Harper's Magazine: March 2008

Archive > 2008 > Jan · Feb · Mar · Apr · May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep · Oct · Nov · Dec

March 2008

CONTENTS
THUMBNAILS
WEB ONLY

	Art/illustration [Cover art] By Stéphane Humbert-Basset SEE ALSO: Overweight men PDF IMAGES
6-9	Letters/Department Letters On My Orc problem—and ours, from December 2007: Letter By Gary Sandy On Everyone's gone nuts, from January 2008: Letter By Reed Pake Letter By Marc A. Rapaport Letter By Robert Pacenza Letter By Meredith Broussard PDF IMAGES
11-14	Notebook/Article Mudville By Lewis H. Lapham SEE ALSO: Baseball; Baseball players; Drug use PDF IMAGES
17	Harper's index/Department Harper's index PDF IMAGES
19-22	Readings/Article The mortician By Yiwu Liao and Wen Huang (Trans.) SEE ALSO: Career as mortician; Zhang, Daoling; Interviews; Mortuary cosmetology; 1949-1976; Undertakers and undertaking PDF IMAGES
20	Readings/Article Applying for the lotus position SEE ALSO: Buddhism; Reincarnation; Religious life and customs; Tibet; Tibet (China) PDF IMAGES
21	Readings/Art/illustration The fall (detail) By Ged Quinn SEE ALSO: Motion picture studios; Mutilation, defacement, etc. PDF IMAGES
22-24	Readings/Article We might bury you By Leon Neyfakh (Trans.) SEE ALSO: Influence; Oligarchy; Records and correspondence; Russia (Federation); Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich; Youth movement PDF IMAGES
24	Readings/Photography [Untitled Photography] By Boris Mikhailov (Photog.) SEE ALSO: Gas masks; Urban women PDF IMAGES
25	Readings/Article Islamopocalypse SEE ALSO: Civil rights; Human rights; Islam; Steyn, Mark; Muslims; Views on Muslims PDF IMAGES Readings/Cartoon Open door policy SEE ALSO: Catholic Church; Child sexual abuse; Children and adults; Sex instruction; Sexual behavior PDF IMAGES
26	Readings/Art/illustration Digging By Ahmed Alsoudani SEE ALSO: Political violence; Terror; War PDF IMAGES Readings/Article A corpse to stand on By Alexander Stewart SEE ALSO: Somme, 1st Battle of the, France, 1916; Trench warfare PDF IMAGES
27	Readings/Article Trouble helix SEE ALSO: Offenses against the environment; Offenses against the person; Police administration PDF IMAGES
28	Readings/Article Rules of the game SEE ALSO: Human rights; Military interrogation; Peru; Torture PDF IMAGES
30	Readings/Article The philosopher's tone By Ludwig Wittgenstein SEE ALSO: Cambridge; Correspondence; Philosophers; Sraffa, Piero PDF IMAGES Readings/Fiction Luz Mendiluce Thompson By Roberto Bolaño and Chris Andrews (Trans.) PDF IMAGES
31	Readings/Poetry Sixteen By Sándor Márai, John M. Ridland (Trans.), and Peter V. Czipott (Trans.) PDF IMAGES
32	Readings/Article Autoportrait By Edouard Levé and Lorin Stein (Trans.) SEE ALSO: Artists; Biography; Levé, Edouard PDF IMAGES
33	Readings/Photography Pan American Terminal, Kennedy Airport By Enoc Pérez (Photog.) PDF IMAGES
37-46	Article Vote machine: How Republicans hacked the Justice Department By Scott Horton SEE ALSO: Alien and Sedition laws, 1798; Attorneys general; Career as U.S. president; Siegelman, Don; Elections; Executive power; False imprisonment; Bush, George W. (George Walker); Imprisonment; 2001-; Officials and employees; Political corruption; Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ); Selection and appointment; United States. Dept. of Justice PDF FREE TEXT IMAGES
47-53	Article Beltway bacchanal: Congress lives high on the contributor's dime By Ken Silverstein SEE ALSO: Campaign funds; Ethics; Restaurants; United States. Congress PDF FREE TEXT IMAGES
54-63	Article Mississippi drift: River vagrants in the age of Wal-Mart By Matthew Power SEE ALSO: Boats and boating; Mississippi River; River life; Vagrancy; Wal-Mart (Firm) PDF FREE TEXT IMAGES
64-65	Archive/Article Keyword: Evil By Ginger Strand SEE ALSO: Columbia River; Costs; Electric utilities; Environmental aspects; Google (Firm); Information technology; Power utilization PDF FREE TEXT IMAGES
66-69	Collection Experience of the eye By Rackstraw Downes PDF IMAGES Art/illustration [Untitled Art/illustration] By Rackstraw Downes SEE ALSO: Presidio; Racetracks (Horse racing) PDF IMAGES
67	Art/illustration [Untitled Art/illustration] By Rackstraw Downes PDF IMAGES
68-69	Art/illustration [Untitled Art/illustration] By Rackstraw Downes SEE ALSO: Artists' studios; Brooklyn (New York, New York); Buildings, structures, etc.; Cummings, Daphne; Homes and haunts—Pictorial works PDF IMAGES Art/illustration [Untitled Art/illustration] By Rackstraw Downes SEE ALSO: Beehives; Canyons; Presidio PDF IMAGES
69	Art/illustration [Untitled Art/illustration] By Rackstraw Downes SEE ALSO: Barns; Marfa PDF IMAGES
70-77	Article Lonely in America: Contemplating the remains of slavery By Wendy S. Walters SEE ALSO: Africans; Biography; Cemeteries; Desecration; Loneliness; New Orleans; Portsmouth; Slavery; Walters, Wendy S. PDF IMAGES
78-82	Fiction The ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace By Daniel (Daniel Philippe) Mason PDF IMAGES
83-84	New books/Review New books By John Leonard SEE ALSO: Kazin, Alfred; Alfred Kazin: a biography (Book); Biography; Leslie, Esther; Stape, J.H. (John Henry); Conrad, Joseph; Pictorial works; Cook, Richard M.; The several lives of Joseph Conrad (Book); Benjamin, Walter; Walter Benjamin (Book) PDF IMAGES
85-88	Review The vital center did not hold: Arthur Schlesinger's diaries reveal a blindness to the changing political landscape By John Lukacs SEE ALSO: Schlesinger, Andrew; Schlesinger, Arthur M. (Arthur Meier); Diaries; Historians; Journals: 1952-2000 (Book); Schlesinger, Stephen PDF IMAGES
88-94	Review Fear of fallowing: The specter of a no-growth world By Steven Stoll SEE ALSO: Friedman, Benjamin M.; McKibben, Bill; Lindsey, Brink; Deep economy: the wealth of communities and the durable future (Book); Economic development; The age of abundance: how prosperity transformed America's politics and culture (Book); The moral consequences of economic growth (Book) PDF FREE TEXT IMAGES
95	Puzzle/Department Score sheet By Richard Maltby PDF IMAGES
96	Findings/Article Findings By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi PDF IMAGES

