9 August 1999
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From the Editor…
Welcome to the New Statesman website. Whether you are a new reader or an existing one - online or via the magazine - I hope you'll enjoy the great writing, fresh ideas and provocative debate that make the New Statesman Britain's award-winning current affairs weekly
Cover story
Immortal longings grow again
Science has failed: it can't explain the self to the "me" generation. Hence, argues Sara Maitland, the renewed interest in an afterlife
Features
A minister's work is never done
If our rulers make bad decisions, it is often because of an exhausting and unnecessary workload. Steve Richards asks if the system can be reformed
Prescott and class: a sad confusion
Labour ministers used to exaggerate humble origins, not deny them. ByMark Hayhurst
The great Yugoslav failure
Tito's legacy seemed to offer a "third way" between Moscow and the west. But it was the worst of both worlds, and the result was Kosovo
At another eclipse, a star was born
Stephen Hawking may be popular now but, in 1919, Einstein was even more so
A corner of America that is (for a while) Europe
Gondolas, pigeons, muddy water, fine art: Venice has been exported to Las Vegas
Arts & Culture
Lunatic fringe
As Edinburgh's annual jamboree gets under way, Bill Dunn recalls his own and others' inglorious contributions to the ever-swelling comedy scene
Tiger, tiger
Art
Wim and vigour
Film
Personality problem
Classical
Books
Put your money on Dragon Dull . . . but how much better if Dragon Dreamer could win, creating a small republic scoured of Anglo-American greed
Wales: A Question for History
Dai Smith Seren, 216pp, £12.95
ISBN 1854111256
The Welsh Illusion
Patrick Hannan Seren, 168pp, £8.95
Wales for Beginners
Jeff Fallow Writers & Readers, 170pp, £7.99
Clubbed to death
Disco Bloodbath
James St James Sceptre, 320pp, £10
ISBN 0340739533
Kind of blue
Approximately Nowhere
Michael Hofmann Faber & Faber, 77pp, £7.99
ISBN 0571195245
Hall of mirrors
Turn of the Century
Kurt Andersen Headline, 677pp, £17.99
ISBN 074727469X
Endlessly becoming
Henry James: A Life in Letters
Philip Horne (editor) Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 668pp, £25
ISBN 0713991267
Death sentences
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Harvard University Press, 449pp, £15.50
ISBN 0674177649
Observations
Letters to the Editor
New Statesman readers give their views - see what they said and find out how to contribute yourself by going to our letters pages
