State of the Nation

Disapproval and Trust

Essays

Remembering Randy Forsberg

A tribute to the founder of Nuclear Freeze
Joshua Cohen

Call of the Tribe

The role of identity in our politics and our lives
Glenn C. Loury

Constitutional Conventions

Public history should make us think
William Hogeland
Sanford Levinson responds, and Hogeland rebuts.

The Mourner's Hope

Grief and the foundations of justice
Martha C. Nussbaum

The Good Life

On The Measure of America: American Human Development Report, 2008-2009
Claude S. Fischer

Not Free at Any Price

Why I switched to the OLPC — and why I dropped it
Richard M. Stallman

New Fiction Forum

Bad News

On the Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger and authenticity in the South Asian political novel
Amitava Kumar

Every Leaf, Every Tree

fiction excerpt
Neel Mukherjee
art by Tom Uglow

The Weight of Grief

Kristin S. vanNamen

Uproars

Leslie Epstein's magic
John Crowley

On Film

What Does Woody Want?

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Alan A. Stone

On Poetry

2008 Poetry Contest

John Koethe introduces the winner of Boston Review's 11th annual poetry contest
Sarah Arvio

Listening to Poetry

Jack Spicer's My Vocabulary Did This to Me
Zach Finch

Wanderer

Jay Wright's The Presentable Art of Reading Absence and Polynomials and Pollen
Aaron McCollough

Microreviews

Mary Jo Bang

Lisa Samuels

Rosmarie Waldrop

Rusty Morrison

Sabra Loomis

Poems

A wellworn inclined ramp for launching vessels, or, body integrity identity disorder

Thomas Hummel

Sea Horse

Aleš Šteger

Now There Are Two Poems In Which We Are Kissing

Rebecca Bridge

Ruined Interior

Suzanne Buffam

Home, Away

Margaret Monaghan

Pig's Heaven Inn

Arthur Sze

in the dark I stare through your cream gauze drape and hope for your shape to pass

Tom Bourguignon

Chernobyl

Emily Fragos

Poet's Sampler: Patrick Moran

Introduced by D.A. Powell