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A biography of Václav Havel, playwright and former president of the Czech Republic, is presented. He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1936, as the son of a real estate magnate and nephew of a visionary in the Czech film industry. He was elected as the first president of Czechoslovakia and subsequently the Czech Republic, serving in office from 1989 to 2003. Some of his accomplishments as an author and playwright include "The Garden Party," "The Memorandum," and "To the Castle and Back."

This article focuses on the book "Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline," by Richard A. Posner. The term is redundant, Posner suggests, because an intellectual is by definition someone who addresses the public. Writing for fellow experts may take just as much brainpower but is merely academic. For practical reasons Posner is not concerned with the brave last stand of independent thinkers. Posner thinks that public-intellectual work offers the consumer three goods: entertainment, solidarity and information. The consumer (and the magazine editor or television producer who procures on the consumer's behalf) can usually tell by inspection whether a commentary is entertaining and whether it reassures people that they are on the right team, be it of abortion-haters or deconstruction-defenders.

This article presents information about the book "The Go-Between," by I.P. Hartley.

This article focuses on the book "All Families are Psychotic. A Novel," by Douglas Coupland. The speech rhythms in the book derive from sitcoms. Characters describe each other with tags like "That cheesy slut," and they silence each other with lines like "Drive, Howie." The prose style is aesthetically bankrupt, so much so that a reviewer feels a little silly and priggish for pointing it out. A lake is described as "a very lake-y looking lake." A house is described as "an event in itself." One suspects Coupland of writing badly on purpose, as if he meant to suggest that sloppiness of perception might be raised to a metaphysical disposition-- a strategy for approaching the world.

Several letters to the editor are presented in response to articles in previous issues including "The Assault of the Super PACs," by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney in the February 6, 2012 issue, "The Wicked Art of Caricature," by Edward Sorel in the February 6, 2012 issue and "Diary of a Mad Law Professor," by Patricia Williams in the February 6, 2012 issue.