Editors’ Note

Deborah Chasman and Joshua Cohen

State of the Nation

Run For Office

Stephen Ansolabehere

Essays

Qaddafi’s Dream

Robert P. Baird

Vanishing Point

Niall McCann

Karlan’s Court

It Takes Two
Pamela S. Karlan

Apocalypse

What Disasters Reveal
Junot Díaz

The Novel Is Not Dead

Despite Critics’ Best Attempts
Jess Row

Seriously Funny

The Jewish Jane Austen
Roger Boylan

Feast and Famine

India Is Growing Rapidly, but Indians Are Still Starving
Siddhartha Deb

Government’s Place in the Market

A Q&A with Eliot Spitzer
David V. Johnson—Web only

Winning the Future

Should Political Scientists Care More About Politics?
Archon Fung—Web only

A Predicament of His Own Making

Obama’s continuation of Bush’s counterterrorism apparatus
Owen Fiss—Web only

Another Year, Another Nakba

Pro-Palestinian protests along Lebanon-Israel border turn bloody
James Reddick—Web only

Strongly Worded Dissents

A conversation on California prisons and Cornel West
Joshua Cohen and Glenn C. Loury—Web only

Putting Solutions on Trial

Impact Evaluation and the Millennium Villages Experiment in Africa
Michael A. Clemens—Web only

Fiction

The Shunting Trains Trace Iron Labyrinths

Ana Menéndez

On Film

Hello, Columbus

Icíar Bollaín’s Even the Rain
Alan A. Stone

On Poetry

Out of Reach

Susan Howe’s That This
Richard Deming

(Most) Everyone’s Invited

Roddy Lumsden’s Identity Parade
Dai George

Microreviews

CAConrad
Wisława Szymborska
Allison Titus
L.S. Klatt
Grace Zabriskie

Poems

Discovery Contest Winners

Ansel Elkins, Angelo Nikolopoulos, Adam Roberts, and Solmaz Sharif

Poet’s Sampler

Ann Marie Thornburg
Introduced by Laura Kasischke

Lollipop and Breath

Daniel Coudriet

By Some Miracle a Year Lousy With Meteors

Cynthia Arrieu-King and Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis

Frog and Toe

Caitlin Dube

Hate Mail

Carol Muske-Dukes

High Church and His Legacy

Timothy Liu

It Was a Rat that Carried Your Heart to the Sea

Kyle McCord