FIELD NOTES SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT While the book review will continue to be available as a stand-alone publication, we are happy to announce that beginning with this issue it will also appear within the pages of Lingua franca as a special supplement each April and November. BOOK REVIEWS BREAKTHROUGH BOOKS
INSIDE PUBLISHING
CONTEST WHEN WORDS FAIL
CONFERENCES HYPOTHESES
Professors battle impeachment/a college defends marriage/Sarajevo saves a book
Last year, Lingua franca launched The Lingua franca Book Review, a semiannual publication. It was distributed exclusively by certain college and independent bookstores to academic readers and bookbuyers. 
Emily Eakin on BETTY FRIEDAN
William Kerrigan on ACADEMIC KEYWORDS
A.O. Scott on NORMAN PODHORETZ’S EX-FRIENDS
Jen Nessel on HOW TO DO IT
Gar Alperovitz on THE STAKEHOLDER SOCIETY
Ben Ratliff on THE MYSTERY OF SAMBA
Joan W. Scott on RAISING REDS AND RED DIAPERS
John Brewer on A HISTORY OF THE MODERN FACT
Philip Kasinitz on THE FUTURE OF US ALL
Exploring the universe
Wisconsin comes out/Oxford abandons poetry/Peyton Place returns
Postmodern scholars are often attacked, with some justice, for their opaque
writing and turgid prose. But do they deserve all the attention? From Talcott
Parsons to Allan Bloom, more traditional scholars have written plenty of
unfortunate sentences too. Lingua Franca asks its readers to send us the worst examples of academic prose they can find.
In 1912, the rare-book dealer Wilfrid Voynich purchased a medieval manuscript in Italy and brought it back to America. Filled with odd botanical illustrations and images of naked women, the manuscript was written in a code that looked simple to decipher. But decades later,Voynich’s book remains an enigma. Locked in a room at Yale’s Beinecke Library, it keeps its secrets from even the most determined scholars.
BY LEV GROSSMAN
Jim Holt on the appearance of objectivity.
