Editor’s Note: Russell Banks is the widely acclaimed author of over a dozen novels and collections of short stories, including Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, and Success Stories. He helped organize a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of North Carolina in the 1960s. He recently retired from teaching creative writing at Princeton University. Two of his novels, Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter, have been made into acclaimed films. A third, Cloudsplitter, is in the works with HBO. Banks was interviewed by Joel Wendland.

Bay-area hip-hop artist and political activist Michael Franti (of Spearhead) recently put out an anti-war single titled “Bomb Da World.” In this song, Franti calls on the people to rise up against the insanity of Bush’s perpetual war.

I was introduced to Abraham Polonsky through two films on late-night television that aired around 1957. The films were Body and Soul and Force of Evil. Both starred John Garfield at the peak of his powers, both were written by Polonsky, and he directed the second, darker film as well. Abraham Polonsky was a filmmaker and novelist whose work consistently critiqued the violence and corruption of capitalism.

The morning of March 5th, I threw on my big cammy fatigues that I used to wear for bombing* because of all the hidden pockets. Walking out the door, I grabbed a large papier mâché book, the title reading, “Books Not Bombs,” and headed toward Manhattan’s Hunter College for an interview with Good Day New York.

“Globalization is an exceptionally abstract concept to convey to the general public,” said Alan Greenspan to The Globalist in 2001. “Most of those who protest against globalization, though presumably driven by a desire to foster a better global society … hold misperceptions about how markets work – and how to interpret market outcomes.”

A study of the diversity and complexity of African American poetry during the 1930s and 1940s, Smethurst’s The New Red Negro compellingly and subtly articulates a new view of this long-neglected period and genre of American letters.

William Gibson, best known for the sci-fi thriller Necromancer, in Pattern Recognition spins a post-9/11 tale of espionage and mystery set in the world of high-finance advertising.