LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

CONFERENCES

December/January Issue

Departments
 
FIELD NOTES
Borrowed time/
Brand new world/
The globalization tax/
and more

INSIDE PUBLISHING
Journal jousting/
Star-spangled mastodon/
Nobel nastiness

BREAKTHROUGH BOOKS
The History of Reading

HYPOTHESES
Jim Holt travels to multiple universes.

Pet Theory
If schizophrenia is not the product of faulty genes or faulty parents, what is it? E. Fuller Torrey smells a cat.
BY STEPHEN MIHM

The Quest for Uncertainty
Richard Rorty can't handle the truth. Or rather, he has renounced its philosophical pursuit. Can he reconcile his metaphysical skepticism with his progressive politics?
BY JAMES RYERSON

The Lost Emperors
Who is buried in Japan's imperial tombs? Thanks to the Imperial Household Agency, there's no way to know.
BY ALISSA QUART

The lexicographer's Apprentice
An expert in American slang flies to Oxford for a crash course in compiling the OED—"the oracle," as he puts it, "of an entire language."
BY JESSE SHEIDLOWER