- The Economist: on the new Russian mythology and on the upcoming sham elections (1, 2).
- James Wood takes on the new War and Peace translation, covering a suitably vast amount of territory. (Aside: Wood's jump from The New Republic to The New Yorker was much heralded a few months back. Judging from his reviews so far, Wood himself seems to have deemed the move momentous. So far for The New Yorker, Wood has reviewed Phillip Roth's latest sandwiched between translations of the Psalms and War and Peace. Where does one go from there?)
- Putin's Power Grab - Sakhalin Island, a former gulag off the coast of Siberia, sits atop one of the world's largest known deposits fossil fuels.
