aveyron Stands Up During a Dinner Arranged by the Doctor

You can also check out our ongoing coverage, and the various proposals for universal care in these archive features:

John Geyman on national health insurance

Barbara Starfield on increasing the number of primary care physicians

Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Victor R. Fuchs on universal health care vouchers

John Canham–Clyne on the single–payer system

This Friday, April 17, 7 p.m. — Strange Voice
Featuring James Tate, Fanny Howe, and John Ashbery

Saturday, April 18, 7 p.m. — Strange Image
Featuring Henri Cole, Jorie Graham, and Mark Strand

Sunday, April 19, 7 p.m. — Strange Place
Featuring Adam Zagajewski, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Derek Walcott

Requires flash 10 to view. For more information, see their homepage.

Michael Gecan

New Eastertime fiction from D.S. Sulaitis

Using the recent Alexander Hamilton revival, the twin hagiographies of Pete Seeger and William F. Buckley, and the newly-opened Constitution Center in Philadelphia as examples, Hogeland considers what we lose when the gritty and contradictory events of the past are made to fit political aims of the present.

“For William Hogeland, thinking about history is an act of moral inquiry and high citizenship. A searching and original voice.” — Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland

With a foreword by William Easterly and responses by nine experts — Olu Ajakaiye, Ken Banks, Robert Bates, Paul Collier, Rachel Glennerster, Rosamond Naylor, Smita Singh, David N. Weil, and Jeremy M. Weinstein.

“A refreshing take on the fortunes of Africa in the current century and a fascinating compendium of some of the leading theorists of African development.” — Publishers Weekly

". . . when Mikhail writes that 'Baloch is a victim of a policy that, pre–9/11, would have been unthinkable,' he makes the same crucial mistake that so many critics of immigration detention have made, blaming it all on Bush/Cheney."

"Jones was writing within conditions that continue to disfigure the American—and human—scene of which he was, and is, though oppositionally, a part. . . And still there is this painful, visionary music."

They will be reading their work at the 92nd Street Y in New York on May 11.

Boston Review is the official co-sponsor of the contest, now in its second year with the magazine. We will be publishing their work in the May/June issue, on stands May 4. For last year's winners, click here.

"It is essential to understand that we follow the course advocated by most leaders of the democratic movement inside Iran. No major figure in the Iranian opposition supports sanctions, let alone military action."

Kim Bobo is the founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, the leading national organization that mobilizes religious support for low-wage workers and rebuilds partnerships with the labor movement.

"The science-fiction label was one that Disch neither accepted entirely nor tried to leave behind. He was a considerable figure in the genre, a representative of a new style that transformed SF in the late 1960s into a realm of innovative personal art."

Poet Elizabeth Alexander has been selected to compose and deliver a poem at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Read her work Race from our April/May issue of 2000.

"'That's insane,' I said."

New fiction from Laura van den Berg

"Synecdoche is an uncompromisingly ambitious and challenging film, even if not a masterpiece. Kaufman set out to create a work like Fellini’s 8 1/2, or Bergman’s Persona. Unfortunately, where the effort to evoke the mysteries of the human condition succeeded in Bergman’s and Fellini’s films, it can feel like intentional obscurantism in Kaufman’s.

With a web-only forum of responses from Human Rights Watch's Joanne Mariner, and law professors Eric Posner and Michael Chesney.

Vivian Gornick with an an excerpt from her recent essay collection, The Men In My Life

Amvita Kumar takes a look at authenticity and the Indian political novel.

"At the close of what by all accounts has been a most extraordinary national political campaign, I believe it is important to at least raise (if not answer!) the question of what role 'identity' ought to play in our politics and in our lives. . . there are times when the call of the tribe just might be a siren’s call and when an excessive focus on 'identity' could lead one badly astray."

Stephen Ansolabehere of Harvard, Robert Erikson of Columbia, Gary Jacobson of the UC San Diego, and David Mayhew of Yale, all gave us their best guess for the presidential race and the makeup of the 111th Congress.

Can you do better? Beat our experts and we’ll give you $500! Details at our website.

“Weaving several stories together in a nonlinear narrative, the film juxtaposes life in Hamburg and Bremen with life in Istanbul and along the Black Sea.”

“In Bidart’s poems, the domestic becomes tragic, the incidental becomes epic, the mythological becomes intimate. And this has nearly always been the case.”

“In the Irish soul, yesterday is tomorrow, and it will be no surprise to me if the wild men return – and with them, more lovely laments, more bitter book, more art from war.”

This essay is the fourth in a series on literature and conflict funded by a grant from the NEA.

