2008

• Sloveniafest

  Jordan Davis : Poetry

  What is it about Slovene poetry that has attracted so many American poets?

• The Idiocrats

  Alexander Provan : Internet & New Media

  Why do Internet boosters continue to confuse social networking with art?

• Seeing Past the Ivy

  William Deresiewicz : Literacy & Reading

  Why the commentariat's response to hand-wringing about "the decline of reading" condescends to the large mass of nonspecialist readers.

• Krapp's Last Horse

  Akiva Gottlieb : Theater

  With his new play Kicking a Dead Horse, Sam Shepard is still stranded in a prairie of tough-guy cliché.

• Darkness Becomes Him

  Scott McLemee

  A French pundit's short journey from Maoism to the cult of moi.

• Music's Measures

  Brian Morton : Jazz

  A jazz writer pays tribute to his longtime collaborator on The Penguin Guide to Jazz.

• Staged Reading

  Alisa Solomon

  How Judith Thompson's play about Abu Ghraib falls short.

• Uncomplicated

  Daniel Miller

  Slavoj Žižek's newest book may cause readers to conclude that the superstar philosopher has misplaced his marbles.

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  The Aesthetic Is the Personal

  Barry Schwabsky

  The Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Guggenheim.

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  It's About Freedom

  Nick Stillman

  Philip Guston at the Morgan Library.

• Strange Alchemy

  Michael Kazin

  In A Conservative History of the American Left, Daniel Flynn can't decide whether to ridicule the left or fear it.

• Taz Year Thirty

  Paul Hockenos

  Germany's leading left daily wins the fight to name a street after a leader of the 1968 student movement.

• Looking Past Clichés

  Laila Lalami

  The Visitor is that rare film that defines Arabs not as ethnic or religious stereotypes but as individuals.

• The Light Stuff

  Melanie Rehak : Literacy & Reading

  The Kindle e-reader lightens your load, but can you curl up with it in bed?

• Loss Lieder

  Ange Mlinko : Poetry

  It's National Poetry Month, and that means cooked meat.

• Victim 'Hood

  Chris Lehmann : Publishing Industry

  An account of the most recent installment in the nation's sick love affair with literary exhibitionists.

• Professing Literature in 2008

  William Deresiewicz : Higher Education

  Why is the intellectual agenda of English departments being set by teenagers?

• Tom Stoppard's Schlock 'n' Roll

  J. Gabriel Boylan : Theater

  When will we stop living in the '60s?

• An Ayler in My House

  Nick Stillman : Jazz

  A glossy and ragged musical declaration of love.

• An Unmonumental Grimace

  Barry Schwabsky : Architecture & Design

  Taking stock of the new New Museum.