Trumped Up Elisabeth Zerofsky attributes Marine Le Pen’s recent successes [“Front Runner,” Letter from France, May] to the current political vacuum in France — and rightly so. A populist demagogue such…

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Adverse Effects Andrew Cockburn’s analysis of the “election-industrial complex” [“Down the Tube,” Letter from Washington, April] argues, correctly, that the rise of super PACs has created a class of consultants…

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Overhead Costs Jay Kirk’s “Killer Bunny in the Sky” [Letter from Massachusetts, March] was amusing, but the impact that hunters have on wildlife isn’t. Hunters use high-powered weaponry, tree blinds,…

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Corn Bred Richard Manning’s critiques of Iowa politics [“The Trouble with Iowa,” Report, February] are all too familiar to those of us who live in the state, and many of…

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Editor’s Note This month we are introducing three changes to the regular format of Harper’s Magazine. In the Readings section, the usual found documents and fine art are accompanied by…

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Suspicious Activity It is a physician’s responsibility to give patients information about strategies that will help prevent adverse outcomes. As a doctor who focuses on high-risk pregnancies, I often ask…

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The Secret History Randall Kennedy’s claim that respectability politics has “improved the racial situation dramatically” [“Lifting as We Climb,” Essay, October], overstates the centrality of that phenomenon to black freedom…

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Harper’s v. Harper It is a tradition among Canadian pundits to travel abroad bearing tales — possibly because it is easier to convince a foreign audience that the current government, regardless…

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Taking the City by Storm In her article about reform in New Orleans following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Rebecca Solnit could have mentioned that Barack Obama’s policies have only…

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