See our other archive features on faith and politics here

"The sturdy house of the novel of sexual identity, with its secret passageways and walk-in/walk-out closets and tempting garden paths and labyrinths, lies in ruins. We are not trying to peep through the windows. And yet, post-gay, like post-colonial, does not mean that the old architecture has been swept away."

This essay is the third of four on conflict and fiction, funded by a grant from the NEA.

Albert Raboteau's American Salvation is a look at the balance of faith and works within our national democracy, by an African-American convert to Eastern Orthodoxy.

Catherine Tumber's The Reckoning charts the fluxuating influence of the evangelical movement in American progressive politics.

"The current situation is quite unlike the food crises of 1966 and 1973. It is not the result of a significant drop in food supply. Rather, it is fundamentally a demand-driven story of 'success.' Rising incomes, especially in China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil, have increased demand for diversified diets. . . . against this background of growing income and demand, increased global consumption of biofuels have added further strains to the agricultural system. Neglected investments in agricultural technology, a weak U.S. dollar, excessive speculation, and misguided government policies have exacerbated the situation. Climate change also looms ominously over the entire global food system."

"In the 1980s the United Nations led a massive effort to bring safe water to all people. Aid agencies and UN bodies increased their water budgets significantly, and water was provided to a large number of previously underserved populations. Yet at the end of the 'Water Decade,' more than a billion people were left without access to safe drinking water and more than two billion still lacked safe sanitation."

Lew Daly takes a look at their proposal, where the benefits lie for blue-collar families, and the odds of real transformation in the party.

"The public record is now so elaborate, so detailed, and validated from so many directions that a weight is on the population’s shoulders: does our already existing knowledge of what they have done obligate us to press for legal redress?

"The question is painful even to ask, so painful that we may all yield to an easy temptation not to pursue it at all. . . . The very multiplicity of the apparent crimes, the sheer array of arguably broken laws, is dizzying. But that multiplicity must be faced, for in it we will see that what got in President Bush’s way was not any one law but the rule of law itself."

Read Elaine Scarry's complete article at here..

"These Jewish-American writers, they have written more virulently, more violently, more angrily about women than have their gentile counterparts. Roth and Bellow suffer from feeling like such outsiders in gentile culture that savaging women seems justified.

But really, what I am saying in this piece is that Jewish writing is over . . . There’s really nothing to write about. Yet you have young people who keep on doing it. All I’m saying is, it doesn’t count. Take Michael Chabon, or Jonathan Safran Foer. They’re cashing in on a world that’s long gone and they’re writing with open nostalgia. They’re making things out of it that belong to their grandfathers. It’s a habit to go on assuming that this is legitimate writing. But I truly feel it is not."

In our 2005 special issue, Reforming Health Care, Barbara Starfield explained how the rise of specialists and concomitant decline of general practitioners have contributed to the overall ill-health of the nation.

"Improving the compensation for primary-care practice is another practical option. Primary-care practitioners generally earn much less than specialists; reimbursement rates for their services should be increased. Savings from insurance reform could be used to do this."

Read the NYT article here.

“Small business owners occupy a Norman Rockwell-space in the American imagination. But as our analysis suggests and experiences in Washington and the nation’s state capitals repeatedly reveal, the appeal of small business has been appropriated by a powerful interest group that does not fully represent the views of small-business owners.”

“Literature becomes a mirror of the complex self, and misunderstanding the other a tool that enables us to see ourselves with greater clarity.”

“The memoir reads like an international relations primer done in the style of a modern morality tale—imagine Kenneth Waltz’s classic Man, the State, and War as written by Ayn Rand.”

“Beyond the prices paid by individual poets, demonizing aesthetic invention and poetic difference has broader ramifications, from the diminished intellectual fare served up daily by the mediocracy to the stunted—and stunting—conception of literature promoted in too many classrooms.”

“He wanted, desperately, to depict man in an all-encompassing way—after the Revolution, the new Soviet man.”

"Obama’s apparently unquestioning loyalty to the cultural left will weaken his case if he really wants to transform American politics for the sake of poor and distressed communities. There are two reasons why. The first is simply that the law is not on his side. The second reason is moral. By restricting religious hiring rights, Obama’s faith-based initiative attacks the very thing it claims to be supporting. That is, it attacks communities.”

Half of all imprisoned men have children. Mary Katzenstein and Mary Shanley address the effects of incarceration on fatherhood, exploring the societal benefits of retaining ties between children and their imprisoned fathers.

Finally, Robert Perkinson examines the history of the prison boom through a series of recent books that chart America’s changing ideas of crime and punishment.