WEEKLY REVIEW
WASHINGTON BABYLON
NO COMMENT
MR. FISH

Weekly Review By Gemma Sieff	Mar 18
Weekly Review By Christian Lorentzen	Mar 11
Weekly Review By Paul Ford	Mar 4
Weekly Review By Claire Gutierrez	Mar 25

By Ken Silverstein

Meet Janice Enright, Hillary’s Lobbyist Friend and Fundraiser	10:00 AM Mar 21
The Surge is Not Sustainable: Augustus Richard Norton explains why	11:33 AM Mar 27
Aventum President Says Her Firm Totally Separate from Former NRCC Treasurer	12:54 PM Mar 14
Bowling and the G.O.P.	2:40 PM Mar 12
Castro Departs but Engel Still Wields Power	4:50 PM Mar 4
Obama: Liberal Madman!	12:06 PM Mar 26
Spitzer Set Up?	2:17 PM Mar 13
Target Terror: Buckeye, Arizona	9:09 AM Mar 24
Military Report Looked at Co-opting Bloggers	4:24 PM Mar 31
Spitzer: Political Leak?	4:19 PM Mar 10
Spitzer Leak Update	5:03 PM Mar 11
Six Questions for Matt Bai on Campaign ‘08	9:48 AM Mar 28
I Thought the Banks Were Broke? Plenty still on hand to buy lawmakers	9:59 AM Mar 21
Before You Write That Next Check to the Sierra Club	9:34 AM Mar 28
Murky InterOil	10:20 AM Mar 31
Who, Us? Derivatives traders shocked that fingers point at them	9:01 AM Mar 24
The Trials of Sami al-Arian	11:47 AM Mar 7
The Rise and Decline of American Newspapers	8:39 AM Mar 14
Reverend Wright’s Remarkable Letter	10:48 PM Mar 28
The Company They Keep A Russian oligarch roots for McCain.	10:35 AM Mar 19
Should Clinton Withdraw? Let voters, not pundits, answer the question	9:55 AM Mar 5
Good News for Freedom Agenda: Pro-American dictator not a cannibal	10:43 AM Mar 17
Gaga Over Geagea	1:16 PM Mar 14
America at Its Best: Spitzer Scandal Brings Out Good Old-Fashioned Entrepreneurialism	8:32 AM Mar 16
More Failure for “Sensible” American Middle East Policy Former CIA official: concessions by Israel cannot be discussed ”rationally” in United States	12:43 PM Mar 3

