“The Secret History of the Magna Carta” by Peter Linebaugh; Jonathan R. Cole on defending the university post–9/11; “Just Marriage”: Mary Lyndon Shanley on the public importance of private unions; Abbott Gleason compares today’s antiliberal revolt to that of 1920s Europe; and Leonardo Avritzer examines the chances Brazil’s President Lula has to redeem democracy in Latin America. In reviews: Susie Linfield on the literature of political memory; Jehangir Pocha on Zoroastrianism; and Charles Lawrence on Young, Gifted, and Black. In the New Fiction Forum, James Hynes surveys works by British novelist Adam Thorpe. Poems by Claudia Rankine, Aaron Belz, and Nikolai Zabolotsky.