Volume 56, Number 18 · November 19, 2009
(Library of Congress)
by Jonathan Raban
Of all the many thousands of photographs that came out of the New Deal–era effort to photograph rural poverty in the southern states, none has remained more famous than Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother.
by Joost R. Hiltermann
When the US begins pulling out its first combat brigades starting in March, Iraq will be entering into a period of fractious wrangling over the formation of a new government. If Iraqi national forces fail to impose their control, an absence of political leadership could coincide with a collapse in security; if politicians and their allied militias resort to violence, the state could fracture along political, ethnic, and sectarian lines.
- NYRblog: Iraq: A Bigger Threat Than Bombs
by David Cole
African-Americans are 13 percent of the general population, but over 50 percent of the prison population. Blacks are incarcerated at a rate eight times higher than that of whites. Three recent books by scholars who happen to be black men eloquently attest to the broader effects of the racial disparities in our criminal justice system.