Valéry on the Language of Art	Mar 6
Yeats’s ‘Second Coming’	6:18 AM Mar 18
Farmer’s Folly	9:19 AM Mar 13
Judicial Bamboozlement	8:11 AM Mar 26
The Reality of Life in a Police State	8:25 PM Mar 13
Spitzer Set Up?	7:04 PM Mar 13
The Passion According to Johann Sebastian Bach	10:01 AM Mar 21
Clarke’s Ultimate Machine	12:43 PM Mar 19
More Rumblings in Los Angeles	8:23 PM Mar 20
How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the (Ticking) Bomb	7:46 PM Mar 1
Mukasey’s Law	11:18 AM Mar 6
Eyeless in Gaza	2:13 PM Mar 4
Rumi—Dervish at the Door	9:07 AM Mar 27
Remembering Frederick Douglass	12:29 PM Mar 11
Spitz Out	6:17 PM Mar 12
Proust on Art as Transcendence	Mar 28
No More Torture—No Exceptions	8:20 AM Mar 12
Donne—Good-Friday 1613	7:05 PM Mar 21
What Do Sex Scandals Tell Us About America’s Political Maturity?	8:25 AM Mar 18
Siegelman and the Fairness Doctrine	11:32 AM Mar 31
Cusanus’s Great Continuum	6:12 AM Mar 20
Edmund Burke and the War in Iraq	11:37 AM Mar 22
Pope—Know Then Thyself	5:20 AM Mar 29
The Past Is Not Past. Or Is It?	9:07 AM Mar 24
Crazy in Alabama	10:15 AM Mar 14
Six Questions for Garry Wills on ‘What the Gospels Meant’	9:20 AM Mar 15
Oakeshott—On Experience	Mar 27
Mukasey and Public Integrity	9:51 AM Mar 29
The Gitmo Farce	9:59 AM Mar 16
Kraus—The Perpetual Peace	6:39 AM Mar 12
In the Beginning. . .	Mar 16
Stevens on Emancipation	6:27 AM Mar 7
The Gathering Storm at Justice	9:19 AM Mar 15
Vaughan—Gone Into the World of Light	6:37 AM Mar 23
More Political Taint in the Spitzer Case	3:01 PM Mar 22
Dowson’s ‘Vitae Summa Brevis’	6:48 AM Mar 8
The House that Karl Built	9:39 PM Mar 30
And Now for the Really Bad News. . .	10:40 AM Mar 17
Mallarmé—the Faun’s Afternoon	5:20 AM Mar 6
Liveblogging	2:22 PM Mar 3
Bell on the Shi’a in Iraq	6:29 PM Mar 19
Court of Appeals Sets Governor Siegelman Free As Congress Calls Siegelman to Testify in Continued Probe of Political Prosecutions	4:51 PM Mar 27
Lenz on Human Perfectibility	Mar 30
Media Alert	9:43 AM Mar 11
Lawrence on the Iraq Quagmire, 1920	Mar 19
The Transformation of Experience into Performance	Mar 31
Witching Moment	4:56 PM Mar 5
Merton on the Choice Between Good and Evil	Mar 9
Lincoln at Gettysburg	Mar 25
Law as a Vehicle for Freedom or Repression	Mar 1
Wolfram’s Divided Heart	Mar 21
Kafka on the Need for a Personal God	Mar 23
Mallory–The Apotheosis of Lancelot	Mar 4
Media Alert	5:23 PM Mar 28
The Assault on Public Integrity Continues	7:11 AM Mar 19
Neruda—a Song of Despair	6:12 AM Mar 25
The Center Holds	2:59 PM Mar 14
Whitman—‘America Singing’	9:04 AM Mar 4
Kraus—Humanity on the Way to the Gallows	Mar 12
