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Contents

Vol. 27 No. 10   ·   19 May 2005

The Savage Life

Frank Kermode: The Adventures of William Empson

  • William Empson: Vol. I: Among the Mandarins by John Haffenden  Buy this book

Letters

Niall Ferguson, Neil Vickers, Richard Guy, Geoffrey Best, David Seddon, Sydney Bernard Smith, Graham Brown, Timothy Knapman

Ross McKibbin: Feckless, Irresponsible and Back in Power

Robert Irwin on the invariably savage Tamerlane

  • Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World by Justin Marozzi

Corey Robin: In the Name of National Security

  • Arguing about War by Michael Walzer  Buy this book
  • Chain of Command by Seymour Hersh
  • Torture: A Collection edited by Sanford Levinson  Buy this book

Eric Foner reports on America’s bad wars

  • The Dominion of War: Empire and conflict in North America 1500-2000 by Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton  Buy this book

Ilan Pappe: de-Arabisation

James Morone traces America’s ‘base cupidity’

  • Born Losers: A History of Failure in America by Scott Sandage  Buy this book

Short Cuts

Thomas Jones: ‘The Dinner Party’

Bottlenecks

Partha Dasgupta: What Environmentalism Overlooks

  • Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond  Buy this book

Eleanor Birne on the life and death of Stuart Shorter

Elizabeth Lowry: Hilary Mantel’s Fiends

David Wheatley

Theo Tait: The Difficult Fiction of Cynthia Ozick

  • The Bear Boy by Cynthia Ozick

August Kleinzahler: Lee Harwood’s risky poems

At the Royal Academy

Peter Campbell: Matisse’s revelations

Ian Gilmour on the disgraceful Lady Caroline Lamb

  • Lady Caroline Lamb by Paul Douglass

Carolin Crawford explains the Universe

  • The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene  Buy this book

Diary

Patrick Cockburn reports from a divided Iraq

Contributors

LRB cover artwork: hats on garden furniture

Featured articles

The Savage Life
Frank Kermode: The Adventures of William Empson

Bottlenecks
Partha Dasgupta: What Environmentalism Overlooks

Diary
Patrick Cockburn reports from a divided Iraq

Short Cuts
Thomas Jones: ‘The Dinner Party’

At the Royal Academy
Peter Campbell: Matisse’s revelations