Louis Menand's <A HREF="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/07/09/070709crbo_books…; of <I>The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Politics</I> is an interesting read—possibly more interesting than the book itself. However, back in 2004, Gene Weingarten covered the same questions, getting up close and personal with Ted Prus, a non-voter who "just doesn't give a rat's ass."
The final article of <I>The Oxford American</I>'s Best of the South issue is Hal Crowther's splenetic rant about the region's less savory characteristics.
Everybody knows WWI was in black and white.
They bend the rules.
Don't pick up that dictionary! You're smart enough to figure out what that new word means.
Jack London's forgotten <I>The Road</I>.
Eugene Starostin and Gert van der Heijde have solved a 75-year-old conundrum by developing tools to predict the three dimensional form a Möbius strip will take.
'Fess up, you didn't know where they are either.
Personally, I've enjoyed the Potter books finding the themes more archetypal than "derivative," but <I>chacun á son goût</I>, ya know? What I found interesting about Ron Charles' rant was this pithy argument: "We're experiencing the literary equivalent of a loss of biodiversity." In 1994, according to a Stanford survey, over 70% of fiction sales were from just five authors.
John Flahive answered the phone one evening. On the other end of the line was a stranger, George Martorano calling from prison. That call changed both their lives.