Melville on Life and Philosophy	Mar 26
Kisch and the National Surveillance State	Mar 24
The President’s Lawyers	12:24 PM Mar 11
Maimonides’s Measure of Man	Mar 13
Seneca’s Measure of the Human Life	Mar 8
A Brain-Dead Press	6:43 AM Mar 7
In Pakistan, Judges Freed, Pressure on Musharraf Builds	8:03 AM Mar 25
Yeats—Easter 1916	6:49 AM Mar 16
Conrad on the Imperialist Spirit	Mar 29
Public Integrity, Redefined	3:02 PM Mar 14
Thoreau—Battling Evil	Mar 5
Media Alert	8:53 AM Mar 16
Emerson—Science and Religion	Mar 14
The Silly Season is Here	2:05 PM Mar 18
The Case of the Amazing Vanishing Corruption Investigation	7:03 AM Mar 17
Adams on the Revolution	Mar 18
More Bad Nominees	8:42 AM Mar 17
House Beautiful Iraq	7:13 AM Mar 19
The Speech	12:47 PM Mar 19
Jefferson on the Utility of Soft Power	Mar 11
Joyce on the Irishman Abroad	Mar 17
Milosz on Being	Mar 15
Marvell—‘Cromwell’s Return’	6:39 AM Mar 14
The Spitzer Sex Sting: A Few More Questions	7:58 PM Mar 10
King Arthur 2.0	4:17 PM Mar 10
Armenia and the Unfinished Business of Ethnonationalism	7:30 AM Mar 13
Blackwater’s Gray Zone	8:17 AM Mar 21
Droste-Hülshoff—On Maundy Thursday	8:59 PM Mar 20
The Torture Team	4:05 PM Mar 28
Gitmo and the G.O.P. Election Effort	5:53 PM Mar 29
The Speech: A Conservative’s Take	9:57 AM Mar 21
The War Over the War Inside the Pentagon	11:10 AM Mar 20
Another Milestone on the Road to Serfdom	7:58 AM Mar 8
Bar Questions Independence of Military Commissions	11:31 AM Mar 13
Burke—When Politicians Deal in Blood	3:13 AM Mar 22
Listening for an Easter Afternoon	12:49 PM Mar 23
Correction	2:18 PM Mar 10
Roasting on a Slow Spitz	1:16 PM Mar 14
Were Karl Rove’s Emails Destroyed?	11:41 AM Mar 22
Alice Martin’s War	7:07 AM Mar 9
Celan’s ‘Tenebrae’	6:13 AM Mar 20
No Terrors for Me	4:46 PM Mar 26
Iraq in the Balance	8:37 AM Mar 31
Hayek on the Formation of Free Opinion	Mar 10
Akhmatova on Eternity	9:35 AM Mar 1
Pasternak’s ‘Black February’	6:17 AM Mar 10
Executive Privilege on the Firing Line	8:43 AM Mar 11
Six Questions for David Rieff, Author of ‘Swimming in a Sea of Death’	4:44 PM Mar 6
The Question Behind ‘Goya’s Ghosts’	9:56 AM Mar 16
Wang Wei’s Deer Park	7:23 AM Mar 31
Thucydides on the Destructive Qualities of the Thirst for Power	9:39 AM Mar 2
Six Questions for Aram Roston, Author of The Man Who Pushed America to War	9:22 AM Mar 19
Tremors at the Roof of the Earth	11:01 AM Mar 18
Buckley Questions the Establishment	10:00 AM Mar 3

By Mr. Fish

A Cartoon	9:05 PM Mar 22
A Cartoon	3:32 PM Mar 28
A Cartoon	10:06 AM Mar 6
A Cartoon	1:36 PM Mar 14
A Cartoon	3:29 PM Mar 28

USERNAME
PASSWORD
Subscriber? · Lost password? Lost username? · More help