19 June 2006

From the Editor…

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Cover story

Can America go green?

Why are Americans so sceptical about global warming? Possibly because they really don't want to do anything about it, argues Elizabeth Kolbert

Features

Where were you?

Five things you might have missed last week

The war on children

The most vulnerable people in Gaza are suffering the worst acute mental and physical trauma as a result of Israel's actions: almost half the population is under 15

Sometimes it's hard to be a man

On the surface, any connection between the World Cup and men's mental health week is just a quirk of the diary. Or maybe not?

My socialist dream

Time was when Tony Blair espoused radical causes. Robert Taylor reveals the romanticism in a hidden letter from the young politician to the Labour leader Michael Foot

Where idealism and pragmatism meet

Time was when Tony Blair espoused radical causes. Neal Lawson says utopianism is alive and well

Interview

NS Interview - Chomsky

The New York Times calls him "arguably the most important intellectual alive", yet he has needed police guards on his own campus. Andrew Stephen discusses Iraq, Iran and Blair with a man who divides opinion like no other

Regulars

Leader - Time for a living wage

The government has not intervened to help low-paid workers because it is on these very people that our economic growth depends

Chaos over the biggest issue of our time

Nobody knows which Whitehall department is in charge of engaging with Britain's Muslims and tackling extremism. After Forest Gate, the problem could lead to disaster

The martyr who would have been secret

Unsuitable anagrams No 3933

Set by Will Bellenger: We asked for inappropriate reworkings of the monikers of the famous

Culture

Democracy by design

Factory Records had an aesthetic that captured a revolutionary spirit: it stood for both high art and a good time. That idea has blossomed in contemporary Britain

A man of the people

Ken Loach will not be deterred by the hostile response to his latest film, he tells Richard Brooks

How the personal became political

Paul Laverty, Ken Loach’s screenwriter, explains the genesis of their film

When Britain was true blue

A loving paean to the Eighties comes complete with snow-washed denim. By Rosie Millard Market Boy
Olivier Theatre, London SE1

All smoke and no fire

A satire about the tobacco industry proves a damp squib, writes Ryan Gilbey Thank You for Smoking (15)
dir: Jason Reitman

There's no business like show business

A Pop Idol for playwrights is short on ideas, long on naked ambition, writes Andrew Billen The Play's the Thing
Channel 4

The Beatles? We've bigger fish to fry

Andy Kershaw harks back to the strange world of student gigs

Books

An orgy of inhumanity

The War of the World: history's age of hatred Niall Ferguson Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 746pp, £25 ISBN 0713997087 Why was the 20th century marked by so many massacres, wars and genocides? And will the next 100 years be any different? Joanna Bourke explores our capacity for hatred

Know thy enemy

On the Road to Kandahar: travels through conflict in the Islamic world Jason Burke Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 297pp, £20 ISBN 0755309855

Second helpings

Unaccompanied Women Jane Juska Chatto & Windus, 253pp, £12.99 ISBN 0701178043

The greatest battle of all

Moscow 1941: a city and its people at war Rodric Braithwaite Profile Books, 446pp, £20 ISBN 186197759X

House party

Men Who Made Labour Edited by Alan Haworth and Dianne Hayter Routledge, 273pp, £30 ISBN 1845680472

Body of evidence

Heartbreak: the political memoir of a feminist militant Andrea Dworkin Continuum, 232pp, £14.99 ISBN 0465017533

Walter Benjamin's "On Hashish"

The NS guide to the Walter Benjamin's "On Hashish"

Severed isles

The Book of Dave Will Self Viking, 496pp, £17.99 ISBN 0670914436

Like a true professional

In My Skin: a memoir Kate Holden Canongate, 286pp, £9.99 ISBN 1841957917

Brush with a strangler

A Death in Belmont Sebastian Junger Fourth Estate, 272pp, £14.99 ISBN 0007200056

Taking liberties

Homer's Odyssey Simon Armitage Faber & Faber, 144pp, £14.99 ISBN 0571229352

The ways we love

Adverbs Daniel Handler Fourth Estate, 352pp, £16.99 ISBN 0007181272

Observations

Africa's new royals

Observations on celebrity by Brendan O'Neill

Old school tie lives on

Observations on inequality

The Fanny question

Observations on literature

Genghis day

Observations on Mongolia

Nazis who clung on

Observations on Germany

The interview

Preview: Ken Livingstone: “The world is run by monsters”

The interview

Preview: Boris Johnson: “I’ll tell you what makes me angry – lefty crap”

On Syria

Intervention in Syria won’t work, so how do we stop Assad?

GOP race so far

Infographic: Republican primary race 2012

Mind your B-sides

Mind your B-sides

Time to rethink

Time to rethink, not reassure

Who minds?

Latter Day Taint?

Alistair Darling

Alistair Darling, the Miliband dilemma and what the party must do next
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