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March/April 2006

Gianpaolo Baiocchi on the citizens of Porto Alegre; Nir Rosen discusses the roots of sectarian violence in Iraq; the end of the culture wars; Josiah Ober looks at what we can learn from Athens. Khaled Abou El Fadl on Osama bin Laden.

Poems by Geoffrey O’Brien, Matthew Zapruder, and Frank Bidart; criticism by Joyelle McSweeney; a short story by Deb Olin Unferth.

Essays

The Citizens of Porto Alegre

In which Marco borrows bus fare and enters politics
Gianpaolo Baiocchi

The Nation in a Room

Turning public opinion into policy
James S. Fishkin

Ending Polarization

The good news about the culture wars
John Gastil, Dan M. Kahan, and Donald Braman

On the Ground in Iraq

The roots of sectarian violence
Nir Rosen

The Crusader

Why we must take Osama bin Laden’s writings seriously
Khaled Abou El Fadl

The Dreamlife of Rupert Thompson

Novels at the intersection of gothic and noir

James Hynes

Fiction

Things That Went Wrong Thus Far

Deb Olin Unferth

On Film

Happy Endings

Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice

Alan A. Stone

On Poetry

Poet’s Sampler

Introduced by Larissa Szporluk

F. Daniel Rzicnek

A Broken Place

Brenda Hillman’s Pieces of Air in the Epic
Amy Newlove Schroeder

The Light in the Heart

Anne Carson’s Decreation
Joyelle McSweeney

The Speaking Ear

Ronald Johnson’s Radi Os

Dan Beachy-Quick

Microreviews

Poems

Tu Fu Watches the Spring Festival Across Serpentine Lake

Frank Bidart

A laborious wakefulness or was it a most unapologetic whistling in the ear

Shane Book

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